Weekend notes

I tend to leave my little blog corner a little dusty, and for that I apologize to the ones and ones of you that actually read this. There is a rather large blog post that is ongoing and will dwarf any of my other posts, but as it is ongoing, I will make a pitstop and describe my weekend and what I did.

When I came home Friday afternoon, Kel and I did some last minute house-tidying. This was our weekend of respite for two sets of two kids (we will refer to them as M(f), M(m), R and A, as per foster care decorum in concealing identities.) M(f) and M(m) were to arrive right around 5pm, but they had some home issues to resolve and they didn't find their way here until just about 6:45pm. We are quite friendly with their foster mom so we were told that they would be in trouble for a few things, and we followed through once they got there. We've had all four kids in the past so we know what mischief they can get into, but it helped that M&M would have an evening to themselves to get settled in. A & R were to arrive Saturday morning, and lucky Kel would get to supervise/police/referee their morning and afternoon monkeyshines, as I (irony alert) would attend a foster care workshop. (Our agency requires foster parents to procure 24 hours of workshop training -- Saturday would enable me to lob off a quarter of that in one fell swoop) Everyone was supposed to pass a dish around so Kel found a recipe and I did some late-night grocery shopping to get some ingredients, as well as returning some overdue library stuff. I picked the grocery closest to the library, which is not my favorite but it's lack of customers ensured my full slob dress attire (generic Madison t-shirt with flimsy Gears of War sweats) would be noticed by as few folks as possible.

As Saturday morn arrived, I beat everyone to the morning sun, and was able to get a load of dishes and laundry going before attending to kids waking up. M&M got up around 8ish, we talked for a little bit and then Kel came down as well. R&A came about a half hour late, which wouldn'tve been an issue had we not said M&M could eat when they arrived. So as all four kids got situated, we realized the number one requested breakfast option (toast) was scandalously low, and so off I can to the local gas station conveneince store. Grabbed the bread, went up to pay...and my debit card is not in the debit card slot. I have the cashier hold my purchase, I mentally re-trace my steps, and start rifling through the car in search of my card. I fail to find it, realize my wife's purse (and, by extension, debit card) is in the back seat, and jazz improv off of that to get my vittles. I get home, breakfast continues to be served, Kel goes through a list of house rules and responsibilities charts to keep the Four Horsekids at bay, and before I know it, I'm off to Milton and training.

The training was pretty low-key; it was me and one other older couple. The first half was a DVD on parental guidence of teens based on logic and love, which Cliff-Notes into letting your child have choices and have them learn from the mistakes they make along the way. Some of it made sense, some of it I questioned. Overall I'm noticing with these presentations the people doing them try too hard to be comedians, so it comes off like open mic night for doctors and pyschologists. After a lunch (spicy chili and the dessert Kel made for me) we went to the second half, which was an audio presentation on grief and coping by the same guy that was on the DVD. Having the voice with nothing to attach it to was a struggle, as the educator guy had a sing-songy, melliflous voice that caused more than a few eyelids to flutter. His main brunt of handlibng tough sitautions was to talk it through with the kids by asking the right questions and offering your own analysis of it as one of many tactics. Again, thumbs up on some, thumbs down on others, and the two minute examples of his plan "working" sounded unconvincing. We were able to wrap up a few minutes early, so I headed back to the car and searched a bit more for the debit card, which I eventually found in that half-inch of carpet floor between the passenger seat and passenger door.

Back home, Kel had a friend of hers over I hadn't yet met as well as her infant son. We chewed the fat for a bit, got dinner ready as by now it was almost 5pm, and brought the kids downstairs. The rest of the night the kids watched a Halloween movie on one of the Disney networks, played a Press Your Luck DVD game and then some full band Guitar Hero where I played roadie/band manager/instrument assigner. And then, after a few too many interband arguments/ego trips (which, considering their instrumental acumen was roughly The Shaggs Pop Warner level, was a bit funny) I played Yoko Ono and broke up the band with a quick flick of the power switch. It was almost time for them to head up to bed, anyway, but they managed to soothe over any hurt feelings. After going through their responsibilities charts and figuring out the perfect balance of in-room lights (for the boys, one night light; the huge lamp for the girls), I computed while they and Kel went off to dreamland.

