Haphazard Random Notes from a Changing Weekend

1.  I started posts several times this weekend but I never finished and things seemed to be in a completely different place when I would go back to them.  So random I am.

2.  Yesterday afternoon:  My head hurts, my house smells like a litterbox and Ernie is sick.  Actually it's been a nice weekend despite all that.  I think my headache is from a combination of allergies and the litterbox smell.  The house, the kitchen primarily, smells like a litterbox because when our basement flooded last week (did I mention that?) it also flooded the cats' litterbox.  I know.  Lovely....just as lovely as you imagine.  Ernie has cleaned and bleached and we thought it was much better but today it is wafting upstairs again.  And Ernie?  I don't know, he just woke up sick to his stomach.  I'd think it was food poisoning except that Owen and I ate the same thing.  He rallied a bit and we all went to the Louder Than A Bomb movie at Ebertfest but by the end he was looking pretty green so we sped out of there.  I would have liked to stay for the afterstuff. Oh well.  Owen says he loved it but he slept through a good bit of it.  He says he didn't sleep---that he was just resting his eyes.  Are men just genetically obligated to say that?  Leo was not particularly happy to be there but my boy is a stoic if nothing else.

3.  We started out the weekend with our standard Friday lunch and then Artists Against Aids in the evening where we spent WAY too much money.  Remind me never to let Ernie drink red wine in the afternoon....but I love what we got.  Two new Joe Miller paintings and a gorgeous platter.  We both loved the platter but then I said, "I don't need it, I have all those platters of Judi's."  He leaned over me and said, "but you know...you don't have to keep all of your sister's things."  And I looked at him in surprise.  Of course he's right.  I can sell her things....I don't have to keep them....so somehow that made it all right to buy it. 

4.  I stood there admiring the platter yesterday morning and said to Leo, "isn't it beautiful?"  He looked at me and shrugged.  I tried, "aren't the colors pretty?"  He shrugged.  I kept quizzing him and finally he shrugged again, sighed and said, "I just don't really care about pottery stuff Mom."  I smiled at him and then after a long moment he said with a shy little smile, "it reminds me of when we looked up into the dome of the capitol building the other night."  See?  I knew he had it in him.  I just couldn't love that boy any more.  He's a romantic despite himself.

5.  Saturday afternoon:  My neighbor Dave is cutting his grass.  Honestly, he does it so often that we make fun of him but Lord it smells good.  It's one of those sweet smelling days.  It's been horribly windy (so we aborted plans to plant seeds) but the nice thing about that is those flowery springtime fragrances that whip by every so often.  I am sitting on the porch as I was attacked by a snake earlier.  I mean, I suppose I wasn't really attacked but he slithered right in front of me....right where I WALK!  So I immediately let out that weird barking scream that I do when I'm scared.  The snake slithered into the groundcover and I raced to porch where I stood feeling my heart beat like crazy.  I know, I know....garter snakes don't hurt us....sigh.  I just stood there on the porch yelling at Ernie, "WHY do they DO that?  WHY do they SCARE me like that?" I did carefully make my way back into the yard to plant my windowboxes but now I'm back in my safety zone.  I knew it would be a bad snake day.  It's just that kind of weather.

6.  Ernie worked the WILL Vintage Vinyl sale Saturday morning and was terribly restrained....I think he only brought home about two dozen albums....

7.  I hate it when Ernie is sick.  I think because I worry about his cancer I find that any illness---today just some kind of harmless stomach bug----sends me into hyperconcern and worry.  He feels better this morning....I'm so glad.

8.  Osama Bin Laden is dead.  It feels sort of hollow to be celebrating a death...and yet I know I have the luxury of that because I wasn't touched more directly.  Still....a strange thing.

9.  O.k.....and I must say (shamefully because it means I was watching it) wasn't it perfect that they cut into the end of Celebrity Apprentice to announce it?