We had a normal weekend. I mean normal as it would have been several months ago. It's very strange and very wonderful.

Saturday morning we got up, had breakfast and went to the spring Jonquil Festival in downtown Smyrna. By the time we got there parking behind the library was already full, so we had to park behind City Hall. This means we had to run the gauntlet of the food vendors. This was a real test of self-control: they had elephant ears, which I know as doughboys. James longed for red beans and rice or jambalaya. We passed them all by and instead enjoyed the other vendors. We did taste and buy some Wisconsin cheese: smoky gouda, bourbon gouda, dill havarti (mine), and a siracha [sp?] gouda. Looked at the Button Girl's booth, jewelry, cute kid things, hand-made pens, carpenter bee traps, scarves, hand-made furniture, bird houses made of old license plates, sports dog collars and leashes, stained glass that reminded me of the windows of Ste. Anne's in Fall River, and other crafty delights. It was warm, but not hot, the sky clear and blue.

We stayed about 90 minutes, which was all our skin could stand, after perusing the books for sale by the Smyrna library, and then went to Costco. Got what we needed (toilet paper, American cheese), but I was ticked because the date on their skim milk was May 1! I just got the one gallon.

From there we came home to have lunch and chill out until it was time to go to Jake Skidmore's birthday dinner. This turned out to be, as the cliché says, a comedy of errors. I had checked e-mail about three o'clock, and then we got dressed, then headed over to Cumberland Mall (dinner was supposed to be at Maggiano's) about four. Now, earlier I had talked to Lin Butler about our extra Instant Pot. (I'm not sure I've mentioned that here or not. When I ordered an Instant Pot on Prime Day, Amazon sent me two. I made sure they didn't charge me twice, then contacted them to see how to send it back. They said they didn't want it back. They even sent me an e-mail to that effect. They said it was mine to give away, sell, donate, whatever. I figured that at 8 quarts it could cook a large amount of food in a short time and it might be nice for a shelter or a soup kitchen. Lin knows someone who works at a soup kitchen.) I texted Lin to tell her I was going to bring it with us and we could transfer it there. So we got to the mall, parked in the garage, made our way to the front of the mall and Maggiano's, and nobody was there. So I texted Lin and she texted back "Didn't you get my text about the change of location? Maggiano's couldn't take a group larger than ten. We are at Pasta Bella." So tramp, tramp, tramp back across the mall, into the garage, on to Pasta Bella, with the diversion of an accident on the East-West Connector. Meanwhile, I checked my phone. Oh, there was the text! Why didn't the phone notify me? Well, because for some strange reason only James' texts were being notified to me. Since I didn't set the phone to do this, I can only assume some update did it for me. Thanks a lot. 😡

We had a great time at Pasta Bella, came home with leftovers, and I discovered that Charles had sent an e-mail notifying us of the change of venue. However, our mail server didn't deliver it on time. Thanks a lot again. 😡 And Lin now has the Instant Pot to hand over to the soup kitchen. May it feed everyone well!

We had a nice long sleep, had Sunday breakfast, and proceeded on Sunday errands, a.k.a. Kroger and Publix. Kroger was kind of a bust because they no longer have the thin-sliced low-sodium Swiss cheese he likes (they discontinued it) and the milk—since we couldn't get it at Costco—was $2.79/gallon. For that little a difference we could have gotten it at Publix. Whatever. Then we took the perishables home and I put them up while James loaded the power chair. We went to Trader Joe's for chicken sausage and his favorite tea, got dark chocolate peanut butter cups for a dessert, then bundled that all up in an insulated bag and went to the Barnes & Noble at Town Center for a little bit of fun. He came home with six magazines, and I used their coupon for three books, including one I'd been wanting to read for a while, about the demonization of pit bulls.

James changed his clothes when we got home about 3:30, preparatory to cooking up some ground turkey for him to use in breakfasts this week. I washed the towels as well as the master bathroom rugs, then sat down to watch some horse jumping on the NBC sports channel. James also put up the plastic storage containers and, because it was by then nearly suppertime, made some gravy to go on the rotisserie chicken we got at Costco and had lunched on yesterday afternoon, warmed up the chicken and a veggie, and we had supper. At seven I turned on America's Funniest Home Videos for a good chuckle, and then switched to Guy's Grocery Games, which featured children tonight. Since we'd missed Masterchef Junior because of some ridiculous football draft—why can't that stay on the sports channels?—this was a good replacement.

Next on the schedule was Call the Midwife...

And we interrupt this program for the next post. Hold on, this one gets crazy. Again. Yes. [facepalm]

Labels: books, crafts, events, food, friends, magazines, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:42:00 PM

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