TGIM

I was thinking this morning how much I love Mondays.

When Monday rolls around, I have already seen all the previous week's shows.  If I've been diligent, I have already written the reviews (but not always).  I have delivered my mother's meds to her and can take a day or two off.  If we're talking about this Monday, I went and did a moderate size shopping at the supermarket yesterday and had nothing on my schedule for today.  Or, in fact, for the rest of the week.  No shows this week.

So actually, as a retired person, I could stay in my jammies all day, read, watch a lot of TV, and do lots of "research" on the internet. There was nothing I had to do until it was time to cook dinner.

I did change out of my pajama bottoms, but I put on a pair of shorts ('cause Eileen Javora, my favorite weather person, told me might get up to 106 today), but since on hot nights I usually sleep in my shorts, it was really just like changing from one pair of pajamas to another pair.

In one of those weird Facebook quizzes that will tell you what kind of tree you were in a former life or something, I came across a quiz that would determine what rank I would rise to in the Star Trek universe.  But since I was wearing a red shirt, I decided it probably was unwise to take the test until I'd change my shirt, at least.

But yeah, here I sat in my "hot weather" pajamas all day and went back and forth between TV marathoning and Internet surfing.  I did take 2 hours off to watch the corny old movie If This is Tuesday, It Must be Belgium   The second half of the movie is the schlocky love interest part, but the first part is hilarious while this disparate group of tourists from the U.S.  start out on their week=long tour of all the historic sites of Europe while a British tour guide narrated everything.

I swear I was back in Italy with Ian on his Bataan march across Paris again.  I recognized many of our "special" tour guides in Germany and Austria as this happy faced woman gave the intrepid tourists a tour of yet another museum that everyone was too exhausted to appreciate. And there they were, floating down the Rhine past all those castles that we saw a couple of years ago.

I had a chance to look at our Viking tours through the eyes of the theater-goer, laughing uproariously at the very things that Walt and I and Mike and Char have been doing for the past several years, and will do again very soon.

Kind of puts it in a weird perspective.  As I have found on our trips, it showed also in the movie how the best experiences weren't those at big monuments or famous museums.  It was when there was true interaction with the locals, the kind the Rick Steeve writes about so eloquently.  I remember the day when we had a choice of touring the town of Bratislava which apparently is another old famous quaint city with ore old buildings an interesting monuments, or we could pay extra and visit a woman who would show us her house.

I have never regretted for one minute going to visit Mrs. Brunovska.  She didn't speak English but our tour guide interpreted.  She served not very good packaged cookies (only enough for one each) and some wine.  She showed us her garden.  She showed us her dog.  She showed us the stove built into the wall of her old kitchen, where she prepared meals for a family of 9, before they all retired to sleep in the same little room next to the kitchen (mom, dad, the kids and mother-in-law).

I'm sure Bratislava was a wonderful city, but my very favorite part of that vacation was being with Mrs. Brunovska.  And the folk dancers in St. Petersburg.  And the cossack horsemen in Ukraine.  Those are the things I go on those trips to experience.

Anyway, the movie brought all those memories back.

In the evening I put my new StoneWave cooker to the acid test.  I made terriyake chicken, spicy green beans, and a chocolate mousse for dessert.  All in 2 little StoneWave cookers.  The chicken was delicious and while the "mousse" was good (it was really more a chocolate cake than chocolate mousse) but I made one in each of the two cooker and that was w...a...y too much.   Must remember if I make that next time that ONE will probably give a nice serving to three people.

I have now vegetated the day away and it's time to drag my sweaty body into the couch and go back to sleep. Tuesday will be very much a repeat of today, except it will probably include a visit with my mother.  Now that she maybe starting to forget me, I'd better get in all the visiting time I can before it's all gone.

I just realized that in just a couple of days past 2 months, she will no longer be my 94 year old mother, she will be my 95 year old mother and that much closer to hunnert.