All Over the Place
Our division holiday outing was today. That means another free lunch at an overpriced place that isn't very good and the afternoon off. I used the extra hours wisely: finished my shopping, mailed some packages to friends out-of-state thereby avoiding long, peak-hour Post Office lines, got some additional baking goods, went to the bank...It's nice to be productive.- - - - - - - - - -
My brother-in-law is an old man wannabe. He likes sweater vests and slippers and hot tea. I bought him a sweater for Christmas a few years ago that had suede patches on the elbows; he wore it for the next two days. I decided this year I wanted to get him an old man cardigan. But either the stores didn't carry them (thank you Marshall Fields), they were nazzzzty (thank you Nordstroms), or they were acrylic (thank you Kohls).
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I turned my search online, where I found a nice wool one at LL Bean. I didn't really want to pay the $72 it would end up being, but we're doing Christmas this weekend - I was getting desperate. So last night I ordered the fucking expensive sweater. Today, I swung by Lord & Taylor, where they have wool cardigans that look identical to those at LL Bean but at half the price. Sold! I came home and emailed LL Bean to cancel my order, but they said they had already processed it.
Now, it's Christmastime. They hadn't had my order for 18 hours yet. I seriously DOUBT they had processed it already. Fuck. I'll just have to return the sweater when it comes. Fuck. I'm not good at returning things - I still have two packages here that need to go back, one from before May. Ack!
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I do have two batches of peanut butter fudge chilling in the fridge, as well as coconut balls. Coco. Nut. Balls.
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I drove home behind a school bus today, which made many neighborhood stops. When I was growing up, I didn't live in a 'neighborhood.' I lived in the country. Country Club Road, to be exact, which isn't quite as prestigious as it sounds. True, the school bus did pick us up out there, but there were no sidewalks. There weren't even any direct neighbors. My mom raised chickens for a while - apparently we were poor, but I never noticed. I think my intense dislike of birds stems from the pecking I received one summer afternoon...
In the winter, Sister & I would trek across our yard, down the hill, through the spiderwebby culvert, and up Lingle's hill, where we'd sled and toboggan until it grew dark. Some years, the culvert was inaccessible, and we'd climb the barbed wire fence to access the hill. Ah, sledding with torn pants. And the fun of sliding right into the semi-frozen creek at the bottom of the hill!
Girl + toboggan + gravity + speed = enough force to crack through ice!
We'd build ramps and wave to the cars, and sometimes the cars would stop, if it was someone who knew us. Some years, when our driveway iced over, Sis & I - along with mom's best friend's kids - would pretend we were mountain climbers, and try to haul ourselves up from the very bottom of the long, windy hill. It was harmless and innocent fun.
Chickens and cows and sleds, oh my!
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