April 10
This entry was posted on 4/10/2008 5:45 PM and is filed under blather.
I'm back at work with a vengeance.
Josie and I didn't get more than half way through listening to Deathly Hallows on the ride home from Denver. So, we've been listening in the car on our rides to and from school. She made me promise not to listen without her. This was working fine and dandy til the car threw it's breaks out. Again.
What is it with brakes? It's not like I drive around with my foot on the brake all the time. How often are you supposed to get them serviced? Why won't anyone tell me "check your brakes every 5000 miles." No, they just charge me an arm and a leg every single gorram year to fix the flippin things. Tim.
Worst than the knowledge that the stupid van is gonna cost me 500 bucks again is the fact that the other van has no cd player.
No cd player; no Harry Potter.
So we listened in the house before dinner last night. Then Josie had to go to karate and again made me promise not to listen without her.
I had no choice. I went and found the book and read the rest of it.
I gave Josie the cd's to listen to in her room. She has a discman she's using to listen on the rides to school.
This afternoon I picked back up a project I had had to shelve for a few weeks. My client thinks I'm leaving him in the lurch with a half painted room and a ghost of a picture on the wall. Hey, relax! I've been busy. So I hauled my stuff over and went to work. I couldn't do as much as I'd hoped today because I realized I hadn't brought the proper brushes. Also, it was FREEZING in the room I'm decorating. After an hour, my fingers were numb. It's a really bad idea to continue to paint with numb fingers. Almost as dumb as continuing to drive after you've caught yourself dozing off.
Oh, sure, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "painting while numb is nowhere near as dangerous as driving while drowsy!" but don't forget; I'm the one who nearly killed herself with a vacuum cleaner. And it wasn't even plugged in. Don't tell me I couldn't accidentally gut myself with a paintbrush frozen to my hand.
It was raining when I picked Josie up this afternoon. No biggie; it's April. It's supposed to rain. It was pouring the biggest, fattest, whitest rain drops I've ever seen.
YES IT WAS RAIN! IT WAS TOO!
I remember April of 1980. I was over at the University of Minnesota, taking Shakespeare and Philosophy. I was supposed to be a studio arts major but the art classes were retarded, so most of my classes were literature. I was driving my counselor crazy. I hate poetry but I liked my poetry professor because we shared a love of Louie L'Amour. He admitted to me once that he'd been trying to get the University to let him teach a class on L'Amour for years. There was also this hot Canadian guitar player in several of my lit classes...
I remember a week's worth of +90 degree weather.
In April.
Back then, we didn't howl in fear and cower in the basement screaming "Oh no! THE CLIMATE HAS CHANGED! MAKE IT STOP!" We just said " It's hot. Let's wear shorts."
We were practical. We were realistic. We understood that April is the month of unlimited possibilities, weather wise. Rain, snow, seventy degree temperature swings...that's not a catastrophe, that's spring in Minnesota. We were more worried about Russian nukes than about our light bulbs.
Gas was less than a dollar a gallon but the prime rate was around 20%. There were no ipods, cell phones, lap tops, mini vans, internet, ATMs, PINs, pc's, cd's, dvd's...heck, video tape was brand new!
I'll take my $4.00 a gallon gas, just keep your mitts offa my flat, wide, hi-def tv.
Life is much, much better now.
Even if it keeps on raining all month.
