Well, I thought it was a good weekend...

G woke up this morning, wailing that he hadn't had enough of a weekend. This continued until I cajoled and threatened him to get dressed, eat breakfast, get his backpack on, get out of the car, and get to school. I was tired when I woke up, and am now exhausted.

I had a great weekend!

Friday
We picked up Lucy from the vet (I'll blog about her ibuprofen ingestion and subsequent $2k in vet bills another time) after her having received a liter of fluid under the skin to continue to flush out the ibuprofen remainders. She was in good spirits and we were given handfuls of meds to continue giving her.

We had a nice dinner and I loaded our spare crate into the back of the car and put her in it, and we set out for the Friends of the Library's biannual book sale, on their "preview" night. I had written ahead of time whether we could join that evening and get in 'free.' I'd been thinking of joining FOL for a while now, and since admission was $5 apiece and membership was $10 (or $5 for students, bless my Peralta Colleges ID), joining was a fait accompli. I had thought that, since it was free to attend the other 2 days, this night would be a bit sparse.

More the fool I. It was packed! It seemed divided between book lovers (and likely FOL members) and book resellers. The latter were crabby and unpersonable, unapologetically grabbing books and scanning them with small, handheld digital scanners and putting them back. I'm not sure if the scanners were preset to show "BUY IT" or if they went back and uploaded the data, to return the next day with a list of books to grab.

The book lovers were interested, engaged, and delightful. A woman and I met up at the foreign-language table. I asked what language she was interested in, as we were on opposite sides of a big table, and she said pretty much anything! I found a Jean Anouilh play that looked interesting, a detective novel with an English glossary in the back, and a small, hardbound French-English dictionary that would be perfect to keep in the fanny pack for our next trip.

G found a stack of Goosebumps books, and also selected a few Lemony Snicket hardbacks. I wasn't sure the latter were his style of reading/humor, so encouraged him to put them back and get the first few books from the library to see if they were something he'd enjoy. (His teacher told me today she thought they were right up his alley. There will be more LS books to be had, I'm sure.)

He also found a book on Star Wars droids that he thought his friend W would enjoy. His friend D talks about Star Wars machines nonstop, so I suggested he give it to him instead. He'll choose this week, I think. I love that he thinks of others in this way.

Lucy did fine in her crate in the back of the car, even though we were gone 1.5 hours instead of the 1 hr I had hoped.

Saturday
This day was set aside to clean our church to to bottom. I love that a woman at our church spearheaded this project and was happy to participate. I had to call that morning, though, to let her know we'd be there, but late, as Lucy had one more vet visit that weekend for more fluids and a brief checkup. She emerged looking a bit like a linebacker, but sans the annoying E-collar that she'd rammed into our shins countless times. Yay.

We arrived at church and were given the job of dusting two large ficus benjamina silk plants. I set to work on the upper leaves and G started on the lower ones, but was quickly bored. I sent him off to the organizer to get a new job--he was given the job of washing down a found high-chair, which he apparently did with relish (and making a pool in the tiled hallway at the same time). I giggled to overhear him being told that he'd done a great job and to go get a bunch of paper towels to wipe up all the water.

I spent more than an hour on the two plants, but it was well worth it: they really looked great when I was done, and they set off that stairway landing (open to the below) well. I even found a treasure-hunt note under one: "David, you've done well! Now hunt around in the leaves of the plant 10 ft away to find your next clue." Too funny. (David?!?)

We sat down to a pizza lunch from Bowser's Pizza, which I was told is a fun place to bring kids. I'll put that on our list of places to visit. We had the exact right amount of pizza, with my splitting one of the last slices of cheese with another, and G getting the last bit of my pizza, as he was still a tiny bit hungry.

We then set out to wash down the ends of the carved wooden pews in our sanctuary, a slow job that took work but didn't seem to change the look of it much, to me. G got a little bored again, and was given the task of washing the windows of the doors into the sanctuary. The lower parts are pebbled yellow glass and the upper parts are lovely arched panes of clear glass. He set out to clean the lower panels with a vengeance, and after I was done with the pews, I set out to clean the upper panes, as I'd noticed some fingerprints on them. I'd forgotten what a pain it is to clean two sides of clear glass! You rub and rub, and then finally realize that smear is on the other side. And half the time, it was on the side you'd been working on. Agh! We did finish, though, and it was well worthwhile, as those doors are seen by everyone walking into and out of the sanctuary every Sunday. Yay us!

We finished the workday by moving things into and out of a storeroom behind our kitchen that was much larger than I'd ever remembered. Some folks had cleaned it out and cleared off a workbench that couldn't be worked on because of the massive amount of stuff stored on it. They also made a dedicated work area for our wonderful volunteer flower arrangers. I laughed when I picked up things to move, as I had a huge armful of florist foam, which weighed about 2 oz total. Yeah, that's me working hard!

