Molding & Our trip to Main St.

I was going to start out by saying that the weekend was ‘crazy busy’, but it seems redundant – all our weekends are ‘crazy busy’.
So what did we do? Friday night we finally ate our Corn beef and Cabbage dinner for St Patrick’s Day. We were going to eat it on Wednesday (boot camp on St Patrick’s Day), but I had a problem. I was rushing around in the morning before work, didn’t have my glasses on, couldn’t see a thing but instinct told me that ‘hot’ should have been all the way to right of the dial on my crockpot. When I got home, the meat was not cooked as I had selected ‘warm’. So Friday we had Corn Beef, mashed potatoes, cabbage and fresh bread. It was delicious.
Saturday: jeff had a early morning T time for golf and left the house at 6am. I had thought that I would get out of bed as soon as he left. But, you know those mornings when the window is slightly open, the breeze coming in is a tad colder than it should be, and outside is overcast and the bed feels perfectly wonderful. So, I snuggled down in the blankets a bit more, Bella snuggled closer to me and Life was Good. I was rudely awakened at 8:30 by Scott turning on the shower. Big problem: he showers long and hot, so I had to get up so that there was more than a drop of hot water left. At 9am Scott and I were out the door in Jeff’s truck on our way to purchase more wood molding for the stairwell project. Now it made perfect sense to me that as long as I was getting some wood (1 length) and I was already at the store (not close to the house), I may as well get all the molding that I need for the dining room project (in the planning stage). As I was walking in the door of the store I made the decision to buy enough wood for both and decided that I would try to hide the wood from Jeff for a few days. (who was I kidding). The fun then began as the sole purpose of taking Scott was for him to tie the molding onto the truck. One of Jeff’s claims to fame is that he can tie knots better than anyone (except my dad) I know. While Scott is an Eagle Scout, knot tying is not his forte. Together we held the wood on top of the truck, wrapped twine around and around and around the little bundle. We secured the 16’ lengths in 3 different places and then for good measure wrapped more twine around the middle section. We tried to imitate Jeff’s knots and his fancy tricks but I think all we did was to supply a few good laughs to anyone watching us. It took us forever, a few laughs and we were on our way home. Nothing slipped off so we were very pleased with ourselves. 16 feet doesn’t seem that long but really you can’t hide it anywhere easily so we placed it neatly on top of pile of wood in the garage and hoped for the best. Of course it was the first thing noticed by Jeff when he went in the garage later that afternoon.
Jeff came home from a good day of golf, I fixed him lunch, he rested for as long as he could until some men from church came over to work on making soapbox derby cars.
Sandra was watching 2 of Kevin and Kim’s children for the day starting at 12:30. I had told her that I would go down to the beach with her and the kids to see Tyler who had his dad’s old Woddy Car in a show on Main street. Sandra picked me up in Kim’s huge SUV, and INSISTED that Bella come. I panicked, 2 kids, 1 unruly ill behaved dog, and the beach…it had been too long for me to feel comfortable with all this. Sandra told me: ‘Mom you remember you tell us to tell you when you are being old and stupid, well this is one of those times’. Ouch, that hurt. So the 5 of us (Bella counts as one) got in Kim’s car, Sandra was driving and her feet didn’t touch the floor boards. We laughed so much, Sandra has a Honda Civic, small, zips in and out of small places, and here she was, driving this big car. We planned to park in an underground parking structure which presented another round of laughter. We were poised on the top of the ramp and the 8’6” height bar, looked like it would slice us in two. She went down the ramp, we ducked our heads, made it, but then she had ended up too far away from the auto ticket machine. Put car in park, break on, lean as far out of the window as possible and take ticket. The kids were great in the back but we did start to hear ‘ I can take Bella by myself’. Out on the street we found Tyler and his mother in front of the Woody. Now I did take my new camera but left it in the car as I just couldn’t fathom having the extra arm to take a picture. I regretted that decision several times this day. We walked along to boardwalk (10’ wide footpath several hundred feet from the ocean-roughly) Both Drew and Brooke were holding Bella’s leash, ‘sharing’ her. We watched several fancy kites for a few minutes and then the kids wanted to play in the water. Here comes my confession. I did see a sign about no dogs on the beach. So I thought I am a responsible pet owner so I would carry Bella across the sand and then hold here while we watched Sandra, Brooke and Drew play. I had been sitting on the sand holding Bella – who did not have one paw touch sand, for about 10 minutes when over the loud speaker from the pier (so we hadn’t walked that far) we hear ‘No Dogs allowed on the beach’. Repeated several times. Oh my: that was for ME. So I stood up with Bella, Sandra was laughing so hard at me and I walked back to the boardwalk carrying Bella where she was admired by quite a crowd. I was so proud of Bella, she sat quietly while being petted by strangers and sat next to me while we waited for Sandra. After about 15 minutes of waiting I saw Sandra on the horizon and suddenly I see Drew flop on the sand, I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. What else do you do in the sand but make Sand Angels. How cute is that. On the walk back to the car we heard Brooke telling Drew, ‘If you don’t want to hold Bella that’s ok’. ‘Drew, you can hold her later’……..It was quite entertaining listening to how many times Brooke could tell her brother nicely that he didn’t really want to hold Bella’s leash. We made it home safely and after a snack Sandra took the kids to Debbie’s to watch them until Debbie and Dan returned home early Sunday morning.
About 6pm Jeff said that he would help me install the last of the molding boxes in the stairwell. We had a bit of math dilemma, had to recut a few pieces of molding and finally finished about 8pm….a long late night for Jeff. He has been truly wonderful the past 3 weeks while we installed the molding. We don’t do things quite as efficiently as before but we work slow, steady and together and get the tasks accomplished. I now have the job of patching, sanding and painting everything.
Sunday we went to church. In the afternoon Jim and Stephanie came to dinner. Our nephew Nathan had stayed at Stephanie’s house over the weekend so he came a well. We had a great evening. There is nothing better than when the girls and hubby’s come to Sunday dinner. All 3 men have I-Phones so after dinner the conversation was all about ‘did you know…..’ or ‘have you seen….’. I am not a gadget person, but even I think the i-phone is a pretty cool machine.
It was a great weekend.