Just Another Day

This morning as I was waking up, I mentally made my to-do list:  Dip raspberries in chocolate, clean tile grout in the master bathroom and shower, scrub the tub, go to lunch with Katie, paint the kitchen walls, put a second coat of red paint on the rocking chair, work-out, clean my craft room, do laundry, shorten the sleeves on Jer's jacket, shred papers.

What I really did: put a load of laundry in the washer, walked with Maryann, answered a few e-mails, took the clean sheets out of the wet load and put them in the dryer, got the raspberries out of the fridge and washed them.

Then the phone rang.  That's when things fell apart.

Jerry called to tell me a friend is in the hospital.  I wanted to send her flowers so I called the hospital, got her room number and asked to be connected with their gift shop.  I was put on hold and waited ten minutes.  No one answered. I hung up and called again.  The operator transferred my call a second time and this time while I waited, I attempted to clean about six inches of bathroom grout using an electric toothbrush and a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and baking soda.  About twenty minutes later, I realized that this was a flat-out waste of time, just like holding for the gift shop was turning out to be.  I hung up and called back again.  I told the operator that I'd called twice before and spent a combined time of over thirty minutes waiting for someone to answer.  She told me that was because the gift shop wasn't open.  Hard to argue with that logic.

After I found a florist and placed my order, I was back on track and dipped the dry raspberries in dark chocolate.  By the time I'd completed that messy but delicious chore, it was time to leave to go to lunch with my daughter.

Whenever I go out to lunch, it takes the whole afternoon.  I never think it will but it always does.  Today was no exception.  We ate lunch, visited Starbucks, said our good-byes and I drove off in the direction of home.  I had a handful of quick stops to make while I was out:  the bank, the market and to buy a gallon of color-matched paint (which turned out not to be.)   Then home.

As I arrived, I stopped at the top of the driveway to check for mail.  Our postman always comes ridiculously late and there was no mail yet but as I was walking back to the car, I saw our neighbor Dave bringing his Corgis to play outside.  I wondered why he wasn't working, so I walked over and asked.   (The ominous background music you hear is not playing for Dave, but for me.  With every step I take toward his house, I'm walking one step away from my to-do's.)

Dave and I got into an interesting discussion as he was answering e-mails (I'm not the only one in the neighborhood who multi-tasks.)  It was a lovely day and we were sitting outside talking when who should drive up in his snazzy maroon Miata but our neighbor Denny (AKA Cappy from my post "Daring Rescue at Sea.")  Now I've always wanted a ride in this little gem when its top was down so I seized the opportunity to ask him if he'd drive me home.  Both men laughed because my driveway is mere seconds by foot from where we were now standing.  Cappy cheerfully agreed to give me a lift though and, as a bonus, he even drove me the entire length of our street while I yelled, "YeeeeHaaaaa" with my arms over my head like I was on a roller coaster.  Wild ride!  (Well, the speed limit is 25, but I was still grateful to be wearing my seat belt.)

On our return trip, we saw our friend Joyce and stopped the car to talk.  (People driving convertibles do that.)  Then Denny parked in front of his house and I left for home, now farther away than I was when I'd asked for the ride.  

Susan, Denny's next-door-neighbor, was outside and she recently got an adorable new haircut so I stopped for a while to discuss her cuteness.  I am, as they say, easily distracted.  Eventually back at my own driveway, I checked the mail once again (still nothing) and drove down the hill to the house.  By the time I got inside, it was 4:45.  That's how it always is when I go out to lunch.  Leave at 11:30; return around 5:00.  That's my normal.

Back on track:  I checked on the laundry.  The sheets were dry but the rest of the wet load, mainly dishrags, had soured.  Into a bucket to soak they went.  I folded the sheets and put them away then searched the abyss (our garage) for sandpaper, found it, sanded the rocker and threw the dishrags into the washer.  I began hunting for the paintbrushes that we'd purchased last night.  Three times I scoured the entire house, garage and car, looking.  After an intense search, they turned up -- hidden in plain sight -- just as the washing machine buzzed.  I put the laundry in the dryer and and as I picked up the paintbrush, the phone rang.

It was Jerry.  He was two hours away.  I thought that would give me enough time to coat the rocker and paint the kitchen walls.  How foolishly optimistic of me.

My heart tells me that painting should be easy, fun and the results will be gratifying, but my mind tells me otherwise.  It flashes memories of other botched paint jobs onto my internal movie screen and asks me what I'm going to do differently this time.  I tell it forcefully that I am going to go slowly and stop often to check for drips.  (I would like to underscore how much I dislike drips.  They just make a paint job look so amateurish.)  This particular rocking chair was rescued from a trip to the dump and this is not its first rodeo.  It arrived here with paint drips painted on top of paint drips.  I had sanded it well though and my heart secretly harbored high hopes.  The paint is ultra-glossy and I have visions of seeing my reflection in it when I'm done.

