Dating

Since returning from Winter Break, my calendar shows that I am off every Friday. Those Fridays off are pretty much noted from now through the end of the school year. My weekend and 'extra' days means I am working more than my contract requires - so I'm doing everything humanly possible to lower my work days by attempting to take days off. This would be a beautiful thing if only my new assistant - who also started working for me after the winter break - didn't only work on Thursdays and Fridays. So since I want/need time with her, I've been actually going in on my days off and spending at least 1/2 day with her. I just don't count it as a work day. And I give myself the luxury of sleeping in a bit later, wearing jeans and hoodies and sneakers to work and then leave before it's lunch time. It's been fun. And I feel 'productive' about it - we are accomplishing a lot of things that need taking care of and I still feel like I have time off. Friday afternoons off are awesome! True, it would be more awesome to sleep in completely and to lounge around in my PJs for awhile before starting the day (ala the weekends) but oh well. I'll take whatever down time I can get at the moment.

Yesterday, J. and I took my car in for service - it is three and half years old, has 36,000 miles on it and needed an oil change, air filter change and tires rotated. They said an hour and a half. We prepaid for maintenance for four years - it was stupid of us to do that - especially with a hybrid - because the car truly requires very little service. Far less service than a regular car engine does. Add to that my low, low mileage (around 8K a year) and we paid for service we will probably never need during the service period. Oh well. I'll be taking the car in for every little thing in the next six months in a vain attempt to 'get our money's worth'. Note to self: don't buy a car from a friend who owns the dealership. That whole 'friendship' dynamic makes you do things you would never normally do. Like pay for pre-paid maintenance.

We spent a really fun time at the Starbucks near the mall - happily ensconced with our Kindles, a light caramel frapp and a Trenta iced tea and spent just under three hours reading away. Enjoyed nice conversation with various SB customers as they passed. It was delightful....and I could see our retirement ahead with many lazy afternoons passing the time at SB reading and enjoying people watching and conversation.

I started to get a little antsy about how long the car was taking - didn't they say 1.5 hours and we're now over 2.0. And J. was all 'we're having a great time, honey. Relax and keep reading'. I replied 'I hate it when you go all "glass half full" on me'. Said with a grin and a shoulder shrug for added emphasis. But he was right. It was a great time and I'm close to half way through the 2nd book of the Hunger Games series (a post coming up on that shortly). And I finished my iced tea while we were there and my gold card gets me free refills!! So I got a 2nd Trenta iced tea for FREE!

Cheap Chinese for dinner (which is what we call the Chinese food place in the food court at the mall - we've always called it that).

B.'s birthday was great fun. He ordered a '7 and 7' for his first drink (which is something his grandpa would have ordered) and then followed that with a blended strawberry margarita. We went to Texas Roadhouse where they make you sit on a sawhorse with a saddle while they sing Happy Birthday to you.

For his birthday, we gave him the wireless headphones that go with the running gadget he got for Christmas. And we paid for 50% of this semesters tuition. And then last night, we threw in a full tank of gas - he is off to party with friends this weekend and spent last night in Roseville and will be partying in Sonoma tonight. I think he was most excited about the tank of gas.....

Today will be full of yard work. I think I'm firing our gardener shortly. H. has been doing some work out front and H. pulled a lot of the ground cover out from one of the beds near our fence. It wasn't what I wanted - there was a lot of 'culling' and thinning to do but he pulled out everything - and I was OK with that. The gardener 'helped' during one visit and basically weed whacked the bed. OK. I was OK with that. But then the next time the gardener came, he weed whacked the ENTIRE BED in front of our living room window - took out every bit of ground cover - which is not what I intended at all. The guy does very little for his $60 a month - especially in winter when the grass is barely growing - but he shows up and weed whacks my front flower bed without asking.

I think we're going to put bark in those beds and just be done with it. It's probably the best thing to do - so we will work on that today. Probably making a trip (or two) to OSH to get more bark. Sure, we could have the local nursery deliver bark and dump it in the driveway - but then we'd have to take care of it immediately (lest our neighbors help themselves to the bark or Mother Nature blow it all down the street).....so bags of bark (though more expensive) give us flexibility in when we put them down.

I am the mother of a 21 year old. Holy Crap!