The wild weekend that was.

Hubs ended up off this weekend (a rarity), had a cold (nothing severe but enough to encourage him to sit back and relax), so I've been a wife on the move. I was glad to see him sit back and relax, take the time he needed to recuperate. He never gets to do that, so it was luck that he had the weekend off to sit and just be.

I, on the other hand, had much to accomplish. Saturday we decided to sleep in a little (until 8 AM). K- and I had her very first reading class at the university, so we got ourselves all set to go for that. Initially, she was a little afraid. She told me that she was. I told her that we didn't expect her to sit down and read books, but that it was to help her and me learn skills to eventually put together to read. That made her feel better. She's not normally shy, but it did take about 10 minutes for her to warm up. I'm glad to report that her class is smallish (12 or so kids each with a mandatory parent in attendance) and the teacher seems lovely.

We came home with the intention of washing the car, but the neighbor had a friend over and he was cleaning her car. It doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but when Mike cleans a car he really cleans a car. From the first moment that I met Mike, he was cleaning his car (as I was looking at the house when it was for sale-- Hubs was working and I was pre-looking for us.) Mike sweeps the inside spotless, as he did on the car that he worked on today. I swear that he swept that car for at least an hour. Then he washed it. Every. nook. and. cranny. Then he waxed it. All of it. (Not that you'd want a partial wax job.) Oh sweet heavens. But you see, our yards are small. My child is also probably the nosiest neighbor child, besides E- next door. Oh bless these two only children. If you are out, they are going to talk to you and tell you their entire life story. So, in the interest of not interrupting Mike and his company, I found other things to do until Mike was finished doing a deep clean on the friend's car.

I weeded the garden. It's not a big garden, but I have the poor man's rototiller (the Garden Claw) and fluffed that through all the rows. Then I took the long handled three tined tool I have and fluffed between the plants. This ended up killing all the little weed sproutlings, which worked well enough for me.

I then moved on to the back flower gardens. I fluffed through those, pulled weeds, checked for anything else coming up. The usual.

My aunt decided cruise over on her mobility scooter to drop off some food offerings from her cupboard. My aunt is legally blind, so she doesn't realize that what she tripped on over was expired by at least a year or two. (Cake mixes and canned cream cheese frosting.) Very sweet, but as I'm sure that the cake mix would fail at this point and have no idea what state the icing would be in, I appreciated the effort, but deposited them in the garbage after she had gone. I made K- swear that she wouldn't tell on me.Then finally, oh finally!, Mike decided to do something else. This gave me the opportunity to clean the exterior of my vehicle and for the first time ever in my entire life, wax the vehicle (but truly I've never waxed any vehicle ever). Can I tell you something? It sucked almost as bad as what I thought it would. Though I used Turtle Wax Liquid Paste that goes on as a liquid and has the haze and polish of a paste, I'm really not good at it. I admit that the RAV's exterior was not entirely bug free, but my true hope was to fill in the scratches in the hand indentations for the handles and to cover up the 3" scratch (from someone's purse hardware is my guess) on my back quarter panel. I'm pleased to say that was successful. I'm also pleased to say that as I'm 5' 3/4" tall, I was still able to wax the roof-- the entire roof. (The moonroof got it, too, as I couldn't avoid it.) Am I the only one to miss sections of wax and have to go back over the job? Maybe it is just inexperience. That's okay. It really needed done and a few times a year is fine with me. Mike, car waxer extraordinaire, told me that the particular red that I have is prone to oxidation--which looks way yucky and appears pink-- so waxing is not an option. And wax on, wax off? Nah. I was getting sore so there was no on with the right and off with the left. Whatever arm was capable of buffing it back off did the job. Sheesh.

On Sunday, I did consult Mike, the great man o' car wax, and he said that he noticed that I did something more than wash my car. He was so proud of me for waxing it. He wanted me to wax it with this super duper cable insulator wax, but you can't have a speck of anything on the car, as the wax will make it permanently yours forever. He asked what I used and I told him he would yell at me. What I used was the Liquid Paste Turtle Wax-- half the bottle. He laughed and told me that's why it was so hard to rub off! He said I over-waxed, but apparently thought I did a great job. I think that he was all excited that I listened to him, even though I clearly handled the job a little differently than he would have. At the end of Saturday, I was too tired to clean the interior of the car, so I thought I would pass that on to Sunday.

K- took more trips up and down the sidewalk on her bike on Saturday than I can humanly count. I really do need to hike those training wheels up a bit more. I'm thinking that in a month or so we can probably ditch them.

I washed laundry that we had and hung it out on the line. I ran a cheater week on the sheets this week and pulled the pillow cases only. I wash the sheets every other week, but try to pull the cases every week. Of course, Hubs went to lay down and found the pillows bare. Right now he is riding with flannel cases. Oh well.

My Saturday night finished out with folding the balance of the laundry on the lines and putting the weeks worth of laundry away. I had gotten it done and folded, but hadn't managed to put it away during the week. That was my goal for the end of the day. I wanted every speck of laundry washed, folded and put away. I'm glad to report that I got that completed.

Sunday brought us to just the regular church service. I finked out on Sunday school, knowing full well I had 2 hours of church to attend at night. We came home, had lunch and I tackled the dishes from Saturday and Sunday since I had been preoccupied elsewhere.

K- and I went outside, hooked up with E- and her mommy and the girls played on E-'s porch as I tackled the interior of my RAV and all of it's windows inside and out. I traded watching E- so she could weed, gave the girls a snack and finished working on VBS set decoration plans. The girls seemed interested and each started launching into conversations with me about Jesus, who He is, what He does and all that. At one point, E-'s mommy came back to check on the girls. She hadn't heard them and since they were being big bellyachers on the porch at her house, she had wondered where they had gone. She was impressed that they weren't fighting and seemed to be having a good time. After my plans were complete, I pulled the hammock out for them. They love to hang out in there.

Then was the time for our play date to end. K- was going to go to evening church with me, she needed fed and washed up. As I was preparing dinner, K-'s refusal to do chores properly reared its ugly head again. You see, as I was cleaning the interior of the car, the backseat (AKA the toy box) was cleared out of all the things K- brings into the car and never takes back out. I had a round laundry basket full of doll babies, parts to Little People sets, Crayola Color Explosion and Color Wonder Books, play food, pad of construction paper, a variety of crayons, sippy cups and McDonald's Happy Meal toys. Her task was to put these items into their "proper creature homes" while I prepared dinner. She kept running up telling me that she found either new homes, just put the basket on the shelf or put the basket on the toy box. Great, but that is mommy's laundry basket and you need to do your chore properly. Oh, this ended up in the privilege of her going to fun evening kids church being taken away. I hated to leave her with Hubs, who is still nursing his cold, but I couldn't take her to church falling apart. No way, no how. Later I checked to see how she had done, and she put everything away, even putting the laundry basket next to the washer as I told her. Hooray for listening ears!

I got home, we cruised outside, took an evening stroll down the street and watered our plants and flowers. She got a bath, without too much grief, then didn't want to do her reading class homework. Turns out that at 8:30 PM, she was nearly begging to go to sleep because she was so tired. There's always tomorrow for our homework.

Have a great day!