Mondays have gotten routine with water aerobics. I've gotten used to getting there and then going to the locker room and rinsing off and then working out a little. I had agreed to do some grocery shopping after.

I thought of going to what I call the 'convenience store Randalls' which is a small store on Exposition. But on the list was 'cherries' which meant marashino cherries for FFP's occasional Manhattans. I thought that the Balcones Randall's would have them. They didn't or, if they did, I couldn't find them. I suppose I should have tried the baking aisle but after I didn't see them with the bitters and mixers and cocktail onions I figured I was sunk. Shopping is such a colossal waste of time. Trying to figure out the best buy for both health, taste and price and actually finding stuff. And I was trying to use some coupons, something I rarely do. Then the checkout was a big mess with one person waiting for change, another getting the wrong stuff, the guy starting to ring my stuff for the person in front. Sigh. I didn't have the strength to ask the sweet mentally-challenged sacker for paper sacks for my recycling.

At home I ate some lunch and boiled some eggs because I thought they'd be good to have on hand and maybe tomorrow make tuna fish salad.

I spent some time on the Internet getting a hotel reservation. [Ed. note: Wasn't satisfied with hotels.com choices and ended up on Orbitz...first time I've used them.]

And I started on tedious holiday projects. Figuring out a card to make and preparing a calendar and other mailers for family are the tasks at hand. One of my aunts wanted the spouses of a couple of grandkids and their anniversaries entered on the family calendar along with the date of death of her daughter. I put these calendars together by combining event lists. One list has immediate family (my mom, dad, sister, her family and FFP) special days. One has those of relatives from my dad's side, one has relatives from my mother's side, one has my brother-in-law's family. I don't actually have FFP's Mom and Dad on it. He doesn't have any brothers or sisters and he doesn't really keep up with his cousins for birthdays and anniversaries. Anyway, by combining all the event lists with a holiday one, I make a calendar for my sister and her family and Dad. By combining the immediate family and the Ball side with the holidays, I make one for the Ball relatives. By combining the immediate family and the DeArmond side I could theoretically make one for those relatives although I think only my aunt Katie, my mom's one remaining sibling would be remotely interested. My sister and my dad and my Ball aunts love the calendar, though. And my cousins are at least gracious about receiving it. But printing out dozens of calendars is tedious. While I'm working on all this, I try to go through the stacks of stuff that had accumulated in front of my computer. Slips of paper with phone numbers, new addresses for people. In the mess is a letter from my gynecologist saying that he is retiring that I got a while back. It was meant to remind me to make an appointment. I call and get one. A number of 'to do' lists on scraps of paper are in the mess. I notice that many of the items have been done or become obsolete by ignoring them. I realize I don't have any paper that I like for the printing of the calendars or the Christmas mailer that is forming in my mind.

So...I get a shower and decide to go out to the Office Depot. But first I start the laundry. Ho hum.

I stop in the Ross next to Office Depot to purchase dish towels, my annual Thanksgiving gift to the hapless soul who will host part of the Ball clan for turkey. When I come out of Ross it is raining a little and the skies are really threatening. I get an umbrella from my car. A small piece of metal on the umbrella slices a nick out of my finger and I try to stop it bleeding while picking out paper and finding some of those stickers to seal a foldover mailer. I have trouble finding the latter while clutching reams of paper and the umbrella and bleeding. I attribute the fact that I got legal instead of letter paper for the Christmas cards to doing this balancing act. The skies have opened when I go out and, even with the umbrella, it is hard not to get a little wet. I drive carefully home through the storm. I hope it doesn't start flooding and it doesn't.

At home, I have to stop and install a new cartridge on one of the printers. I set the ink jet to printing more calendars. I notice FFP has changed the wash and I try to write my Christmas card and go over my list of addresses to pick the ones for cards. [Ed. note: This list started out as a Paradox database probably on DOS and was converted to Access some years ago Every Christmas I struggle with the steps to mail merge labels into Word. Damn Microsoft.] FFP wanders by and I ask, pointing to the first name, last name Abraham..."who is this?"

"Someone who came to one of our parties for Project Transitions," he says. "Is that what you are going to wear?" [Ed. note one: PT parties are dinners you have for whoever is intrigued by your party's theme so you don't always know the people in advance. Which is probably no excuse for collecting the address of the person and then completely forgetting who they are. Ed. note two: FFP is much more fashion conscious than I am.]

The blue cotton Dockers and the sailing chart shirt seem OK to me for a Cabaret night. I will escape the tedium and spend some pleasant hours on Fourth Street.

And we leave the tedium. It's dry now. And we are stepping out.

 

 

 

 

 

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Felt equal to the task today.