Busy Weekend

What a busy weekend! I started out shopping at the thrift stores and consignment shops, where I get just about everything, as mentioned in a previous post. I found a pink and a black suit jacket and a beautiful deep blue deck chair, but no suits. I had put in a hair emergency call to the salon next door to work. They took me in at noon on Saturday, so I interrupted my shopping to get my hair cut and styled. I really liked it until Sunday morning in the shower when I realized I had no hair left! About half of it is gone, they cut it around my face and to shoulder length. I don't know if I can even put it up anymore, but now since it looks decent, maybe I won't have to do that. It feels so skimpy, though, when it was so nice and thick before. I think next time I'll just get a trim.

After the haircut I was hungry, so I went to get my Mom. We always eat Saturday lunch together and usually do something else either before or after. After lunch at the Olive Garden, we went shopping at the regular stores. I easily found a gorgeous black suit with long, simple lines, and bought a white cotton shirt with white subtle embroidery in the front to go under the jacket. Then off for shoes. I'm really not that fond of shoe shopping and my poor Mom even less. But I found some black shoes with a low heel, classic but not old-fashioned. Then, exhausted, I dropped my Mom off at her apartment and went grocery shopping. I had been planning to go to the fair with Amanda and Anton but I got home too late, around 6:00 p.m. It was a long but productive day.

Sunday I had to shop again for a white bra (I wear only black ones) and some dressier nylons, spray starch for the shirt, and things like that. When I came home I gardened, with the "help" of the two little neighbor boys. Even though they are here almost all of the time, I found out that they don't live in our neighborhood but are visiting their Grandma. And I found out why they are visiting their Grandma so much when their Mom came to pick them up.

She pulled up in a ratty, doors don't match car--and there's nothing wrong about being poor--but she just opened the door and yelled for her boys, "Get over here, you bastards! Get over here right now!" Not very impressive. Good thing Grandma has the boys most of the time. They are adorable, three and five years old, mixed race children. The older one is so polite and helpful that someone must have taught him well. Their Grandma had to come over to the garden to collect their things, so I talked with her for a while.

Then I finished weeding the back garden and the neighbor next to me started sawing branches off the large ash tree near the street. The low branches get in the way when he drives his cars (3) up into the yard to wash them, which he does almost daily, right outside my bedroom window. So I helped hold the ladder from one side and his wife from the other while he used a chain saw right above my head! I've used a chainsaw but have also seen some horrible accidents from them, so I was wishing that I had a hardhat! After that I hoed in the gardens and tried to get more grassroots out, working up a good sweat. It was humid and I was getting sore and starting to get a headache when the neighbor came back over and offered to take away my huge pile of weeds with the tree limbs. I was tired and more than ready to quit, but had to help him since it was for my own benefit and if I'd gone inside he would have done it alone.

So he drove his truck over and we picked, raked and scooped up my weed piles. My good shorts got all dirty, as did my face and arms. His wife lurked anxiously from their yard, does she think.....no, he's nearly young enough to be my son, so I hope not!

I didn't have time to go over the material from work for our strategic planning on Tuesday, nor practice the tough interview questions that I'm sure I'll get on Thursday. The weekend was just too short! Hope you had a good one.