NBC-10-Philadelphia-kimwolterman

Yesterday I went to the local grocery store, and this is how the conversation between the checker and the bagger went:

bagger - "Did you get the coke?"

checker - "No, I'm not cold."

bagger - "I'm sorry you're cold."

checker - "I'm not cold."

bagger - "Do you want my coat?"

checker - "I said I'm not cold."

befuddled customer (me) - "He asked if you got my coke!"

checker - "Coke?"

befuddled customer - "It was the first thing you rang up."

I felt like I was in the middle of an Abbott and Costello routine. Tell me again - who's on first? I think we might be a couple bases shy of a full playing field.

My sister returned from a month in Belize last Wednesday night. Because she lives out on a difficult country road and snow was predicted, she stayed at her daughter's house until Sunday. With another storm on the way on Sunday she came and stayed with me since Jim is up in Iowa. We had fun catching up on all that has happened since she was gone, and cooking with another woman was a treat. Other than that, one day we went and ran some errands, but we pretty much stayed close to home. She thinks her road is passable today, so she took off this morning.

Jim is expected back today. In fact he was supposed to come home yesterday but Iowa got a lot more snow than we did and the winds pretty much made for blizzard conditions up north. He wanted to get on the road about 7 this morning, but his mom needs to have fluid drained off her lung at noon. She begged him to stay until that is done. Now he hopes to leave by 1:30 or so. Because he is leaving from Mason City where the hospital is located, that will add on to his drive time. The doctors are now pushing to do Lorraine's carotid artery surgery in about 6 weeks, so this will all start up again a lot sooner than anyone expected. Oh dear...

Jim left this morning to go up to Charles City and check on his mom. She has multiple doctors appointments on Monday, so he thought he could help out by driving her and his dad over to Mason City. Because it is a payroll week, I stayed home with Kirby so I can take care of business. On his way up Highway 61, he visited a store on the south side of Hannibal. We have often commented on it, as it looks like a mini Bass Pro wannabe. Jim took a break and stopped in. A little Italian man owns the place, which basically is a bow hunters store. Jim told me that he has deer in the back. I was thinking that he meant he sells the bows to the hunters, then they bring the deer back to him and he processes the meat. Nope. He actually has deer fenced in out back. He collects the urine from the deer and sells it. A pee farmer.

First of all, how in the world does he collect the urine? Are they catheterized? Second, who buys the urine and what are they doing with it? Apparently he shovels up the urine of does in heat. It is a strong buck attractant. Which answers question 2, as he sells it to hunters to get the attention of the bucks. Hmmmm....and I thought we had an interesting business. As I say, only in America.

I spent all of today cleaning the house to try to get rid of some of the plaster dust. The downstairs is 100% done, and part of the upstairs is finished. My sister is coming over tomorrow to spend a couple nights with me, so I still need to dust the guest bedroom and then clean the attached bath before she gets here. Dusting in my office and the master bedroom can wait, if need be. I'm not sure if any workers will be back on Monday or not. God forbid they should keep me in the loop. With the forecast, it is likely they will stay home. Then my house can stay clean for a couple days.

Now that I've gotten that song stuck in your head, I'll tell you why that is particularly true today. I was chatting with my carpenter about a story in our local newspaper, and he happened to mention something about his high school. This being St. Louis and all, of course I had to ask him "Where did you go to school?" He replied that it was a school in Des Moines. "Did I know you were from Des Moines?", I asked. He said Jim knew but that he didn't think he and I had discussed it. I told him I am from Des Moines as well. He was sure we didn't go to the same school, so when he said he graduated from Hoover High, I about fell off my chair. I also graduated from Hoover. As it turns out, he graduated a year ahead of me, and his sister Vicki graduated with me.

We are the Huskies, couldn't be prouder! If you don't believe it, we'll yell a little louder!

Seriously...how small world is that? I'm off to drag out my yearbook.

Last night Jim and I went to see [title of show] in the Studio at the Repertory Theater. I admit to being a little confused when we first got the tickets in the mail. I should explain here that a friend of ours has great season tickets (second row, center) at the Fox and (fourth row center) at the Repertory Theater. He and his partner also own a condo in Hawaii, so when they are out of town we get first dibs on their tickets. This year for whatever reason the Rep had assigned them tickets to Rep and Studio shows for the same night, January 31st. Luckily they asked no questions when I called to exchange tickets, and we saw "39 Steps" Sunday night and the other show last night.

Anyway, when I saw that the tickets said [title of show], I assumed that the play had not yet been selected. Wrong - that is the name of the play. It turns out that it is a play within a play within a play. Mind boggling, I know. It is actually based on a true story of a couple of friends who wanted to write a play and enter it into a competition, where the winning play would be performed in a theater in New York. They just made the play up as they went along. It is a musical and a comedy as well, and we very much enjoyed it. Evidently we aren't the only ones as they added a second week to the production.

We are through with plays for the rest of this month, which is fine with me. I like them spread out a bit so I can anticipate date night with my hubbie. In the meantime, I now have construction dust from one end of the house to the other, so I have plenty of work to keep me busy. Yuck!

Last night I finished clearing out the bathroom so that the workmen could begin today. As I did a final cleaning of the tub, sink and toilet prior to their removal, I thought back to when we purchased the house in 1987. Andy was two years old when we moved in the end of June. While the house was pretty well emptied out when we arrived, it had not been cleaned. At all. Before we could give Andy a bath that night, I practically had to sandblast the tub. Ancient non-skip strips refused to be budged, clinging on for dear life to the bottom of the tub and God knows what other various substances. Mountains of old lady hair clogged the drain. Yek!!!

Wielding my toilet bowl brush last night, I reminisced about potty training Andy in that bathroom, and his sister after him. Both of them swam in that tub, then graduated to using the shower like a "grown-up". Is it weird to be sentimental about a toilet?

Well, no matter. The guys came today, and the bathroom is now just a shell. Interesting that they found hot and cold water pipes on the opposite wall, leading us to speculate that at one time there may have been a claw foot tub in the room. There is also some framing indicating that in the past the back of my closet did enter into that space. I'm thinking that before indoor plumbing was available, they probably used all the space for storage. Just a guess.

Apparently the fact that the tub will take two weeks to get here is an issue. Only the electrical can be handled in the interim. They can't do the drywall or the cement board, which means no tile can go up (or down, for that matter). This will put the whole project behind two weeks. Yippee! I tried to tell Jim that we shouldn't start tearing out until all the parts were in, but nooooooo...he just had to get them going. Men!

Last night Jim and I went to see the play "39 Steps" at the Repertory Theater. The play is based on the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name, which apparently was originally based on a novel. The play, however, has been turned into somewhat of a comedy. I imagine Alfred Hitchcock is doing a little turning of his own. Three men and one woman made up the cast, with each playing several different roles, sometimes at the same time. It was cleverly done, and the cast was exceptional. I'm not a big fan of British humor, so I probably didn't enjoy the play as much as some of the audience. The props were funny though, with ladders turned horizontally to be held by the actors as if in a plane, dust mops trimmed creatively representing dogs on the hunt (though they could have left out the "humping" activity), and doors being swung to and fro to show the actors entering and leaving a room.

There was a little extra step action going on during intermission when an elderly patron took a tumble down the stairs on the way back to her seat. Intermission was a bit longer as we waited for the paramedics to check her out and remove her from the theater. Watch that 39th step - it's a doozy!