September 8, 2006: This would be my birthday, #35. This is a milestone birthday. There was a slip for a mammogram in my purse. I spent a total of 10 hours out of bed on the 8th, given the severity with which a cold hit me and went directly into my chest. I don't remember much about the day, other than this e-mail from KitKat:
You are old
You've got more wrinkles than a crumbled piece of paper,
It is as if something as big as an Elephant squashed you,
You make a Zombie look young.
that's all I have so far,
KitKat
Nice, yes? I watched a movie with Mr. Sapphire and had it. Bed beckoned, and I answered its call.
September 9, 2006: Only slightly better, but work needed doing, so I did it. At 11:00, Tiger's Eye's friend called. He knows better than to call that late, so I took the call because I figured it was of importance. I'm glad, because he had an extra ticket to the Rams' home opener! He asked to talk to Tiger's Eye and I woke him up. He sleepily informed me, "I'm sleeping," to which I responded, "Wake up. You want to take this call." I watched his eyes happily open. This was just such an awesome opportunity (thank you Paul, Paul's Dad and Paul's Grandpa).
September 10, 2006: Day of anticipated game - kickoff of football season! Many, many reasons to crash my weary body on the lovely broken-in couch that I always want to replace until I'm not feeling well and realize how well the kids have beat it into shape and it conforms so nicely to my sick body. From noon to nine, I pretty much stayed in my chair, snoozing and cheering at five-minute intervals it seemed. Of course, when you know your kid's at a game, you spend every possible moment looking in the crowds, just in case. The Peyton-versus-Eli game proved every bit as fascinating as promised. Tiger's Eye came home pumped up. You knew he'd been somewhere, and was just so thrilled. Good for him. What an awesome thing to happen for a 14-year-old young man!
September 11, 2006: Worked, worked, worked. Coughed, coughed, coughed. Worked, worked, worked. Helped kids with homework, hacked and coughed and worked some more.
September 12, 2006: Repeat Monday. Yikes. Only I got to listen to Bram Stoker's Dracula (unabridged, even) as I drove around town, stopping at the doctor's offices for their dictation. This is how I get my "culture" anymore - books on tape. I just "read" Da Vinci Code, only to be bitterly disappointed that it was the abridged version. Now I have to read the book to see what I missed!
September 13, 2006: One of our doctors sees 60+ patients a day, and dictates on each and every one. He turned in three tapes, I believe. Yikes. That night was a blur. Tiger's Eye did inform me of a new Spanish swear word he learned, and I taught him another. Okay, take my mom's license away. All I did was tell him it's a good thing we didn't name him "JJ." You figure it out, gentle readers.
September 14, 2006: My mother's birthday. I really, really wanted to get her set up with DSL and had spent time e-mailing various DSL providers trying to make it happen. She does a lot with genealogy, including transferring pics, which takes hours on her dialup. She has a cell phone, and we use that more because she's tying up her only phone line while transferring all this data. Yahoo has a really nice online photo album. She could post them and let the others pick what they want. Unfortunately, DSL only operates on copper wiring, and she's fiberoptic. That leaves cable as the other choice, but that's a little more than I wanted to go, but at least I'll get her introduced to Yahoo and show her all the fun features available with it. I went grocery shopping at Aldi and bumped into her! It was nice. I hate not being able to see my mom on her B-day, so I gave her a relieved hug and my daughter did the same. I explained to her how I came up short with her B-day present and she assured me it was the thought that counted. We chatted and had a good time shopping. Just the girls. Very, very refreshing after a hard week of work and colds. She doesn't often shop at Aldi, so it was an amazing coincidence that we met there, but I made sure to point out all the great things they have added as constant items, particularly the boneless pork ribs. She went home to get ready for the main event of the week.
September 15, 2006: The main part of the week came after my first official screening mammogram. Joy. Not too bad of an experience, but it's out of the way and I made the ladies in the office laugh, so obviously I said some things too obnoxious to post here. Heh. I'll write about that in a password protected file!
This is the best part of the week: My sister Joni, her husband Dave and my awesomely gorgeous, extremely gifted, incredibly beautiful, laughing two-year-old nephew came to town. If you don't have any appreciation for children, please see the following photo of my Mother and said nephew.
Henceforth, I shall refer to my nephew as Kaplan, which means "tiger" in Turkish. Someday, I will explain the Turkish connection, but I need to scan some photos first. He knows about 70 words, now, and tonight, he learned a new one "Kay-tay" for KitKat. I don't know how he does it, but ManCub made Kaplan just chortle and squeal - for almost an hour! It just does a body good, hearing all that lovely laughter coming from a little one. What a great way to start out in life, yeah? He gives out kisses and hugs readily, and can clearly say "Pop!" and enthusiastically so. Of course, Pop just glows and lamented that they live two states away.Dave, Joni's hubby, is Mr. Competition, and so is Tiger's Eye, so at the first opportunity, they challenged each other to a game of Scrabble. It soon became evident that my father hung around somewhere in some form. He was absolutely amazing at finding an X at the proper time, landing it on a triple score. We didn't do that good, unfortunately, but we were doing pretty good. Tiger's Eye asked for my help. I usually don't do board games, but, tonight, I helped him out, especially when I saw a series of letters that cleared all his squares save one. Triumphantly, I placed the word under the existing R and spelled out "Racquet," obtaining about 50 points for us. Next move? Dave finds an S. Guess where he puts it? Right at the end of my racquet, on a triple score. Man, did I set us up good for that one. Tiger's Eye came through, though, and as the board became more crowded, he remembered a word he learned in world history this past week, "ka," which is an Egyptian element of soul, which squeezed together nicely with "gam" for a nice pickup of points.
Dave won by 75 points, thanks to my stupidity, and the fact that we gave him "poo" without a challenge...grrrrrr...I did, however, think it should be in the dictionary, and it might be in the newer Scrabble dictionary, as we've had this one since I was a kid. I remember Dad trying to challenge me, holding that book, only to be embarrassed. I never put out a word unless I knew he'd challenge me on it, thus taking some points away from him. That's the only way I ever came CLOSE to beating the man in Scrabble.
It was nice. With Kaplan to bed, and us soundly beaten but very impressed with one another's knowledge, we said goodnight and came home, where I finally feel well enough and chart the week's events.
That's my week, ladies and gentlemen! Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, especially with my nephew, whom I see all to infrequently.
Joni, Mickey, Kaplan and Dave
No comments:
Post a Comment