Has it really been since Wednesday?

I guess it has. Wow.

Where to begin...where to begin....

Friday morning I was laying on the couch dozing in and out - in my conscious moments thinking about getting up and starting on the garage sale pricing, in my not-so-conscious moments Zach Braff was involved - when the phone rang. It was one of my old babysitting moms asking if I could watch JackJack for the day. I haven't seen him since late last fall, so I said sure, bring him on over. He was a baby last time I'd seen him, barely sitting up, but now he's a little boy with a little boy haircut who walks like Frankenstein. The kids enjoyed having him here all day and he kept them occupied while I priced stuff.

It was fun playing baby games with JackJack and as I sat in the floor with him across from me, matching sock hats on each of our heads, a chicken puppet on my right hand and a hippopotamus puppet on my left, making him giggle until he lost his breath, I thought, "This is where my uterus should start crying and begging me to have another baby." So I waited. We played "watch Kiki stack blocks as high as your head and cry 'Ohhh no!' as you knock them down" and thought, "Okay, uterus, start kicking up a ruckus down there," but I got nothing. It was kind of sad that I didn't get sad that I don't want to have any more babies.

I was talking to Cousin Courtney on Saturday and we were discussing babies and my current disdain for slobber and snot and how pudgy baby cheeks don't affect me like they used to. I said, "Everyone says you'll just know when you're done having kids and I guess I've reached that point." Cousin Courtney shrugged and said, "Sounds to me like your biological clock just broke. Forget about batteries running down, that thing's just broke."

Broke enough that I'm making Paul a doctor's appointment this week.

Snip snip.

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The hay guy finished our hay on Friday amidst low rumbles of thunder off and on all week. We were so afraid it would rain between cutting and baling and we'd risk losing our hay. Fortunately, it all worked out and we got 98 bales this year. The first year we lived here we fertilized and got 134, but most years since we've gotten around 90-100, except for year before last when we got 67 and last year when we got 42 1/2. Drought is rough.

Normally we just give the hay to Paul's brothers, but this year they only needed 10 bales, so we got to sell the remaining 88 bales. When I did the math and figured out what we were going to get for the hay I excitedly asked Paul if I could start booking our anniversary trip. He stopped scribbling in his hay notebook and looked up at me over the top of his glasses and said, "No, we're buying you a van." Now, this should make me happy....because I do need a van. But I really want to go see Mickey Mouse again....

I'm still pouting and hoping he'll just give me his truck so we can go to Disney World for our 15th anniversary. A van just isn't as romantic as holding hands while watching fireworks over Cinderella's castle. Wait, who am I kidding - if he and I go to Disney World together, it'll be me standing there bawling as I watch TinkerBell fly out of the castle while he gripes that his feet hurt and he's hungry and his hand is sweating because I've been holding it so long.

As disappointing as a van may be, it might save me from being disappointed at a lack of romance.

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Saturday was the garage sale. Separate post to follow.

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When the garage sale was finally packed back up and stuffed where it needed to be stuffed (Some of it in Mom's garage, but unfortunately, most of it in my van) the kids and I flew back here to get ready for the 8-man football game. Paul's mom was here to watch the kids and had brought pizza, bless her heart. Somehow she just knows when to do that. Paul was helping a guy load hay, so I did my best to dry out my bra somewhat with the hair dryer (I'd sweat so much during the garage sale, I think my boobs mildewed in my bra) and touch up the makeup I'd had on since before dawn.

At 4:30 we were flying out the door and headed back to town. We got to the football field and not a soul knew where our money, programs and tickets were or any other pertinent information. Finally we just went down to the gate and waited. Eventually a guy drove down to us and brought 3 boxes of programs, two rolls of tickets, a jar for the tickets, a walkie-talkie and a money bag. We were rollin'. Once we finally got a system going were rocked along okay and eventually they sent 5 cheerleaders down to sell programs for us.

