Another Weekend

Yes, another weekend has come and gone, and although born in angst, it quickly righted itself and became a closely bonding experience. We're both getting to the point of being able to keep our flight impulse at bay when having an argument - and I think it's mostly due to the fact that it feels like we've been together longer than 5 months. We've both invested so much in a relatively short period of time, it puts us in the perspective of "well, let's not be hasty and dump it all - this is worth sorting out..." After all, one of the necessary skills in any successful relationship is learning how to argue constructively.

To recap, Friday night was It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! and The Prophecy (wherein it was suggested that Eric Stoltz might play me in the Cameron Crowe/Nora Ephron movie of our relationship). Trish and Dan joined us, and for the first time, Shaun made an appearance at the festivities. We made him welcome, and hopefully he'll come hang with us again.

Then the aforementioned tiff occurred, and enough of a peace was forged that nobody went to sleep angry... however:

I awoke at 2AM, drifted in and out of consciousness, and was clobbered by an intense migraine at 3:30 in the bloody AM. Came upstairs to medicate and try to let Raechelle get some sleep without me groaning and muttering expletives. Finally achieved a state of relative equilibrium and trundled downstairs to get back in my own bed about an hour before we had to get up and take Ruby to the dealership for some basic maintenance.

I was not in good shape Saturday.

Things from the previous night were already on the mend, however, so I didn't have to shoulder the worry of an angry girlfriend on top of a killer migraine, no sleep and an empty stomach. We dropped Ruby at the dealership and got a loaner. I was not aware that Hyundai made anything that ginormous. I think it's their equivalent of the Kia Sorento. Anyway, we got brunch at Shari's, and I felt much better. We walked to JoAnn fabrics and got some Halloween stuff. A quick trip to Home Depot for a flat-nosed shovel, an additional clothes rod for the master closet, and an outdoor push broom, and then back to the dealership to rescue Ruby.

We had a quick spot o' tea with Don, Marcia and Ben, Raechelle's ex-family-in-sin. Ben is homeschooled/unschooled, and is an amazing kid of Tyler's age. We picked their brains on the homeschooling/unschooling thing, and a huge new world opened up for me as a parent. We borrowed some books on the subject and are doing some research. Nevertheless, by this point in the afternoon, I was hitting a wall and needed to crash out for awhile. We came home, I turned on some random college football game and promptly fell asleep for an hour and a half.

Other than a trip to SCT for a very funny and well-done production of Night of the Living Dead, it was a quiet night. We stayed in, had leftovers and a little wine, and watched a whole disc of Buffy. With the kids. There may have been popcorn involved as well. It was madness. Then we went to bed, caught the first half hour of SNL, and crashed until after 9AM. Buh?? How is this possible, TD? you may ask. And yeah - I know, right? But it's true!

Sunday consisted of cleaning, then an expedition to Red Light on Broadway and the giant Goodwill on Dearborn. Which is where we happened to find a 4-drawer metal filing cabinet for the office (which usually retail for $200+) for $15. And here is where I must tell a little story...

I never find anything to wear at Goodwill, because I'm 6'4" tall and shuffle around on a pair of size 13 feet. So when we walked into the joint and were greeted with a couple racks of leather jackets, my browsing was completely in the realm of, "Gee, what to they have for everyone in the world but ME?". So imagine my surprise when I found this:

A 19th century style black suede "frock coat". Size: XL. Great condition. Easily $300 new. My price: $30. Gotta love Goodwill. The coat, combined with the black ruffle shirt, purple vest and black boots from Red Light (along with some snug trousers and a couple long canine tooth appliances), will give me a nice Byronic vampire persona for Halloween. Very vampire-pimp (or "vimp") if you will. And Raechelle got herself a doozy of a red & black cancan dress that can do double-duty as a pirate wench ensemble when needed - but for Halloween, she's my #1 vampire-ho. Love it! Tyler has said he's going to be a ninja. I don't know if that means he's going to do a black costume, or just disappear all night. And Kayleigh is going as the character Willow from Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Anyway, once we were back, I muscled in the file cabinet by myself, which was stupid and which Raechelle lectured me about. Fortunately I didn't pull, pop, strain or otherwise burst anything. Then Doug and Ann came over for the Hawks game, and we ate pizza and cried in our Thomas Kemper root beer as the Buccs played circles around the clueless Seahawks. I blame the new training facility. The players have descibed it as "spa-like". I think it's made 'em soft. That and an ungodly number of injuries this season.

We headed off to bed to fold laundry and get kids tucked in, and had a good night's sleep for Monday. It's a new week, and it's jam-packed with social obligations. And that is why we had to un-schedule some stuff for this upcoming weekend. We need to seriously prep the house for Rae's move in, which is coming up in three weeks. And the weekend after this one is our Celtic New Year party (wherein we wear our vamp regalia). So every spare moment is going to be Rae packing her apartment and me making room here.

And although I'm just a tad scared of the whole move-in thing, I've been getting plenty of positive reinforcement from the Universe, and I say bring it.