Oh, my, now THAT was a good weekend! Fascinating suburban tales of holiday cheer!

And it started off good--we decided to go have supper Friday evening at the Local Chinese Restaurant With Two Inexplicably Anglo Waitresses, and we got the good one who is always on the ball. The other girl, for some reason, seems always to be in perpetual training, always having to be cued to wipe the tables or bring a chair or whatever. Anyway, it was fanstinkintastic, which is pretty rare on a weeknight. (The Sunday buffet is usually much better.)

Saturday was the real workhorse day, and I managed to get just about everything done that I wanted to do, and managed to avoid some other things pretty handily. Like being able to sleep in. 6:30 in the a. of m. ...creeeeaaak...pad, pad, pad, pad, pad...pause...padpadpadWHUMP...::sawmill whisper:: "HEY MAMA, I DIDN'T WET THE BED!" "Mmelphmmebu. MOrhoomsl." Translated as 'Mama sleeps on the other side of the bed, first, and second, if you keep coming in here and waking Daddy up early on Saturday mornings he will personally make sure that Santa Claus leaves you a lump of coal. And crappy high-sulfur soft coal, too. Or maybe even peat.' Boy, I sure would like to sleep late one morning. "CAN I WATCH CARTOONS?!" "Yes, please quit talking quite so loud, though, because I'm not deaf and you're right beside my ear." "But I was awhisperin', Daddy." "Maybe on the Planet Hearing Impaired, but not right now." "Okay, can I watch the cartoons now?" She scrambled up into the covers as Mom got up and started getting ready to start the day. "Catherine?" "Yes, Daddy?" "You do realize that with you in bed, it makes it very difficult to convince Mommy to get back under the covers so I can snuggle with her, don't you?" "We gonna watch cartoons." ::sigh:: I got up and started getting ready, too.

Laundry was bundled up and taken downstairs, and then it was the beginning of the first project--changing the shower lightbulb. I have avoided this one for a while, to the point that Reba gave up prompting me with small verbal asides about how dark it was in the shower. I get a bulb and the step ladder and head upstairs. Hmmm. Can't reach it with ladder outside of shower, ladder won't go all the way IN shower, meaning ladder must be half in, half out. SUCCESS! Barely reach cover, pop it off, change the bulb (thus answering the question, 'How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but all he can think about is what a great blog entry it would make.') and gather all the stuff and take it all back downstairs. Although I did not make a big deal out of it, neither did I make this repair in secret. There was an awful lot of rattling of ladder parts and asking where the light bulb was, yet it was not until Sunday morning that Mrs. Oglesby took notice of my efforts. She was somewhat pleased. I'll take what I can get.

Then it was time to take Oldest Girl over to the church building so she could study with her friends for Bible Bowl. I decided to take Franklin since it has been over a month since he was exercised. Good thing I did--real slow to crank, and everything felt creaky and cranky and sluggish. But after a few miles, he was back to normal, or at least normal for 255K miles on the clock. Dropped off Girl, stopped and got gas, and two really cool STP keyrings, which were on the two bottles of STP Fuel System Glop That Might Work As a Placebo for Various Engine Ills. But it had keyrings, so I had to get it. Back to the house, and it was time to put back the errant shutter that has lain on the ground for several weeks, awaiting my magical fixative abilities.

These things are lightly held on with little plastic anchors, which somehow manage to sprout little legs and run away, leaving the shutter to explore the effects of wind and gravity. I have tried in vain to find these at the hardware store, which always leads to an interesting conversation with some mop-haired slacker or two. "Uhhhh...no, I don't think we have anything like that." Great. But, you know what? I'm an OPTIMIST, so I figured I would take ANOTHER trip to the Marvin's at the bottom of the hill and just see once more how little they can help me. Or just get some bright shiny expansion screws and washers. I just wanted the shutter back up. To the Possummobile! Franklin was finally getting into the mood of working again, and he fired right up and off we went.

The place was packed. Mainly it was folks getting those messy old real Christmas trees, but also full of people seemingly just wandering around the parking lot or blocking my way with their vehicles. I started to do the engine racing backfire bit, but hey, it's Christmastime. FINALLY got parked and went inside. Lots of Christmas decorations and a guy in a Santa suit, all of which just looks odd in a hardware store, and then I saw it...a WHOLE AISLE full of shutters, just like the ones on my house! And there was a non-mopheaded clerk, RIGHT THERE! It was a Christmas MIRACLE! Or not. He was having a conversation with an old timer about the shutters..."Naw, I don't want 'em if'n they're plastic. I need them vinyl ones."

"Well, vinyl and plastic are about the same thing."

"I don't know...I got me vinyl sidin', and that plastic stuff just won't hold up."

They looked intently at the box. I looked at the stock tag--"56INCH VYNIL SHTR LOUV"

"Maybe these are ABS."

"Whut's ABS?"

"Ahhhh, it's...ABS? Umm, it's another type of plastic...that's...ummm, durable."

Oops. Shouldn't be working without a net, there, Chief. "Durable plastic? I don't know, I got vinyl sidin'."

