My Thrilling Life

It's been a whirlwind weekend here at Chez Loudshoes; a roller coaster of excitement and mayhem. Sort of.

Saturday saw "Customer Appreciation Day" at the salon, complete with a tiki-bar set up in the front room. It was a busy day anyway, and the addition of strawberry and rum smoothies did nothing to calm the place down. I did not partake, because bitter experience has taught me that alcohol and hair dye are two chemicals that should never, ever mix. Then I went and did the grocery shopping, and Thing 2 and Himself went to get a birthday gift for his nephew and some flowers for Mother's Day. We got home at 9:00 and watched a movie. Rather, they watched the movie and I fell asleep. (Actually, I created a piece of performance art called "Middle Aged Suburbanite on a Saturday Evening". It was riveting.)

Sunday brought Mother's Day, complete with Thing 2's gift, which she was thrilled to be able to give me. (I had admired a plant at the grocery store the night before, and she and Himself snuck back to get it while I was shopping.) I love that she is still young enough to be beside-herself-giddy with the idea of surprising me.
Then, it was off to the Navy Legion Mother's Day Fishing Derby! (I know, you can barely contain yourself, can you?) The idea is that the Navy Legion puts on a fishing derby on Mother's Day so that dad and the kids can get out of the house for the morning, and presumably, mom gets to eat cake for breakfast and use the bathroom all by herself and generally enjoy having the house emptied. But, because we are 50minutes away and will be there for the day and all, I have to go too. I don't mind it; I get great pictures and I usually can score an Egg McMuffin on the way, because it's Mother's Day, and even though we have to get up early, I can skip having breakfast in bed made for me. (I hate breakfast in bed. I know it's supposed to be a luxuriously decadent thing to do, but I can never get comfortable, I'm always almost spilling the coffee, and it's easier just to get up and eat the damn thing at the table.)
Thing 1 had gone to my in-laws for the weekend, and was already there when we arrived. And she had already caught five fish, (three of which she had to toss back). And, as it turns out, that was the only fish any of the five kids caught all day. (And I wasn't there to take pictures, so that she would have photographic evidence of her prowess.) Fishing with kids isn't easy, let me tell you. They keep reeling in the line and casting it back out constantly; only a fish with ADD would be able to see that damn worm. It's hard to explain the Zen of fishing to an eleven-year-old; they want action. Then we went back to my sister-in-laws and had a birthday dinner, (with cake!) and then home.

Today was the plant sale fundraiser I organize for the kids school. Usually we make buckets of money on this, but for some reason this year, we barely made any. As my mother says, maybe this has run it's course. My stress levels are not helped at all by the fact that I added things up wrong and had too many of some things and not enough of others; I should never, ever be in charge of numbers, I am positively dyslexic when it comes to counting things. ("Okay, so altogether I should order 6 flats of red geraniums. So I shall write down "four".") But I have some lovely impatiens and wave petunias for my garden this year.

Tomorrow is my day off, but it's booked up as well, and I have come to realize that May and June are just very busy months where things are very hectic and we hemorrhage money, and this, too, shall pass. At least it's not all funerals and root canals.