My weekend to date, pt. 1

It's been a chaotic couple of days around here. Yesterday we had a fire at work. No one was hurt, but as a result we physically lost a department. We were going to consolidate it anyway, given the economic climate, but fire damage and a good soaking from the sprinkler system sped up the process.

I'd have been there to help find the fire sprinkler shutoff valve, as I was the only person still employed who knew where it was, but I had to cover an evening shift of someone I'd laid off. When the call came I was in my skivvies at home.

This morning I took LuLu and YaYa to swim class. Lu refuses to put her face in the water. The teacher says she has 'wonderful skill's but needs to overcome her distaste for going underwater. She better get over it because next week is the test to advance to the next level.

Afterwards, while YaYa was swimming I headed to Home Depot to buy a lock for her door. Her room has been ravaged by Smiley nearly every school day. The latest attack led to ripped up Junie B. Jones books and a cross newly painted in silver nailpolish. That cross was a gift from my deceased grandma, and I was P.O'd. He's a demon at times.

On the way back I was pulled over by a cop and slapped with the first speeding ticket of my life, a 4 pt. $80 ticket for going 15 over. Whatever. I'm sure I was above the speed limit, but if I was 'really' going fifteen over than the cars around me were going twenty.

It reminded me of something my Big Grandpa once said. He'd been pulled over for speeding and complained that he was the slowest of the pack of cars on the highway. "I know," the cop said. "You were the easiest to catch."

What annoyed me the most was the length of time this all took. I sat for awhile, made a phone call, read more than a chapter of a book, and made another call. C'mon -my plates are clean, my record is clean. You can hop online in a second and find out how tall Charlemagne was but you can't deduce in twenty minutes whether or not I'm a Gambino hit man?

I'm not as irked as I sound, as I reckon I was due. But not only did the cop sit there with lights ablazin' the whole time, a second squad arrived to back him up after I'd been there ten minutes, which is just downright embarrassing when you're sitting only a block from home.

I'm pleading not guilty and we'll hammer it out in court.

* * * *

Then it was trips to The Salvation Army, Sam's Club, WalMart, and Aldi's with the family. Man, that list makes us seem trailer poor, doesn't it? Not a horrible way to spend an afternoon, but not exactly dinner and a movie.