When The Kids Are Away, The Parents Will Play. And Paint.

It's quiet around here. Too quiet. Okay, not really. I made that up. It's quiet because my kids are gone for the week. But in my opinion, it's hard to ever call this place too quiet. After all, the dumb dog is still here and she has been known to chase the reflection from her own dog tags. So, you know.

It is quiet, though. No kids means that I have quite a few things I want to accomplish this week. I've already done two. On Monday, I met with my trainer, who is, apparently, trying to help me lose weight by making appendages fall off. Yesterday my legs hurt so bad that every time I tried to get up out of a chair I am certain I looked like an octogenarian. I huffed and puffed and groaned. At one point, Patrick patted my knee and I winced. All of this wasn't helped I'm sure, by my very excellent decision to come straight from the gym on Monday and commence with the painting of the poo brown living room. Eight hours. That's right,  it took eight hours to paint that room. To be fair though, that included moving furniture, taping everything off, priming, having my beloved paint the ceiling while I ran out to get sustenance and more supplies, and then finally putting the finish coat on.

So yesterday, after an hour with my trainer on Monday and eight hours climbing up and down a ladder and squatting and stretching and bending, I could accomplish nothing more than strolling and groaning my way through several Goodwills. And guess what I found there?

Did you guess and overabundance of crappy laminate furniture, dingy plastic play kitchens, and used flip-flops? You did? Wow. Are we browsing at the same Goodwill? So that was a bust.

On the upside, I did some reading, captured two more chipmunks in Ye Olde Bucket O' Doom (don't ask about this unless you really want to know), and enjoyed a lovely dinner out with my beloved where there wasn't a kids' menu in sight. We had a particularly good time trying to figure out if Gerry Beckley from the band America had grown out his hair and might be moonlighting as our waiter for the night. I really didn't care though, because he brought me exceptionally delicious food and had a heavy pour with the wine bottle. And only twice was I tempted to bust out and sing "Sister Goldenhair."  Then we enjoyed a walk around the town square and I photographed the trees and bike racks that had been yarnbombed while attempting to explain the point of yarnbombing to my beloved who was, er, bewildered. Art does that to people sometimes. Then we returned home where we watched Design Stars, which I had to keep pausing as I tried to explain the point of some of the designers' choices in the White Box challenge. ("It's not about functionality, honey, it's about big and creative thinking. Now hush and go peel me a grape!")

After taking a phone call from the children and hearing all about their day and then telling them that we were going to Staples and Olive Garden every day (Maggie's two favorite places) plus we were having ice cream for breakfast, playing with their toys, and just generally having the best time in the world without them and they should probably stay the whole summer at their grandparents' house, we went to bed. And we did it without having to tell four other people that it was time to pipe down and go to sleep.

Not a bad day, actually. Not bad at all.

Unless you count the part where I groaned every time I moved my legs.