That was a nice visit, don't ever freaking do it again

And I mean that in the nicest possible way. Ever since my boys learned the joy of sleeping in on the weekends I sleep until at least 10:00 am on Saturday mornings. And the past few years I have become a night owl. Whether it's my journey to meet writing success or playing Sims, I'm up until 2:00 am at times, like last night. So you can imagine my surprise when Boy #2 and almost daughter-in-law #2 came a visitin' at 9:30 AM, that's morning, AM is, without a box of doughnuts or anything. 9:30 PM is way more doable for me unless there's something good on TV.
The dog started barking bringing both the husband and I out of our Saturday morning slumber. I lifted my head, cocked it to the side and scrunched up my face.
"What?"
"Nothing, just thought I heard something."
I rested my head back on my beloved pillow only to quickly lift it back up.
"Do you hear something?"
The husband muttered something and got out of bed. I heard him talking to Boy #2, that's when I started to mutter and got out of bed.
I made myself some coffee and didn't offer any to our crack of dawn visitors because at that moment there wasn't a single cordial bone in my body. It took me a while to join in the conversation but once I worked the cobwebs out of my head I asked them what the hell they were doing here. And they said they were in the neighborhood, they knew they would wake us up but stopped anyway. There is no way either of these two are making my favorite child list any time soon. To reiterate, no doughnuts, no mocha.
So we talked for a while, still I offered no coffee, they know where to find the coffee making machine. And you know how some conversations end up in a direction that you never thought it would go? We ended up talking about Saturday Night Live back in the day. And they asked us,
"Who is Dan Aykroyd?"
Gah!

That old lady smell

I'm not dissing old ladies, some day I will be one God willing. But I'd like to put it off as long as possible. So I need to know what that old lady scent is so I don't inadvertently buy one of it's products. I'm rather sensitive about my age at the moment.
Oh and just to let everyone know if you have a party for me I will kick you till your dead. Most of my friends and family know what expensive gifts I want but if you need a list just ask.
WalMart, you plethora a blogging fodder, I love you. I turned the corner to go down my next aisle and ran smack into a old lady smell cloud. Whoa. She had just come up the aisle I was going down. And on my way down she left a trail of her scent lingering in the air, dissipating the further I got. It isn't an unpleasant smell it's just one associated with old lady. Somebody has to know what these old ladies are dousing themselves in each day of their lives. And I need to know. I will await your responses. Thank you.

Remember the deck step is broken

These words resonated in my head as I gathered the necessary items for my venture into the backyard. All day I had heard something banging in the wind and I mistook it as noise from the work going on down the street. But as night fell and the backyard was enveloped in darkness the thump continued. Peering out the back windows of the house I could see our shed door had been left open. Will someone with in the sound of my voice close the shed that I didn't open? No, they are all deaf to the sound of my voice and as the old saying goes, "if you want something done, do it yourself."
I put on a pair of over sized boots because they were there, I found a non-battery needed lantern that had a crank and I cranked it. The dog always escapes out the backdoor, down the steps and runs like the wind next door, it's where her boyfriend lives. It was important that I didn't let that happen so I backed my way out the door onto the steps and shoved her nose back inside. As I turned I held up my cranked lantern to make sure the beast wasn't lurking below.
You can see I had many distractions, you can see how a broken step can slip your mind. Until you step on it of course. So through the step I went, dropped the crank lantern, got my foot tangled in the wrought iron plant stand stored under the steps, fell forward trying to grab the stupid lantern and cried a little bit.
You get to a certain age that before moving after such a tumble you assess the damage you've inflicted upon yourself. When you are 90% sure nothing is broken you start to climb your way out and close the damn shed door. This happened Monday and I'm still moving slow. And doing quite a bit of bitching and moaning.

I thought we had this Dry Cleaning drama under control

Everything was going fine. I was making quite a bit of progress getting over the loss of The Scary Asian Dry Cleaning Dude blog fodder. My new dry cleaner, boring but competent, was just another errand. They gave me nothing to work with writing wise but when you have WalMart a bloggers life is somewhat complete anyway. So I dropped the husbands shirts off on Friday and picked up his shirts from the Friday before without incident. 

I have been picking up and dropping off shirts for years and years. One thing that has never happened is a dry cleaner telling me that the heat from the shirt press can make a shirt spontaneously com-bust because it's old. I may have been born at night but not last night. This isn't an old shirt, not new but definitely not old. My dry cleaner, see I don't even have a blog name for her, told me she'd patch it for me. I'll let that sink in.....patch it.

Okay, I do not intend to send the husband off to work looking like a hobo. I mentioned to her that in all my years of getting shirts cleaned I have never seen anything like this and she assured me that it happens all the time. Really? Huh. We had a five minute discussion over this problem, actually I dragged it out to she if she was going to charge me for the shirt she blew up. She did. I left my last set of shirts with her today and now I have to look for another damn dry cleaner. One that doesn't go on vacation to China and never come back, one that doesn't loose shirts and one that doesn't blow them up.

Lesson of the day - never get to comfortable.