Swollen Hands

Yesterday was a good if difficult day with S. She took a very, very long time to get ready. In the meantime, I bought her a bow (for archery, about $51 with shipping) on eBay. I also read up on archery and local clubs and called a local guy named Sig something, whose name S felt was "awesome," about archery lessons. I got the address for Stewart's, which S wasn't in the mood for, as it turned out, and I spent a good half-hour finding the location, though I didn't hold this against her, of course, just mentioning as it is one of the mundane tasks that took more time than it should have.

We went to Sizzler near the Mall. We talked about the divorce without actually using the "D" word. She said she basically wanted to know who she was living with and where and that she wanted to stay in the same house, ideally. She had also asked me in the car what the Parenting Seminar was about. It occurs to me now that she might have thought that I was having a baby or something else other than it having to do with her. I explained that the State was intent on protecting the kids of divorcing couples and this was meant to help make the adults a wee bit smarter about how they treated each other and their kids during the "process."

She had the salad bar and I had the Malibu chicken, which I really like, followed by way too many rounds at the salad bar along with two rounds of dessert which was a small square of pound cake, a little pineapple and then strawberry topping and frozen vanilla yoghurt.

We then walked it off at Borders, where S had a hard time deciding between four books: Go Ask Alice, Tweak, Breakfast of Champions and one other. We topped that off with a visit to Blockbuster, where we rented two movies - Juno, which she had seen and I had not, though we didn't actually see it, and Sweeney Todd, during which we both kind of fell asleep. She gave me a blankie to curl up under, she went to dreamland and I followed soon after.

The following day, today, Sunday, I bought S some arrows, talked with her a bit, brushed the dog with her, trimmed some payis the dog had generated near her ears, petted the cats, cleaned up the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher and such, made breakfast (before sitting with S) including picante home fries that were "eh" but interesting for future improvement, sanded and primed my bedroom and the living room ceiling, including patching some bad plastering from the past owner, put together the garbage, collected garbage from upstairs, shaved but didn't shower, talked on the phone a bit, checked e-mail, wrote e-mail, checked my e-Trade accoung, checked some stock picks, kicked myself for not following my own advice on Apple which is at 180 (arrrrrrgh!) and found two new picks, intended to buy but couldn't get in to my account, checked my credit (which rose 80 points due to a correction, just as the mortgage broker said it would) looked at mortgage options, called customer support at Transunion to allow access to that account.

I mowed the lawn and trimmed it. This was hard work and resulted in swollen hands, slightly. I also planted two plant, one of which was a pepper plant from last year that stayed alive (I just watered it, so go figure, and another flowering plant that was kept inside but is near death. Later, I watered all of the house plants.

Later, I did some test recordings of voice mail as I have no other way of getting it off my phone.