We headed home and watched some videos and knitted, with me taking an hour's nap, probably to catch up on my missed sleep from the ibuprofen event. I ended the evening by finishing spinning up some wool/tencel blend fiber that was dyed in a series of colors. I'll ply it and make... wristwarmers? Something like that. I was happy to finish, although I'd like to get out of the habit of spinning for 2 hrs, 2 weeks apart. It doesn't seem good for my body.

Sunday
We got to church on time on Sunday, which was good, as it was a packed morning. I rehearsed with the choir on a song I hadn't sung before, but which was lovely. As we finished, I looked over the bulletin and realized we had a conflict: I was teaching Sunday School, and it was Communion Sunday, where the kids are out at the beginning of the service, rather than leaving in the middle (usually after the anthem). The choir director encouraged me to find someone to watch the elementary-school kids, and the preschool teacher said sure, she could keep an eye on them while I sang. I found an usher to come get me at the right time, and settled down to read the Sunday-School notes for the day.

It was an interesting lesson: about a parable about sheep and shepherds. Another one of those stories that seems more like an interesting story but one that has no relevance to people and how they interact. We talked about shepherds and good shepherds and the passage where Jesus says the shepherds who climb over the fences are thieves, and I related that to his criticism of the temple hierarchy of the day. We talked about being rabble-rousers and how that can be a good thing. It was an easier class than usual, as the boys who are silly and have a hard time paying attention were gone that day. I dashed out, sang the anthem, came back, and we finished the lesson right as communion was about to start. G didn't want to go for communion at first, so we ended up being some of the very last, G taking a huge hunk of bread as usual, something that always makes me smile--have a huge hunk of forgiveness and love, why not?

He didn't want to stay for coffee hour, so we said some good-byes, and left. (Oh, man, I think we forgot our umbrellas! Shoot.) We went home for some lunch and lazed around for a while. Then the weather cleared up, and I decided we needed to try out some golf. (I'd won a set of clubs at a raffle the previous weekend, and G got some clubs at Christmas and has expressed interest in golf for a while now.)

I looked up the hours and prices (greatly reduced prices for Junior golfers, yay!) and we loaded up the clubs and set off. My golf shoes (Reeboks that are like tennis shoes with spikes) were still comfy but at this stage, a little tight, durnit. I paid the 1/2 price (Junior rate!) for a medium bucket of balls, and we headed down the row for 2 adjacent tees on the driving range.

G did great. He listened to my advice and swung his clubs really well, controlling the bounce in his knees after a few tries (it is instinctive to crouch down in the middle of your swing, and hard to resist!). He tried all 3 of his clubs (a wood, a 5/6 iron, and a 9/sand wedge iron) several times and did well with all of them. I emphasized making the club do the work so that the wedge would give him a lofty shot and the wood a long drive, and he seemed to get it. He kept lining up with his left foot back and so shot left pretty consistently. I encouraged him to line his feet up straight, and it really worked.

I hadn't golfed since before he was born, I think, but it felt pretty comfortable and I only topped the ball a few times and bounced my clubs off the mat a few times. I was getting some good yardage (maybe 100 yds) at the end with some of my clubs. I do think I'll keep the new raffle set of clubs--it has one more wood and one fewer iron than my current set, and a nicer putter. I do like me some nice, fancy putters. My original one was just a sort of brass clubfoot, so I had splurged on a used one with a weird, blobby head and more putt-lining-up lines. The one in the new set is even fancier. G's has three blue bubbles to line up his shot and once he got it, he really putted well. (I have to say, I love that putting practice is 'free' at golf courses.)

The Pitch & Putt course at the local golf course was clearly out of use, but they said at the pro shop that it'll be back pretty soon, hopefully in time for us to go out. We'll get the large bucket of balls next time, though! I thoroughly enjoyed it.

When we got back, G expressed interest in staying home instead of going to my hockey game. I'd been taking him to save some $$, especially now that he's so responsible for himself (plus, there are always friends milling about the rinks that can keep an eye on him). I was fine with him staying home, so gave a quick call to my male high-school babysitter, who soon called me back with approval of his parents to do the gig. He arrived early, bless his heart, and played Wii the whole time, with short breaks for putting the pizza in the oven and for getting it out again and consuming the entire thing (as usual--I think I need to buy larger frozen pizzas! There are never leftovers after these two are through with them).

The game was really tough--I was just thinking, "Whoah, they have really strong forwards over there; we're going to really have to challenge them if we want to win" when our coach said, "OK, you guys, this team has very good defenders, so we're going to have to really try to carry the puck and shoot a lot to win." Ha! Turns out we were both right, and they managed to catch the right rebounds and put the puck in three times, always on my shift (dang it). I had some good plays and it was a good, clean, if tough, game. I came home exhausted.

Got G to bed and barely made it to 10:30 to give Lucy her 11PM pill a little early. I thought it was a good weekend. :)