Last Week of Summer Vacation
It’s been a busy week.
Sunday was spent with my sibs at mom’s, sorting out a couple of boxes. Not quite as hard a visit with sibs to share, but still rough. The rest of Sunday and a good share of Monday I was all mopey from it. But the Boyfriend came over Monday for a little while. We decided to go walking at the mall. That turned into me doing Back to School clothes shopping - which could have totally tanked me (shopping for clothes when you’re short and round can be a disastrously emotional experience), but turned out to be a good thing. I can has cute! I also did essentially 4 times around the whole mall not counting wandering around inside individual stores. The exercise was really necessary. It gave me the mood lift I needed to get the housework done for _tia_marie_. Tuesday she came over for a bit on her way back south. We lunched at one of my favorite Lebanese places - yay for happy food! I puttered most of the rest of the day.
Wednesday the Boyfriend took me to the State Fair. We spent something like 8 hours there! SO MUCH walking! We took the tram over the whole fair twice - the best $5 we spent there, and easily the best ride (that doesn’t make me throw up!), especially since the Ferris Wheel rides get shorter every year. We saw just about every damn thing there was to see at the fair that day. We saw all kinds of performances on the small stages, Chinese acrobats on one of the larger stages, dogs practicing for the agility contests, big and small animals, kids doing a corn shucking contest, the live bee bee-keeping exhibit, a glass-blowing demo, a bagpiper, watched people bind handmade books & spin wool, and I don't know what else.
We took a turn around the Oregon Author’s table. I picked up a children’s book, “Sixteen Cows”, and the Boyfriend read it out loud to me. By the time he was done, he had a small audience which included the author. We ended up buying both “Sixteen Cows” & “Tadpole Rex” which the Boyfriend read me later that night! After seeing all the exhibits & vendor booths, we checked out the games. He won me a small hippo who seems to like squooshing his face against people’s noses. Well, at least mine and the Boyfriend’s. Once home, much snuggling & making eyes at each other occurred. We didn’t really realized how much walking we’d done till we got home and put up our feet. Wow!
Today was waking up in a terrific mood and pouncing the Boyfriend. After scrambling his brains in the nicest way I could think of, we moved on to puttering around at the Boyfriend’s (I helped some but mostly watched Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” while he did laundry), then zipping off for a free concert across town: Curtis Salgado! W00t! And because the concert was hosted by a swanky mall in a moneyed (at least for a Portland suburb) sort of town, the people watching was great. Before the concert, one lady started talking to us out of nowhere. Among other odd things she said, she said she thought the Boyfriend and I could be part of Salgado’s band because of our long hair. Umyeah. The people watching was awesome. I noticed that the crowd was mostly my age, older, and their little kids. Not sure how much of that was the time/day factor, the swanky mall factor, and how much was his fan base averaging that old. During the second set a few people started dancing. There was one young (early 20s?) couple dancing behind one of the trees, mostly trying not to be noticed too much. They were awesome. A few older (than us) couples who’d been drinking in the wine garden. A handful of little kids (under 4) wiggling around with their parents. So much fun to watch. We never quite gave up our seats but we did have fun making eyes at each other and swaying about with the music.
Tomorrow I have a bunch of things to do. The more I think about visiting my mom, the longer the list gets of those things I need to do. To be fair, they are things that need to get done before I go back to work on Tuesday. Some of them ought to get done before events happening on Saturday. Mostly it’s going to depend on how mopey I get, how guilty I feel, and how motivated to simply get off my ass I am by 10 am.
Saturday is baby birthday and wedding and seeing rightkindofme & her family. Sunday and Monday are doing housework and getting ready to return to work, stuffing in a few last-minute fun things, and trying to remember to set the alarm earlier so that Tuesday doesn’t come as quite such a shock.
Sunday was spent with my sibs at mom’s, sorting out a couple of boxes. Not quite as hard a visit with sibs to share, but still rough. The rest of Sunday and a good share of Monday I was all mopey from it. But the Boyfriend came over Monday for a little while. We decided to go walking at the mall. That turned into me doing Back to School clothes shopping - which could have totally tanked me (shopping for clothes when you’re short and round can be a disastrously emotional experience), but turned out to be a good thing. I can has cute! I also did essentially 4 times around the whole mall not counting wandering around inside individual stores. The exercise was really necessary. It gave me the mood lift I needed to get the housework done for _tia_marie_. Tuesday she came over for a bit on her way back south. We lunched at one of my favorite Lebanese places - yay for happy food! I puttered most of the rest of the day.
Wednesday the Boyfriend took me to the State Fair. We spent something like 8 hours there! SO MUCH walking! We took the tram over the whole fair twice - the best $5 we spent there, and easily the best ride (that doesn’t make me throw up!), especially since the Ferris Wheel rides get shorter every year. We saw just about every damn thing there was to see at the fair that day. We saw all kinds of performances on the small stages, Chinese acrobats on one of the larger stages, dogs practicing for the agility contests, big and small animals, kids doing a corn shucking contest, the live bee bee-keeping exhibit, a glass-blowing demo, a bagpiper, watched people bind handmade books & spin wool, and I don't know what else.
We took a turn around the Oregon Author’s table. I picked up a children’s book, “Sixteen Cows”, and the Boyfriend read it out loud to me. By the time he was done, he had a small audience which included the author. We ended up buying both “Sixteen Cows” & “Tadpole Rex” which the Boyfriend read me later that night! After seeing all the exhibits & vendor booths, we checked out the games. He won me a small hippo who seems to like squooshing his face against people’s noses. Well, at least mine and the Boyfriend’s. Once home, much snuggling & making eyes at each other occurred. We didn’t really realized how much walking we’d done till we got home and put up our feet. Wow!
Today was waking up in a terrific mood and pouncing the Boyfriend. After scrambling his brains in the nicest way I could think of, we moved on to puttering around at the Boyfriend’s (I helped some but mostly watched Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” while he did laundry), then zipping off for a free concert across town: Curtis Salgado! W00t! And because the concert was hosted by a swanky mall in a moneyed (at least for a Portland suburb) sort of town, the people watching was great. Before the concert, one lady started talking to us out of nowhere. Among other odd things she said, she said she thought the Boyfriend and I could be part of Salgado’s band because of our long hair. Umyeah. The people watching was awesome. I noticed that the crowd was mostly my age, older, and their little kids. Not sure how much of that was the time/day factor, the swanky mall factor, and how much was his fan base averaging that old. During the second set a few people started dancing. There was one young (early 20s?) couple dancing behind one of the trees, mostly trying not to be noticed too much. They were awesome. A few older (than us) couples who’d been drinking in the wine garden. A handful of little kids (under 4) wiggling around with their parents. So much fun to watch. We never quite gave up our seats but we did have fun making eyes at each other and swaying about with the music.
Tomorrow I have a bunch of things to do. The more I think about visiting my mom, the longer the list gets of those things I need to do. To be fair, they are things that need to get done before I go back to work on Tuesday. Some of them ought to get done before events happening on Saturday. Mostly it’s going to depend on how mopey I get, how guilty I feel, and how motivated to simply get off my ass I am by 10 am.
Saturday is baby birthday and wedding and seeing rightkindofme & her family. Sunday and Monday are doing housework and getting ready to return to work, stuffing in a few last-minute fun things, and trying to remember to set the alarm earlier so that Tuesday doesn’t come as quite such a shock.