2001-09-10 - 9:48 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Imagine", again.

So, this is going to be the week of the 20-minute entries. I have SO MANY THINGS TO DO! Dammit! It's stressing me out, too, and making me cranky. MIL and Papa are arriving in two weeks, and our weekends are occupied, which means I have to do all my nervous-wreck-nitpicky housecleaning after work. Also, I'm stressing over trying to plan Christmas, which means dealing with the weird idiosyncrasies (too long to list) of two sets of parents at once in a clean freak's house. I think I have found a solution though: Get a hotel room. Yes. No more sponging off the 'rents; we'll get a place of our own to escape to.

I was really cranky. I wanted to look up hotels, but I couldn't find my Entertainment Book (got misplaced during the flood) AND my brother was using my AOL account from my parents' house (back when he was poor, before he became Mr. Manhattan, I gave him a screen name on my account). That means I couldn't get on the internet. For an information junkie who's stressing about Christmas, this was Not A Good Thing.

Poindexter came to the rescue and suggested a trip to Home Depot. We stood in the aisle and had a good-natured argument about which sprinkler to buy. I have a FUCKING SPRINKLER now. The solution up 'til now was some kind of magical drip hose that didn't work because our regular hose has a mangled end, meaning that water is just streaming out of the connection between the two hoses. So I spent half an hour last night fucking with the stupid magic drip hose and then still had to go and water it by hand anyway. Fucking watering. I hate it. It should RAIN, dammit. Send up some of that water from Houston, for godsakes. I've tried reading a book while I do it, but as soon as I really get comfortable on the page, I have to move the hose, and then I lose my place, and, well, you see my issue. Plus they ripped up the sod by my garden and replaced it with dirt and straw (and, presumably, grass seeds), meaning that water dribbles out and makes mud which gets all over my flip-flops. Argh.

(How can people call flip-flops "thongs"? Everybody hears "thong" and thinks "dental floss underwear" and it's just too confusing.)

After we finished cooking (chicken with red chile sauce, mm mm mm, which is actually made with sweet bell peppers and is wonderful) I asked Poindexter to go for a walk around the lake with me, since I figured it would calm me down some. It did. For two reasons: Because we were talking about buying a truck tent, and because there were little baby frogs EVERYWHERE! Sitting on the path! Soaking up the warmth of the asphalt! Jumping hysterically out of the way as we approached! They're so funny! I love how their legs splay out behind them when they're in mid-air.

I said, "Hey, next time Mom comes to visit, we can send her out here and say 'Go catch your dinner'!" (She loves frog legs, which I mentioned in an entry in late July sometime.)

Unfortunately, some of the frogs are too stupid to move. Or they're sleeping. We had to really watch out so we wouldn't step on them. I didn't want to step on them because I love the frogs. Poindexter just didn't want frog guts on his shoes. We did, sadly, see a few dead frogs, looking a little flat. Poor frogs.

You may have noticed that Poindexter doesn't go for walks unless I beg or coerce him. My phrasing is always "dragged him out for a walk" or some such. So, on the way back:

Evelynne: Why do you go for walks with me?
Poindexter: Because you're a pain in the butt...
Evelynne: Ha!
Poindexter: ...and I know you'll be even more of a pain in the butt if I didn't go.

So, truck tents! We are planning a trip to Tower City either this weekend or next weekend, and the place has campsites, and Poindexter asked me rather tentatively today if I had ever thought about camping. "Yes," I said.

So, Evelynne the Information Junkie starts looking online and finds the wonderful, special invention that is a TRUCK TENT, which fits neatly into your pickup, which we have. COOL as SHIT. Or as the Pandora's Boxers blogger (the name escapes me, and this is a 20-minute entry so I can't go look it up) or my dad (or, let's face it, me) would say, "Nifty!"

Even if we hate it, which I doubt, if we can just manage to sleep in it three times, it's paid for in terms of hotel room costs. I've slept in a VW bus twice, Poindexter's camped at Pismo Beach, and Poindexter and I turn the heat down to 60 in the winter, so I think we can take it a ways into the fall with a little TRUCK TENT.

Time's up. Here's a picture of Poindexter jumping through the air like a crazy person. He's rather adventurous, wouldn't you say?

He got a good pic of me catching six whole inches of air but I accidentally deleted it. :( I'll get one next time.

previous index next