Weekends and family

Photo: Reuters.com

Without a job to organize my week, I've been a little confused about what day it is. I believe this is Monday, which means I had a really great weekend, since that would make yesterday Sunday and the day before that Saturday. Brilliant reasoning, I know.

Family is what made the weekend special. My dad came in from Colorado and my aunt and uncle from Kansas to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Bethany Schools. Mom hosted about 30 ladies at her house for a reunion luncheon. They were all so cute! And noisy!!! Put 30 women in a room, some who haven't seen each other for 50 years, and the noise level rivals a stadium full of vuvuzelas.

I have that word - vuvuzela - stuck in my head. There is something about it that just rolls off the tongue. Kind of like Bafana Bafana, South Africa's national football (soccer) team. Just hearing Bafana Bafana catapults me back to the year we lived in Johannesburg. While living there I never once, however, encountered a vuvuzela. Plenty of ululation, but no vuvuzelas. I love onomatopoetic words almost as much as I love a good palindrome.

Anyway, before I got distracted by "fun with words" I was talking about family. I'm grateful that we are continuing to gather in Oklahoma. Niece Cori is in town to interview for a job that would bring her into the circle of cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents that are slowly assembling here. Her friends in Colorado purportedly can't understand why she would want to live in this state. After living many, many place, I can tell them why it's a good place to live. It's a good place to live because that's where family is. End of story.

A case of the Mondays

Wow that was a short weekend, considering I worked eleven hours on Saturday. I'll take a day off in a couple of weeks to make up for it, but not this week. It's gonna be a busy one. Yesterday I slept and lounged and went to church online and did not leave the house. My idea of a restful day is when I don't set foot outside my front door.

Oh, I did manage to squeeze in "Marley and Me" and bawled like a baby. And I have to say I've been much nicer to our dogs since then. I also joined Facebook. Lame. Yes, I know I said it would never happen. The peer pressure was just too great. But please note that I did NOT ask anyone under 39 to be my friend! They can friend me if they so desire, but I'm not going to make the first move. I wouldn't want to intrude on the secret life of twenty-somethings. Not that anything on Facebook could be considered secret.

Also just thought I'd throw in a little pic for your Monday morning, since I mentioned firemen in a recent post. Read more about it at The Lost Ogle. And have a great day!

The Curious Case of Slumdog Millionaire's Reader in Barcelona

I need to get out more. I haven't seen any of the movies so frequently mentioned at the Academy Awards. I don't know if we're too lazy to go to the movies or too cheap to pay the ticket and popcorn prices. But we just don't get to the movie theater much. I love the convenience of getting a Netflix movie in the mail and watching it with my lazy self stretched out on the couch eating my own microwaved popcorn. I do miss seeing some movies using this method though. Maybe I should start a list of "must see" flicks so I don't have to rely on checking out the "new release" list for adding movies to my queue.

Otherwise, I have two things to say about the Oscars: 1) I am in love with Hugh Jackman 2) For the love, would celebrities please stop using award shows as their own personal bully pulpit. OK, three things. 3) I want to be Meryl Streep. Or Queen Latifah.

I'm not a banker, so I'm off to work. But then who wants to be a banker these days...

I had a good weekend, if anyone cares. It was a perfect mix of fun, family, rest and checking things off my many lists. And because, as we all know, I love bullet points, that's how I'm going to continue with this post. Trust me, I'm doing you a favor because it will be so much easier to read than a long, run-on sentence that never seems to end and jumps from point to point and, well, you get it. So here goes. If you are in the "don't care" category, then check back tomorrow and maybe I'll have something profound to say. But don't hold your breath.

• Our staff lunch on Friday was at Avanti Bar and Grill which is attached to the Courtyard By Marriott over by Lowe's on the north side of the Kilpatrick, between May and Penn. If you're not from around here, then your eyes just rolled back in your head from all the details. It's an excellent restaurant and you must try it, but it's kind of hidden, thus the details. It opened last week, the night of the tornadoes, so you know how new it is. It would make a nice date destination. I know, you're thinking "now you tell me". Where was I when you were standing in line for two hours for a Valentine's dinner.
• Valentine's Day was pretty much a day-long date, in a empty nester sort of way. Starbucks first thing, (never have I seen so many couples there. Usually it's one spouse staggering in to grab the coffees and run) then Mark went with me to that old ice skating rink in Bethany that they've turned into an antique/flea market kind of place. It was his suggestion because it was Valentine's Day, and he actually enjoyed it, although if you ask him he'll tell you we were there for two hours when in reality it was more like 45 minutes. We are apparently antiques because the whole experience was like a stroll through our childhood. If we had only kept everything we ever owned, we could be selling them right now for ridiculous prices. I made an exciting $10 purchase which I will share another time after I upload the photo.
• Still talking about Valentine's Day, but I could tell I was losing you, so I'm hoping another bullet point will refresh your brain. So after the antique mall thing we drove our to Okarche to Eischen's for their famous chicken. Mark wanted a menu, which if you've ever been to Eischen's is kind of funny since pretty much they just slap a huge basket of fried chicken and another huge basket of fried okra on your table, along with some white bread and bread and butter pickles. That's the menu. But man is it good fried chicken.
• I think that's all I'm going to share about Valentine's Day except that in the evening "Somewhere In Time" was on TV. It's a movie with Christopher Reeves, who was GORGEOUS, and, and, dang I can't remember her name. Oh yeah, Jane Seymour. We saw that movie in the theater back in college and thought it was the most romantic movie ever. I remember crying. But I was always crying back in college. Sleep deprivation will do that to you. Anyway, it was a fitting ending to our walk-down-memory-lane Valentine's Day.
• Sunday after church (I admit it, we watched church online) we had our Sunday lunch with Angela and Riley, which is a habit I adore. Tessa was also home because she had volunteered at the Addy Awards Saturday, and niece Alli joined us. Los Amigos in Bethany is what makes me feel like we live in a small town surrounded by the big city. It's always full of people we know, which makes me feel connected.
• Last thing, if you're still with me. We hung our new kitchen cabinet doors and they are amazing. Well, we're still short two doors because the guy who made them got confused. But all the others are hung.

So I'm sure I missed something, but right now you're saying thank the Lord this post is over. I'm here all week. No really, I'm in town all week so I'm hoping to have a peaceful and productive number of days. Did you have a good weekend?