What I Learned This Weekend

I desperately need to say that I had a productive weekend, though I really didn't. That really awesome idea to finally paint our dining room so we'd have a venue to finish listening to the audiobook we started last weekend. Yeah. That idea kind of fell flat.

Saturday dawned hot and humid. The nighttime had been hot and kind of rainy (which is nice because we need the rain), but instead of cleansing us from the dust and awful the-heat-is-never-going-to-go-away stuff, it kind of made the heat a little more moist and icky.

Dear husband had been up until two in the morning working because, as he put it, "the box that I was rebooting died and I fixed it, but then it died again and it took me a while to figure out how to fix it." Yeah. I don't have a clue either. The point of the whole fiasco is that right after lunch, he insisted on going back to bed for a nap. So even though he had only cleared out half of the living room and I had masked only a few vital areas, I sent him off to bed.

True, in a perfect world, I would have been able to be industrious and keep working on the project without him. But truthfully, I didn't want to. He didn't want me up on the ladder without him around, and I have a hard time crawling around on the floor. So I sat down and read.

Sunday morning. I woke up and read. After Ben got up, I did a sinkful of dishes and got started on baking a fabulous Finnish pancake. (It was terrific, by the way.) Following breakfast was a little play-with-Ben time which ended with it's-mommy's-nap-time time. When I woke up, we all had lunch, and then Chester and I got going on the dining room again.

While I was stirring the paint, his work phone rang. Yeah. That's never good news on a Sunday afternoon. Apparently some people at work were quite upset that they couldn't print anymore, and it wasn't an easy fix. I guess the server that hosts the printers is on its last leg, and it's dying. That required a lot of really boring phone calls to a lot of different workaholic types who didn't want to push off the problem until tomorrow but instead wanted my husband to get started on the fix immediately, even though he was supposed to be painting the dining room.

I painted a bunch of the trim areas (the deal is I work the brush while husband works the roller). Chester was in the living room staring at his laptop while he talked to various people on his annoying blue tooth thing. Eventually, he was able to put down the laptop and paint... but while he was on the phone the whole time.

The painting thing was a bust. Our dining room is now half pepto-abysmal pink. It's a terrible color. It's just the mid-tone primer that goes on over the original white and under the beautiful deep red to come. I've always wanted a red dining room. Maybe I'll eventually get one.

Once upon a time, I loved painting projects. Even when I was six or seven months pregnant with Ben, I was quite agile and able to dance around clumsily, painting his bedroom a lovely blue. This time around? Yeah. It's not happening. I hurt. Breathing in this heat with just a box fan to blow more hot air on me... not fun. My feet are swollen, I have two inexplicably bruised ribs, and my house is a disaster area because it hurts to bend down and pick up Ben's toys and videos that are strewn all over the place. But hey. It could be worse. I could be moving like Allie at http://curvatude.blogspot.com.

What I learned this weekend is that sometimes it's best to just focus on the productive aspects of life and ignore those crazy, pie-in-the-hazy-sky plans.

When it was raining Friday evening, and Ben was looking so cute, staring outside at the rain, I went out with him and we got drenched while exploring the perimeter of the house and experiencing the water dripping off the eaves. We were barefoot, and Ben was spotlessly clean after his bath. It was joyous. We got muddy. It was very productive.

I made pork chops for the first time in years, and they turned out well.
We watched a Little Bear video about eight times.
Chester is nearing the end of the last Harry Potter book.
I am greatly enjoying the book I'm reading. The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford.

All are minor accomplishments, but hell. They're all I got.

I meet my boss's new employee tomorrow. On Friday, Lady Smogo asked me surreptiously to try to find the new girl's myspace page... which was no easy task since she doesn't use her real name or a specific location. But hell. I found it. And while she has my favorite singer on her favorite bands list (Damien Rice), I'm still not sure we'll "click." Oh well. Only four weeks of awkward getting to know you crap and then I'm out of there.

In other news, my boss plans on making an offer to my future replacement. She let me help her in the decision on who to hire, and I'm hopeful that this new guy will work out well. Being a proofreader requires a great deal of ... well... balls and nerve. He'll be one of two people in the company who will be proudly waving the banner of accuracy and consistency in the faces of people who were happy with the slap-dash-crap way that they did their work the first time. It takes a bunch of courage and even more ego.

And, because the universe is usually kind to me, just months too late, the person I dislike most at work is putting in his or her notice this week. This person's last day will be about a week and a half before I leave. I did a happy dance, but I wish it would have happened a year ago. No. I wish the company actually cared about performance and quality and fired this individual a year ago when it became oh so clear that it was the right thing to do.