When the alarm went off Sunday morning, I habitually did my snooze tap and turned to Kel's side of the bed, which was empty. I took this as an excuse to sleep in a little, and had it budgeted to be longer, but even the best of dreams will be interrupted by a black lab sitting on your head. (The dream as I remember it was quite a doozy; Kel and I had bought an old Prange Way department store as the rent was low --- $200/month -- and we actually lived in the department store, except people still tried to enter the store to shop and the dogs kept going out the automatic doors. So we took our complaints to the mayor, whose office told us to wait as he was "getting prepared" and as Kel and I waited in the lobby, we saw people frantically taping up sheets of paper to the mayor's door. Curious, I peeked through a corner of the window that had not been covered up and saw a bunch of people creating this paper mache fellow with bits of newspaper and rubber cement. That's when the alarm went off.)

All the kids were scheduled to be gone by 9am: R & A's ride came almost right on schedule and M&M left about 35 minutes later. (They forgot their school folders, which had projects they were to do that day.) I picked up here and there, pleasantly surprised at how smoothly things had gone and how much of the day I had to loaf around. Then, Kel decided to go see her sister in Sauk City, leaving me to myself for the rest of the day.

It's amazing how much little I did. I watched the Pack game, which was probably one of the most underwhelming 26-0 victories an NFL team can have. (The New England Patroits in the 3pm slot took it upon themselves to deliver the Week 1 Tecmo Bowl stomping we should have delivered.) The Ravens came **this** close to ending the Vikings' perfect season, which I didn't mind much as it keeps the hope alive that the Pack can hang their first L on them in Lambeau. I did a little computing, way too much Bejeweled, made a half-hearted stab at re-organizing my CDs, which are mostly corralled in cardboard boxes at the moment, and watched Amazing Race which was fun, despite my favorite team being booted the week previous. (And which I would have missed had it not been for me coming down to check on it -- CBS having a football doubleheader almost always wreaks havoc on the primetime schedule, and so my 7pm show did not start until 8:15pm!)

So another five days of work loom in the morning. Plus, Kel's grandma has been in the hospital, and she is having some procedure done Monday, and having loved ones around at times like those always helps. So I end this at the stroke of midnight, which will guarantee me yawns for most of the morn.

What I did this weekend

So I spent the weekend pretty much wifeless. Not by any plan or any blow-up, but she went to a party in Madison Friday night, had a lot of fun and stayed up until about 7am. She then decided to go up to her hometown and hang out with her folks and her sister (who coincedently lives across the street with the parentals.) They went to movies, went out to eat, did this, that and the other thing, and now plans to come home early this Monday AM.

So what did I do? Well, Friday night after Kel left, I listened to my iTunes and transcribed my diary. (I keep track of every CD I listen to and keep a daily tally, which I call my diary. I started on notebooks and did have them typed onto my computer, but it crashed and I lost 7 years worth of stuff. So slowly but surely I am catching up.) I was going to load the van with all the front porch stuff so we can clear that out and make it into something useful, but I lost time and motivation and decided it could wait until the morning.

Come Saturday morning it was rainy and miserable. Sadly for me, with my current work schedule Saturday is the only day I can do a dump run. So I steel myself and begin loading the front porch stuff into the van while it's coming down ***sheets*** of rain. The nice thing is that after two minutes out in stuff like that, you begin to not notice it -- you reach your saturation point, as it were, and can go on. So I fill up the van fairly quickly, only getting tied up trying to wedge in a cheap wooden cabinet. (Ingenious solution: attack that bad boy with a hammer at the pressure points. Made a lot more room, too!) I drive the van to the city dump, only a mile or so away. I pay my dues, drive to the designated area and start unloading. Now I should mention the back door of our van is wonky so all of the loading and unloading I have to do from the side doors rather than just popping open the back. So I try to back the van up at an angle to the dumpster below to make less trouble for me. (The dumpsters and drive-ups are situated where the tops of the dumpsters are level with the concrete you stand in, so you can throw stuff down and ahead and as long as the dumpsters aren't teeming full, you're OK.) I back up and after a while stop, because my senses tell me I'm dangerously close to the concrete devide. I get out and I'm a good 12 feet away, which causes the fellow using the dumpster beside me to giggle to himself. (When it comes to backing up and parking, I skew HEAVILY towards safe on the safe/sorry axis.) Since I already stopped the engine, I decide to work from there, and of corse the rain just then goes from a meager splinking to a virtual downpour. I empty the van out with a quickness, and hit my work (The Pharmacy America Trusts) as it's on the way and I still haven't had breakfast. My co-workers are amused at how wet and miserable I look and I yap with my buddy and co-worker Rob while I scarf down a Yoo-Hoo and a Honey Bun. I got some money back as I was just short of being able to afford another load, and then went back to the van once the rain let up again.

