Randomania

First, I am eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking root beer for breakfast. Worse still, they are not home-made chocolate chip cookies, merely home-baked. So who knows what preservatives I am filling my system with--whatever preservatives the Doughboy uses, I suppose, as it was Pillsbury ready to bake cookie dough. I confess I subscribed to momentary weakness when I saw them on sale through the Grocery Game. And worst of all, I am letting my children drink root beer with me. Oh the horror!

So why am I eating whatever is easily available for breakfast with a minimal effort? Well, I will attribute it to being over in the Emerald City last night for a nice dinner out with DH, the kids, and a former co-worker of mine. We did dinner reasonably early to (hopefully) ensure good behavior on the part of our children. Thankfully they did behave pretty well, although DS did start melting down a bit toward the end of the meal. I had thought about getting a sitter for them, but on a school night our teenage babysitter was unavailable, and our normal adult babysitter was out of town, so we were SOL.

Yesterday was a strange modge-podge of a day, since I had a plumber back out to correct the tub spout, which was too low for our tub. That was achieved by remarkable negotiation on the part of DH, who ended up talking to the plumbing company's VP after we called to take them up on their plumber's assurance of a "no charge" call to fix anything that was amiss after he re-did the bathtub/shower plumbing. Yeah, well, it was no charge, but only after DH spoke to the VP and refused to be drawn into a "he said, we said" situation. We were both there, we both know what the guy said, and thankfully the VP had the common sense to do the right thing for their company and take care of it for us. This is why I leave these things to DH, because I would be red in the face and irritated in vocal tone on the phone, whereas DH can sit there placidly and say things like, "My wife informed {Plumber's Name} that our new tub was 18" high and the old one was 15" high. Furthermore we offered to go purchase the tub at Home Depot, for which we had all the technical information online, and be back in twenty minutes, but {Plumber's Name} insisted that was not necessary and that he would happily return free of charge to fix any problems." I would have been irritable and just a *touch* cranky with the guy, but DH is a master at skillful silences and completely dispassionate discourse with CSRs, so this was right up his alley. Score one for DH, and one for the plumbing company for doing the right thing and securing any future business from us.

Anyway, I also had a friend from church drop by with some ingredients for two special desserts which I am making for tonight's first meeting our women's Bible study. This resulted in me doing some frantic tidying up and organizing right after lunch, a time when I am normally putting my feet up to enjoy some quiet time while the kids are napping (DS) or playing quietly in their rooms (DD). All this while I was turning off the water for the plumber and sort of hovering to do...well I don't know why I was hovering, really! Some odd part of my brain was hoping he wasn't thinking, "This is far more complicated than we thought! This will be a (bazillion) dollars, not FREE!" As if me hovering and popping in to see how he's getting on with fixing it is going to help that at all. I know, I am strange.

And then I had the business of getting the kids in the car, hopping the ferry, and changing their clothes in the car, on the ferry to something less "street urchin" and more "presentable, clean". Dinner was really nice, and I had a great time catching up with my old co-worker. He has landed on his feet in a much better job, and I am very happy for him. My former workplace is still the king of high turnover and low pay, and nearly everyone I counted as a friend is gone now. I have one lone stalwart remaining, but at least he has secured for himself a relative degree of autonomy which helps him deal with the ridiculous nature of some of the "management" that goes on there. In short everyone of whom I think well there, has secured a decent position or advanced, so that makes me happy.

Lastly, I got called to teach this quarter, which is good. In the usual fashion, the college has called with about two weeks' notice, but frankly I don't mind as NOW I have already taught this course before, and thus will be a bit better prepared (stop laughing, I can hope, people!!) to teach it. And the secretary let slip that the person I am teaching for (instead of?) is easing toward retirement, so maybe in a few years when he fully retires, they will have a full-time position open. And THAT is happy news indeed! Time for me to finish up rewriting a lab that I mentioned to him last quarter as an inquiry-based lab. Nothing like a bit of eagerness to underscore my affirmative interest in teaching there on a more permanent basis.

All in all it was one of those odd days where all the disjointed bits of my universe seem to collide and meld into a crazy collage, but it's still somewhat pretty in its way. I got to feel useful (teaching!), organized (tidying!), helpful & charitable (baking for church!), handy (plumbing supervision!), educated (discussion of science!) and civilized (dinner out! with clean & reasonably behaved children!). Rare day indeed, as usually I feel incompetent (what was that about group seventeen elements?), disorganized (I know I put that bill somewhere around here...*waves arm generally at mass of untidy mail on counter*), selfish & proud (I can make this recipe for church because I'm SUCH a good from-scratch baker), decidely UN-handy (need I remind you of the copper soldering post?), uneducated (I know I got a Ph.D. but all I can do is sing The Backyardigans theme song again and again), and decidely uncivilized (I think the sticky hair can be hidden with a headband...and his shirt's not THAT dirty, it will do for the playdate). It's a crazy roller coaster ride, but sometimes the views from the heights remind me that it's worth all the dips.