I've worked this game for 3 years, but this was the first year it was held at Commerce. Usually it's at NEO and we sit in the breezeway and have chairs and tables and bottled water, but this year we were at the highway gate and therefore worked out of the back of Paul's pickup. When someone drove up, I walked up to their car to take their money. It was at least 95' when we started and add in idling cars on hot blacktop and by the time it was all over, my shirt was soaked all the way through, my boobs had sat in my wet bra for so long they were shrivled and pruny and from mid-calf to where my Crocs started, my legs were black from dirt/exhaust/sweat. I was gorgeous, lemme tell ya.

I pissed a woman off and she honked her horn at me. She had wanted to pay for the car behind us and hadn't made that entirely clear to me. At that point in the evening, we had a high school girl selling admissions, too. She was working the car behind me at the time. In the process of trying to figure out how many adults and children were in her car (a number that changed every second) she all of the sudden leaned out her window and screamed at me, "SHE IS TAKING THEIR MONEY WHICH IS WHAT I WAS TRYING TO TELL YOU I DID NOT WANT TO TAKE PLACE. YOU ARE SO STUPID! HOW DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT I'M SAYING?" Then she beat her fists on the steering wheel and honked her horn. If she'd have called me a bitch, it would've gotten ugly and I could tell she really, really wanted to, but after she honked her horn at me I gave her my Dad look. The Dad look is what Tater and I always got from Dad when we had REALLY pissed him off - he'd tip his head down and glare at us over his glasses and then it was all over but the cryin'. I was looking down at my money bag when she honked and I looked up at her over my glasses and very calmly and politely said very slowly, "Ma'am, you owe me $24. Pay it and drive on. Now."

After they peeled out and made themselves look like total asses to everyone in line, we all had a good laugh and for the rest of the evening the catch phrase was "You better watch it or I'll honk my horn at you."

We had started taking tickets at about 5:15 and the game started at 7. By 8 we'd get a car about every 10 minutes and by 8:30 we were ready to poke our eyes out with unsharpened pencils. We'd let the high school girl go watch the game, our cheerleaders had put on all the lip gloss they could put on and had sprayed their hair about 4 times apiece before they, too, had to go and stretch and get ready for their halftime performance. So it was just Paul and me....sitting.....sweating.....dreaming of fast food and a bathroom........joking about angry bitches who honk their horn ..... and debating if we were too physically exhausted to even gamble after the game.

We stayed through half time then turned in our money and were just ready to go pee and eat. Then I heard my name being screamed through the crowd. I turned around to see one of the former recruiters from the college running at me with her arms wide open. We stood there and visited for 20 minutes while my bladder continued to beg for relief and my stomach growled angrily and my boobs shriveled even more, but honestly, I'm so glad she saw me and hollered. I hadn't seen her in years and it was nice catching up.

Then Paul and I grabbed some dinner (At 9:30. Yes, there was indigestion.) and decided that we had a little energy to gamble. But turns out, we really didn't. We were only there about 20 minutes before we were both ready to go and for us to leave a casino after only 20 minutes, well, you know we had to be tired.

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Today I've cleaned my bedroom and most of my office, rearranged my computer desk in anticipation of the quickly approaching new semester, laughed my head off at the pictures in my old scrapbooks (Cedric, if you ever run for public office, I am SO blackmailing you), marveled at the sheer volume of mundane crap I saved back in my teenage years (score cards for putt-putt, movie ticket stubs, programs to the spring band concert), shed a small tear at the empty box of M&Ms smashed in the back of one book (Stacie told me to save it and I have all these years. Not sure why she told me to save it, but I found it utterly impossible to throw away probably 20 years later) and was again astounded at how gigantic my hair really was in the 90's.

Today was really just the perfect way to end a weekend - my nostrils full of dust and the smell of Pledge, my trashcan full of useless old papers and markers that no longer write and my heart and head full of memories.

*sigh*