After driving home from Sconnie on a hot, sunny Sunday, the weather remembered it was spring time and changed drastically. It’s been raining off and on since Monday morning. My sisters and I tried to walk around the lake on Monday, before the rain came but the second MJ pulled Tot’s stroller out of the back of her car, thunder rolled and the skies wept. We sat in Katie’s kitchen and talked for a half an hour before giving up and going home. It rained for hours but we did manage to walk later, when the sky cleared just before dinner time. Nanners and Bean were with us by then, as school was over but Nanners had a friend with her and the kids were all gung ho to walk too. So off we went.
The rain and thunder waited until after a gorgeous sunset but it’s been pretty much all rain, all the time, since then. Yes, there have been whole minutes at a time when blue sky peeps through, sometimes even a bit of sunshine but the ominous clouds are only using that as psychological warfare to make themselves seem even more menacing. Kind of like the Viet Cong used against POWs in the Hanoi Hilton, reminding them of their wives and families and the country they’d left behind to render their captivity all the more horrible.
HA!
On Wednesday, MJ and I took Tot for a four mile walk down the parkway in the rain. And we enjoyed it!
Take that, Viet Cong spring.
On Thursday, when Jay invited me to play hooky with him (he’s actually on break between semesters right now) I said YES because due to the weather, I’d already gotten a ton of work done this week. It’s good to take a break now and then, so as not to get burnt out.
The Lovely Mr. Curry and his far more lovely wife have just welcomed a son into the world. We were going to go meet him. Our first stop of the day was the Carter’s store right down the street from us. It’s the best discovery I’ve made in years, since everyone I know is having babies and grand babies these days. They had summer weight jammies on sale buy one get two free: it’s like they knew I had twins to buy for! We chose the cutest boy set and two of the cutest girl sets. I have an account with them so every time I spend $75.00 I get a $10.00 discount. I’ve gotten the discount three times since I joined, last summer. I’m telling you: lots of new babies. It’s even more impressive when I tell you I buy most of my gifts off the clearance rack for under $5.00 a piece. I love a good bargain.
We left with our gifts and headed off to lunch at one of our favorite places in town; Kasmarscuk’s. Jay had something that looked like a sauerkraut meatloaf and I had a gypsy club sandwich. It’s called that because of the bacon they use. It was delicious but too big for me to finish. Zack ate what I brought home. In the meat market part of the shop, we picked up a pound of hot dogs, so as to compare them with the ones we got at Pekarna’s in Jordan, which are so fabulous as to be worth the trip south. We love hotdogs: the more sources for good ones, the better. We also picked up a pair of the prettiest pork chops you’ve ever seen to have for dinner.
Then we popped across the street to Surdyk’s. We just wanted to pick up a sixpack for the new nursing mother but found several bottles of wine we couldn’t leave behind, either. In the cheese an deli section of Surdyk’s, I looked at Jay and said “this is your version of a candy shop, isn’t it?” He nodded.
My version of a candy shop is a candy shop.
And an art supply store. I want everything: even the things I don’t know how to use: I want to take them all home and play with them. But I don’t. Not all of it. Not yet.
Then we took our gifts over to Curry’s place to meet Brackets.
He and I bonded over the Twins loss. I told him it was okay, you win some; you lose some. That’s life. He looked like he believed me. He’s a very sweet little guy. He was awake the whole time we visited and he only cried when he needed his diaper changed. I took care of that and he was perfectly happy again.
Back home, Jay got the chops in the oven (he wanted to try a slow roast: it turned out delicious) and I went up to get some work done before dinner.
All in all, a great way to spend a rainy Thursday.