It takes me a few hours to work up the enthuisam for load #2 (we have stockpiled a LOT of junk on our front porch.) But it gets done, delivered and paid for, and on the way back, I hit the local record store (yes, in Wisconsin we have a chain of stand-alone record stores, and even as the rest of the record industry collapses, they seem to be doing OK.) I see if I can afford anything and find a wrestling DVD I've actually been looking for (New Year's Revolution '06, notable as the pay-per-view where John Cena successfully defended his belt against five other people in a cage-like structure called the Elimination Chamber. Right after that, Edge invoked a "any time, any place" instant title match clause he earned the year before, picking up his first world title in fairly easy fashion.) used for only $6. I head home, watch that while doing little odds and ends around the house. After that, I putter on the compy a bit more, play waaaaay too much Bejewled Blitz (the crack cocaine of Facebook game apps) and by seven, decide I should eat something. So I hit the Subway on the south-west side of town, pick up a few subs and some energy drinks at the connected gas-n-gulp and then decide to hit Blockbuster. Now I normally go to Family Video as they seem to be more reasonably priced and usually closer (and no, I do not do Netflix, but I may one day) but I was in the neighborhood. I found two PS2 games for $7 apiece and rented the Wire season one first two discs. Having suppressed my retail jones, I headed home and watched the first few episodes and ate. I had budgeted an 11pm bedtime, but by the time I hit the sack it was 1:45 am.

So I wake up around 9:30ish and commit myself to a few solid hours of diary typing, which works out well except for all the air guitaring I have to do while listening to the Queens of the Stone Age. Then downstairs for brunch and the rest of the Wire that I rented. I spend a little time downstairs with the laundry and then head back up to compute. I send off a few emails to friends that I need to catch up with, talk to my wife and figure out where she's at. Then I make what is, in hindsight, the worst mistake I made all weekend. I went to eat out at Wendy's.

I still had a little money left over and decided to get a small burger meal, and absolutely nothing tasted good. The drink tasted soapy, the fries were cold, and the burger was grisly and bland. But I have the logic malfunction that dictates that I don't want to throw away the food I had spent good money on, and so I finished every bite, threw it away and headed home. Ever since then -- that would be 8:30ish pm, I have had what feels like the Barnum and Bailey circus performing in my stomach, and NOT doing their best show ever. I puttered around the rest of the night, feeling progressively cruddier. I do manage to make a run to the recycling area to dispose of a few trash bags of plastic stuff. I manage to get about 35 minutes of sleep in, which wouldn't bother me if I didn't have to work a 7 hour day at 7:30am (and do the truck order, which involves marching up and down the store, ensuring all the empty spaces get ordered.) Kel and I also have to meet up with our foster care liason and finish up our licensing late in the afternoon. I am awaiting that with the excitement I normally reserve for extensive dental work (NOT because I don't want to foster, but I know by then I will be flatlining and my body will basically go on strike.) But if nothing else, I wrote this blog....

Seriously, though, Wendy's? Why oh WHAT was I thinking? Wendy's is way down my fast-food depth chart, but I guess I felt I did Subway the day before, it seems like I do Taco Bell and McDonald's more out of habit and proximity, and I hadn't been there in a while. It will be several whiles before I go willingly again. It's one of those stomach sitautions where all that needs to be done is to throw up and the recovery will begin. But that sickness is doing the backstroke around your stomach lining, and refusing to get out of the proverbial pool. I normally do not advocate random violence against fast-food mascots, but I seriously want to fling that fleckled hussy Wendy around the living room by her pigtails. (And before you get a nasty misogynist vibe from me, had Ronald McDonald or the Burger King had wrecked my tum so badly, I'd be just as dementedly malicious towards them. I'm an equal opprotunity mascot mauler in my imagination.) Hopefully I can talk my store manager into giving me a 1/2 day once I do my order. Otherwise, I am going to be one grumpy zombie the rest of the day.