06/28/2009

The Weekend

Man, this weekend will have claw marks on it before I go to bed. I am holding on for dear life. It just wasn't long enough. I think a lot of that is because we lost electricity on Saturday at about 5:00 PM. A transformer behind our house gave up the ghost. They were still working on it when I fell asleep at 11:00 pm or so. In the middle of the night, they fixed it and by morning I was cold from having been uncovered and soaked with sweat...

It was probably in the mid nineties outside on Saturday afternoon... Saturday started off pretty normally. I watched little E while Ann took the other three boys to see UP at the cheap movie hour (10:15 a.m.). E and I read a few books and then I found some TV for him while I worked on my dissertation, skimming through all the stuff that King James wrote during his lifetime. I swear, it seemed like half of his decrees were about how there are too many buildings in London.

Then after lunch I ran to the library to pick up some books, ran to get a new headlight for the family minivan, and did a propane exchange. Good thing we were planning on grilling out for supper on Saturday anyway - the power went out before I started, so I had to figure out how to cook corn, tater tots, and about 4 pounds of chicken all on the grill at the same time. It actually worked out, believe it or not. The chicken was excellent and after it cooled, Ann covered it with foil and then laid those frozen blue things all over the top that you use in coolers. Then she put it all in the freezer. Didn't want to let that much valuable chicken go to waste, especially when it all came out so well done and so juicy.

Then after supper I mowed the yard and I and all the boys took turns getting our showers for Sunday. I read to them by flashlight and then fell asleep listening to an audio book on a battery powered cd player. Ann has been reading these mysteries and she stayed up who knows how long reading one of those. This morning then we got ready for church and kept the nursery. We're not having Sunday school during the summer, and so we split right after the last child was picked up by his parents and we ran home and ate chili. After that, I took a 30 minute nap and then we went fishing at Tilles park because Nathan was dying to try out the fishing pole that he got for his birthday. We probably should have spent the extra time to drive out to the Busch wildlife refuge because we didn't even get a bite - it was windy and sunny and though not very hot, it wasn't really cool either. But we saw a gorgeous bird perched right above where we were fishing - a "Black Crowned Night Heron" - and I got close enough to take a lot of really detailed photographs of it. I'll have to post those soon. Whenever we go out of doors, we almost never have a bad time - there's always something interesting to see.

At the park today we fished with corn. Apparently that's how you're supposed to fish for catfish, which eat vegetables, and Tilles park is supposed to be stocked with catfish during the summer months by the parks and recreation department. I am not very good at fishing with corks and hooks anyway, and I had a lot of trouble judging the depth to use for the hooks with the corn. I have a picture of a lot of catfish gathered at the bottom of the lake laughing at my corn way up at the surface. Who knows. Another problem with a lot of the lakes in St. Louis is that there are Canada Geese everywhere, leaving their scat and making the ground unpleasant...

Then this afternoon, the boys split up to watch movies and/or play XBox. After supper and bedtime rituals, I finished up reading the book Hatchet. It was a really good book, though not as good as the book My Side of the Mountain. We'll have to figure out what to read next in a hurry. Usually, I read a section of the bible (we're nearing the end of John right now) and then a chapter from some kind of good fiction book. I'll try to get something from the library for the boys tomorrow, but if I don't get a chance, I'm sure there is something short I can read for one night. N likes these books in the "Great Brain" series about a little kid who swindles everyone in town by using his brain. Those are usually pretty entertaining.

I really don't want the week to start. Last week was so busy and this weekend was cut short by power outages. I'm tired, and my body is sore and I just feel "life sore," as I heard Rob from "Rob and Big" say one time.