Getting Ready for Company

Well, I finished the article and got it submitted to the newspaper by noon, or shortly after.  I would have submitted it earlier, but I was waiting for a promised comment from the mayor, who said he would send me something by late morning.  But he's a politician, so I waited all morning and didn't hear from him.   I finally sent him an e-mail showing what I would write without his statement and he sent me a statement by return mail which is, of course, better than I had written.   I got that worked into the article and sent it off.  The rest of my day was free and clear.

We are expecting Jeri & Phil and Walt's sister here tomorrow, to spend the night.  We don't really do overnight guests.  The only folks who have stayed overnight here in the last 10 years or so are Jeri & Phil and Ashley, who takes care of our dogs.

Cleaning or straightening needed to take place.  

Walt does about 99% of the work around here, without a complaint, and I'm very grateful. I'm trying to get the kitchen clean and the laundry folded before they get here, which of course at 1:30 a.m., when I'm writing this, still hasn't been done.

And naturally, with my little goals for pre-arrival cleaning, the first thing I did was to take off for Atria to visit my mother.

It was a surprise when she wasn't in her room, and it was full of "stuff" -- a basket, some boxes, a shirt, casually thrown over a chair, and a dish of plums. My acute powers of deduction immediately figured out that my cousin Niecie had come for a visit and to give her a pedicure again.  When I was there 2 days ago, that was not on her calendar, but I noticed that it was today. 

I had already checked the dining room and hadn't seen my mother, so I figure Niecie had managed to convince her to have dinner somewhere other than Atria.  I left a note for her and left the apartment.  When I got to the lobby, there were my mother and Niecie sitting on a couch, eating an ice cream cone and chatting. I just hadn't noticed them when I checked the dining room.

I chatted with them for a bit, but had to get to the supermarket to do some shopping, so said my goodbyes and left, telling my mother I would return in 2 days, with Jeri.

I went off to Nugget Market and managed to stock up on nearly $200 worth of impulse buys.  We were out of a lot of things

On the way to and from, I was listening to my audio book, "Drop Shot," by Harlan Coben and it had only 10 minutes to go when I left the supermarket.  I took the long way home and finished the story about the time I arrived back to the house.  I've decided I like Coben's sardonic/ wise-cracking hero, Martin Bolitar, who isn't a detective, but a sports representative, yet he seems to get involves in a lot of crime solving.  This was Book #2 of the series and I've put book #3 on my Audible.com wish list so that when my monthly credit is activated, I will choose that as my next download.

I made a teensy dent in the laundry before All in with Chris Hayes was on. Hayes is reporting from Ferguson and I had read this morning that he had been threatened by the police with macing and I was interested to see what, if anything, he would say about it, but he didn't mention it. Guess he didn't feel the need to inflame resentment in the Ferguson police any more.

The whole situation is so distressing because it is a continuing sign of the disintegration of our society. The thought crossed my mind that maybe Robin Williams was the lucky one.

Walt announced he was going downtown to help Ned hang lights on the plaza for their upcoming concert on Friday  I could, of course, have used his being gone as an excuse to finish either the kitchen or the laundry, but instead I watched Dead Poets Society.  I am watching a lot of Robin Williams right now, it seems, and I am finding it very cathartic.  I didn't know him personally and only saw him on film anyway, and watching these old films seems to make his loss less painful for me anyway.  He's still there, just a click away on my TV or computer screen, just as accessible as he was to me in real life.

Walt didn't get home until 9.  I asked if he and Ned had eaten anything and he said they had a snack from a local Indian restaurant, but not a real dinner, so I cooked up a batch of tortellini I had bought this afternoon.  A quick, easy dinner that he likes.  Especially good topped with home grown fresh basil snipped off the plant on my kitchen sink.

Now it's way past my bedtime and I have just written one of my more boring entries, but it's done and I can go off to sleep without worrying about it.

Tomorrow will be more interesting, because Jeri will have arrived...and it will be anybody's guess whether I get the laundry and/or the kitchen finished before they all get here.

Day 50:  This makes me very happy