After a minute or two, the older fellow decided he would look around town some more and walked on off, a bit disappointed. The clerk turned to me and I showed him my one remaining plastic fastener from the shutter. "Have any of these?" "No, I don't think so, but I can call the factory and see if they can send some extra." Fair enough, I supposed. "Hey, I guess you didn't see it, but your stock tag here on the rack says that these shutters ARE vinyl...see?" I pointed at the tag and he took a moment to process this epiphany. "HEY, they are! You should have said something!" I really suppose it wouldn't have hurt to have pointed it out while we were all standing there together, but it just felt so...intrusive. He was almost beside himself with the pain of a lost customer when a split second later the old fellow walked back by, "SIR! These ARE vinyl! Says here on the stock tag!" And there was much joy.

He took my name and number and asked how many I wanted of the fasteners. Two thousand, three hundred and fifty six. "Oh, whatever comes in their bulk pack. Probably 20 or 50 or whatever I have to get." He promised to call back today. I can hardly wait. After getting this all squared away, there was still the question of how to get the shutter back up in the mean time, so I walked over to the Various Metal Bolts and Anchors Thingies aisle and got a box of tiny expansion bolts and went to the cashier. Cute fleshy blonde girl from the high school, and behind her in the checkout corral was another much more petite young thing. I put my stuff on the counter and as my cashier rang it up, I must confess that I could not quit looking behind her at the behind of the girl behind her. Petite Girl had on a pair of the ubiquitous soft jersey sweat pants and a top that didn't quite hit the waistband, just like what all the hip young things wear nowadays, and those soft pants just laid right there on her backside with that little bit of nekkid lower back peeking through under her shirt and her light brown hair bobbed side to side and then she turned around and put money in the cash register and AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! UNIBROW!!!! WOW, if eyebrows and wooly caterpillars work the same way, it looks like we're in for a really hard winter. All those pliers, all those hedge clippers, all those putty scrapers, all those chemicals, and yet, she had not managed to avail herself of all the heavy duty brow thinning toolery and technology around her. I would say that she probably made up for it in other ways, like being all brainy, but when I had to come back to get more anchor bolts because the ones I was buying were too big, she was not at her register when she should have been, and had to be paged, and she sort of wandered back from some hidden part of the store, and when she arrived, her fellow cashier who just happened to be waiting on me again gave a big, exasperated eye-roll as if to say, "What a clod." Of course, I am one to talk--as I said, I DID have to come back and get something that would actually work. Reba said that's what I get for looking at her butt. Fair enough.

Anyway, when I went back home the first time, not only did I attempt to fix the shutter, but also cleaned the accumulated brake dust off of our cars, requiring much scrubbing and playing in ice cold water, AND installed a new seat cover in the truck, requiring much tugging and pulling and inhaled huge quantities of dryrotted manmade fibers which I sure hope are non-carcinogenic, AND removed the pumpkins and pumpkin guts which had been slowly decomposing in the front flower bed since Halloween, AND then finally managed to get something to hold the shutter in place after a second trip to the hardware store, AND then, for the centerpiece of the Oglesby weekend there was...

THE HAULING OF THE TREE AND DECORATIONS FROM THE ATTIC!

I have this down to a science now. There are only three things to remember--Do not fall through the hole where the pull-down stair is (potentially fatal), do not grab onto the furnace flue (definitely painful), do not step on anything except the plywood (potentially painful or fatal). Tree box, light boxes, and ornament boxes were all carefully brought down and thrown gracefully into the floor of the den, managing to avoid hitting anything or anyone. And then I had to stop everything and go back and get Oldest from church.

"Daddy, are you not going to put up our tree?"

"Yes, Catherine, but I have to go get Ashley."

"Is it in that big box?"

"Yes..."

"Can I get it out and put it up?"

"NO, Daddy will do it."

"When?"

"When I get back."

"What's in the box?"

"THE TREE!"

"Can I see it?"

"When I get back."

"Not now?" ::sigh::

"Why don't I just go ahead and put it up and we'll decorate it when I get back." "YEA! We're gonna put up the TWEEEE-eeee!"

Luckily, this part is down to a science, too, and it was up in just a few minutes (although the 1,876 tips were not fully fluffed out--that's for later). Went and got Oldest, got back and set in to fluff and decorate. Always nerve wracking due to huge amounts of breakable, tear-upable, bend-out-of-shapeable stuff, which, along with the potential for getting electricuted by all the wattage from various twinkly stuff make decoration something not for the faint of heart. But it sure looks nice now.

The rest of the evening was spent scrubbing kids and folding laundry, and by bedtime, I just about dead. Or nearbouts whupped, as some would say. But, to make a good day even better, the mail had brought the newest Autoweek, Automobile, and National Geographic, all on the same day! Hardly gets any better than that. So I collapsed across the bed with my magazines and promptly started snoring.

Sunday was another good day. The kids did good in their competition, and I got to see one of my cousins and her husband and son, and I even managed to read the giant newspaper, and then got to lead singing Sunday night and totally messed up only one song. (You know, having a five note range is not really optimal for this assignment.) Then, to home, supper, and to bed. And now, here I am again.

And away I go again. I have a continuing education seminar to attend this afternoon on the glories of engineered lumber, so today is already shot for me. So in lieu of my continued rambling, be sure to check out the folks up in the header and see what all they have to say, and check back in tomorrow when there might be something else here.
posted by Terry at 10:49:00 AM