I paint like a 5-year-old.

I paint slowly.  I check for drips (and find them) often.  I drip paint onto myself, onto the deck, and onto the rocker - a lot.  I also sit on the dripped paint and various exposed body parts have accidental encounters with wet paint.  I even drop the paintbrush onto myself, not once but twice.  I am officially a mess.  The rocker itself isn't faring much better.  Occasionally I have to dig off drying drips as well as gnats and other unidentifiable grit.   Finally I stop, not because I'm done but because I'm painting outside and it is now dark out.  As I get up to go inside, I hear the garage door opening.

List: 13
Finished: 5

That's almost half.  Impressive. Well done, Chris.

Lunch at home

Yesterday the rain gently fell. It's been a long time since this has happened here. The earth was parched and fissures large enough for a toddler to drive his big wheels into began appearing. The rain was definitely welcome. At least before lunch.

My husband is the kind of guy who doesn't brown bag his lunch. I'm not saying he won't, just that we've been married over thirty years and he hasn't yet. This last move from OH to SC, we bought a house so close to his office that if traffic is light and he eats fast, he can come home for lunch. Not only is this a cost effective measure (as I see it), it has the added benefit of better nutrition as well and no one is arguing about that. It's just a fact and we both know it. It's pleasant too and kind of breaks up the day for us both. He's not able to come home every day, but he does when he can and yesterday he did.

I have no idea what we ate, which seems odd since it was only twenty-four hours ago. I do know we were eating watermelon when we heard the first loud boom. Boom! Bang, bang, bang. A limb from a tree fell, not remarkable in itself since we live in the woods, but worthy of note because it fell on Jerry's car. We didn't see this but we heard it and knew at a glance what had happened. The limb wasn't large - the diameter was about the size of a lady's forearm but it did a lot of damage. The point of impact is unclear, but the roof is smashed in, the windshield shattered and the hood and the side panel over the wheel are all dented pretty badly.

A tree limb altered how I spent my afternoon. Instead of doing laundry, I called my insurance agent, filed an insurance claim, talked with an auto glass repair shop, conversed with our assigned insurance adjuster and made an appointment with an auto body shop. I was assured that this claim wouldn't significantly raise our insurance rates, since we haven't had other claims with this company and they consider this an act of God. I prefer to think of it as an act of Mother Nature rather than God. In my mind, God isn't spending lunch hour throwing branches at cars, but, of course, I cannot be certain.

Today (instead of doing the laundry) I spent the morning at the auto body shop getting an estimate. This shop has insurance people on staff, so my claim was expedited and I now know that the repairs for the vehicle will run $2,005.00, which means the insurance company and the Zimmermans will split the bill almost 50/50 because we have $1,000.00 deductible.

While the gentleman was appraising the damage, he point out to me that the car had sustained significant hail damage somewhere along the way as well. There are tiny dings everywhere. He said that these can be fixed using some paintless procedure but that it will probably cost in excess of $2,500.00 and it is a separate claim, thus necessitating another $1,000.00 expenditure on our part and, of course, if we file another claim so soon, it will raise our premiums.

I'm not quite sure what I am going to do with this new-found knowledge on hail damage to my husband's car. He hasn't noticed these dings himself yet. Jer's pretty fond of his vehicles and I think if he knew, it might drive him nuts. Nuts!! That reminds me! The adjuster said the damage might be caused by nuts falling out of trees and bouncing off the car. If that's the case and we get the car fixed before all the nuts fall....

How many lunches could a person buy for two thousand dollars? Maybe it's not so cost effective to serve lunch here at home after all.

Mystery solved

Dear Carol,

I thoroughly enjoyed the article you sent me from the Cincinnati Enquirer entitled "Ohio Mason's Labor of Love." "So Old-Fashioned they're Trendy," a history of Graeter's ice cream was on the opposite page and that was good reading, too. Oh, and the comics were on the back page so I read them as well. Across from the comics was the puzzle page - Sukoku, which I did until I got it right, then both the beginner's and advanced crossword puzzles and the cryptoquip. They were all fun!

It's eleven-thirty in the morning and I'm not dressed, the bed's not made and Jer's on his way home for a lunch that isn't ready, but the up side is that I finally figured out why my first-grade teacher never checked the "stays on-task while working independently" box on my report card. 

Mystery solved!

Love,
Chris