The weekend that was

So after putting up the Halloween decorations on Wednesday, I managed to leave the lights turned on all night. Gee, that was a great idea. D'oh!

This weekend was filled with stuff, though it seemed to just fly by. Originally on Friday night I was supposed to go fabric shopping with Jenn for my belly dancing veil material, but she had a throat infection and stayed home to rest. Instead, I found my younger brother and set aside some time to assemble the new desk I bought for my home office. That was way more of a project than I had anticpated. We basically managed to get the "easy" part done Friday night, but by 9pm realized that it was going to take quite a bit longer to finish. Brother wanted to be home to chat with gf online, so I let him go on the promise he'd be back on Sunday to help complete the assembly.

Saturday saw me going for a walk in the rain. I've been pretty slack in my walking regime so I decided a little rain shouldn't stop me as long as I dress properly. I know now that my hood on my winter jacket is not waterproof. The lessons we learn :)

Went to church on Saturday and drove in at the same time as my aunt, so I sat with her for Mass. After mass I stopped to talk to her for a bit and tell her my news. I also finally managed this past week to tell my immediate family (in person) that I had started seeing someone. It wasn’t something I wanted to do over email, so I am glad I was finally able to see Dad and speak with older brother over the phone. They were surprised at the distance issue but seemed happy for me, so that was nice.

The only person in my immediate family who doesn’t know is my mom. Ah, who am I kidding, my mother knows everything! She’ll be staring us down from the other side of church, wondering who that is sitting with me. I saw her this weekend at church, and she just looked sad, weak… and pathetic. It’s a shame that she’s done this to herself. A month ago, her best friend forwarded me an email that she received from my mother. In it, Mum talked about how she couldn’t understand why her children didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Funny, seeing as how she was the one who told us she didn’t want contact and was strictly our “biological mother”. Apparently history has been rewritten without my knowledge. As long as you continue to act as an irrational child throwing a temper tantrum because you can’t get what you want, no, we won’t want to have anything to do with you. Not if I want to remain sane.

Mum’s best friend was concerned about Mum, so that was why she’d forwarded me the email. It was right before I left for Tucson, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to contact Mum and then take off out of town, so I decided to sit on it until I got back. The day after I got back, my Dad dropped by on my birthday and told me a nice story. My younger brother needed to renew his passport, and needed his birth certificate to do so… which Mum has. So he had no choice but to call her to see if he could get it from her. She hung up on him. Now, for someone who a few weeks prior was crying over email to her best friend about how her children don’t want to have anything to do with her, to hang up on her son when he called… Yeah. Guess she wasn’t *that* lonely.

Anyway, back to my weekend.

Saturday night I met up with Chris, Mare, Scott and Stew at the Ale House for dinner before going to see Lily’s Song at the Imperial. I enjoyed the show, and kudos to Lisa and Suzy for great performances. There were quite a few people behind me crying during a couple of the scenes, I think it touched a nerve with a lot of those who were there. I don’t personally know anyone going through Alzheimer’s, but I could easily see how terrible it would be to go through, for both the family and the person who had it. The play left me feeling very lucky for being healthy, and somewhat scared of growing older. One line stuck with me though, it was about how you can’t control what happens to you – there is nothing you can do to prevent yourself from developing Alzheimer’s. All you can do is live in the present, and make memories that someday you’ll be reunited with if you happen to lose them along the way.

Sunday was an inside day for me. I decided not to try and walk in the rain again. I started the day by baking muffins and cleaning up around the house. I had moved items out of my office so we’d have room to assemble the desk, which left the rest of the house looking like a mess. Younger brother called around 12:30 and said he’d be over shortly to continue the assembly. He arrived and we got to work. Normally I am a hindrance to these types of assembly situations, because I get frustrated very easily and have no patience. I did, however, point out to him that he had started to choose the left-hand orientation when he should have been using the directions for the right-hand orientation. Crisis averted there! We plowed away at it and finished it, with the exception of actually attaching the two main pieces… I wasn’t sure how I wanted the desk positioned, and it did not have to be screwed together to be stable, so we left that alone.

One thing I definitely need now is a chairmat. My new office chair is heavier than my old chair, and does not roll well on carpet alone. With the current positioning of my desk, I am having a hard time finding a chairmat that fits where I want it to fit, without spending a lot of money. So I am now thinking of shifting the desk 90 degrees, so my back will be to the window, and I can fit a less expensive chairmat and leave more open space in the room [see John, I do accept suggestions :)] Normally there would be glare coming through the window to hit the monitor, but seeing as how most of my PC time is spent in the evening, the early sunset means I don’t really have to worry about that right now. I’m going to take some more measurements and mull over this positioning.

I think the time for the annual hard drive reformat is soon. My PC seems to be acting sluggish for no good reason. I am going to plug some more RAM into it, which should help. Eventually the time comes when you must reformat and give yourself a fresh start. It’s about time I did a backup anyway, so that would kill 2 birds with one stone.

So on tonight’s agenda: go buy material, get some driveway markers before it gets too cold to put them in the ground, and get a couple of grocery and household items while I’m out. Also need to see if I can find some carpet remnants that match my stairwell carpet, as I need to replace what was taken up at the landing from the mold/flood issues.

I miss karaoke :(