Boring family stuff

A good day today. I didn't eat a single calorie, depriving my stomach of any opportunity to rebel, which allowed me to make it through the work day in relative comfort. A good thing that, as I had the opportunity to speak with a 91 year old customer,born in 1918 - "Nearly ninety-one," she was careful to correct me. "My birthday isn't for awhile yet." She's still driving her own car, writing out her own checks and living life on her terms.

"You sure don't look ninety-one," I said.

"Well, I wouldn't feel it either if I hadn't broken my damn hip last winter."

After work I took advantage of a beautiful 80 degree day to don shorts and break out the bikes. Sadly a leak in the shed led to my bike getting a few spots of rust over its first winter. Still, she did me proud on a 10 minute ride around the neighborhood with YaYa and Ginger. [Lu and Smiley were scattered among the grandparents] The ex-Lump had no recollection of the bike trailer and sat bewildered the whole time, but she'll be a happy passenger in no time.

Now I'd been texted at work with news that the backyard was overrun with gnats. I found this to be a slight exaggeration, but there does seem to be a bit of an issue. So I broke out the ol' standby, a bowl of sugar water with a coating of cooking oil across the top. Bugs come to taste the sweetness and get trapped by the oil.

Once again, despite a decade of experience in the field, people rose up to naysay. To which I respond: folks, by nightfall the dang bowl had more bugs in it than Windows Vista.

After a dinner with Lisa on her break at work, the kids and I hit a local church's basement rummage sale. For ~$4 total we picked up a mass book, a Scrabble dictionary, three decks of cards, a wooden turtle from Jamaica, a clothes steamer, a book light, a wooden jewelry box, a 3-D Titanic puzzle, a Brain Quest trivia game, a childrens book, a wooden frog that you can make croak by rubbing a stick across its spine, and a great camera case worth about $30 alone.

What a deal!

From there we returned home and YaYa and I watched Call of the Wild on DVD. Call of the Wild was one of the first (abridged) classics YaYa read.

"Will you watch it with me Daddy?"

"I really don't want to."

"Why not?"

The real reason was I was tired and sweaty and yearned for a shower. But what I said was: "Because I never finished the book and I don't want to ruin the ending. Someday maybe I'll finish it."

"You can read my copy upstairs."

"Naw, I want to read the adult version."

"Hrumph. Well, it does have 107 pages you know. But I guess that doesn't count."

Checkmate. So we watched Call of the Wild, which turned out to be a sequel called "Foxfire" anyhow. It was ok, and I certainly enjoyed cuddling with YaYa.
Afterwards, when Lisa got home, she quizzed YaYa on the BrainQuest questions and YaYa aced darn near all of them. I gave her a big kiss on the forehead.

"Truly, you are my daughter." I said.

"Half your daughter," Lisa said. "She's much too cool to be your clone."