It is currently Tuesday, June 1st at 8:29 p.m. and life, as usual, has us hopping. Today was an exceptionally busy day. It started with getting the kiddos out the door on time and to their appropriate buses. Then Chris and I had to make ourselves look presentable and get up to Clara's school less than hour later to partake in the Second Grade Awards Ceremony. Every single student, in every single second grade class was called up onto the stage, where the principal read a statement written by each student about what they thought their greatest accomplishment was in their second grade career. For Clara, it was being able to recite her math facts without thinking about them. She's practiced them...a LOT this year, so I'm very glad that she felt like the practice has paid off and she's improved in that area. As you can imagine, it took quite a while to work through all of those names. There were well over 100 students to be called. Each with a walk onto stage, a reading of the accomplishment, a hand off of the awards, a handshake from the principal, and a photo op just off stage right. I was delighted to get to the end of all of that. Only to have the librarian take center stage and reel off a whole other list of high achieving readers. Finally, all of the award presenting was done and we headed upstairs to her classroom for hugs and squeezes and oohs and aahs over her really cool medal she got for having the second highest number of reading points in her class. She proclaimed as we stood there celebrating with her that today, has indeed, been the happiest day of her life.
Once we managed to slip away from the awards festivities, Chris and I parted separate ways with our own errands to tend to. Chris headed for Fort Worth to file our homestead exemption papers (today was the deadline), while I headed to my favorite furniture store here in search of a new coffee table. Ours has become quite scratched and scathed over the past few years. Before we moved to Texas, Spike, our idiot dog in law leaped over it and added his own deep scratch marks on it. The room here in Texas that it sits in is quite sunny and every day, each and every scratch and flaw is CRAZY illuminated there on top of that perfectly smooth veneered surface. This weekend, Chris decided to try to sand it down and stain it. He sanded it down fine and the table looked pretty good...except for the one huge flaw in the wood at one end that was SO obvious. He tried staining the table, hoping the flaw would be not, or at least LESS noticeable. But then the flaw only seemed to be highlighted and glowing orange in sharp contrast the beautiful stain over the rest of the table. So staining it was not the answer. We moved on to the painting it option. Chris picked a glossy black...because the table has a kind of glossy finish...however...THAT was a huge disaster. I can't even tell you how ugly THAT looked. And so...today I was out table shopping. The reason I love this particular furniture store is because the entire upstairs is a clearance floor. And they have some totally great stuff up there! I ALWAYS check there first. And am ALMOST always successful! Today was no exception! I hit the jackpot! Found pretty much exactly what I wanted and at a most fantastic price. I called Chris, described them to him...he swung by on his way home from Ft. Worth, purchased them, and brought them home! Hooray!
While all of the furniture purchasing was taking place, Benjamin and I were off at the dentist. Ben had his first cleaning with the new dentist today and I was having an old filling replaced. No big deal. Or so I thought! Ben's appt. went off without a hitch. Mine...not so much. The particular tooth they were replacing the filling in did NOT want to be numbed. They numbed it...started drilling...ouch. They numbed the roots then with some wickedly nasty tasting gel, waited a minute or two, then started again. And again...ouch! And so the doc pulled out the big needle again and proceeded to administer MORE novacaine in more areas around the tooth and we waited again for it all to take place. By this time it felt like my tongue had grown to about 10 times it's normal size...I was drooling on myself and could no longer speak due to the total and complete numbness of my lips. Third time's a charm, right? You would THINK so!!! But no...feeling was still there! The dentist seemed a bit frustrated at this point. Imagine my OWN angst over the failed numbings! I was not enjoying this little drama one bit either. She broke out the wickedly nasty "death to all pain sensations" gel AGAIN and liberally just filled up the whole area. It was MOST unpleasant and the foulest tasting stuff I have ever encountered! But thankfully, it worked. And so...after FOUR attempts at numbing me up, the drilling could finally proceed. It all went lightening fast at that point. It took WAY less time to fill the tooth than it did to get it numbed up. All in all....that one little filling took a full 2 hours! I walked out of there hungry, drooling all over myself, unable to speak clear words due to my seemingly rather large and inflated tongue (it was not...I checked in the mirror to be sure), with instructions not to eat anything until the numbness wore off. Awesome!
I headed home...disappointed that the appointment had totally cut out any possibility of making my workout with my little group. I could have showed up...but could not have talked to them and walking around drooling all over everything at the gym while I tried not to bite my elephant sized tongue off...well...not cool. I headed on home and set myself to floating in the pool for the 45 minutes before I had to meet Clara's bus. It was bliss! I finished reading a great and hilarious book....Thin is the New Happy. Great story...witty, funny, light. But heavy all at the same time. I inhaled it! And now I am, once again, without book. :(
After Clara got home, the boys shortly followed, and soon after, so did Chris. We met with the builder who is putting together a proposal for some work and improvements on the house. The total estimate is no longer greater than the cost of our first house...but it's not chump change either. There is still debating to be done. And after our meeting with Alex, Chris fired up the Green Egg grill and I hit the treadmill upstairs. I had finally quit drooling and could speak fairly clearly, so I figured it was time to get my sweat time in! While I did the sweat thing, Chris cooked up the most delicious salmon and sausages on the grill. YUMMMM!!!! It was a dinner to remember! After dinner, Clara was complaining about her wrist hurting her AGAIN. She's been very consistent about this for a week now. And now we feel as though we really need to have it checked out and x-rayed. I shudder to think if it's broken. I fear she shall be placed in a bubble. Never again to trampoline, roller skate, walk, run or play on hard surfaces...there will be NO GOOD NEWS if her wrist is broken. Oh...and it's the right arm this go round. So tomorrow holds an XRay trip.
After dinner, the kids decided to swim for a bit. I curled up in the chair by the pool to watch them. A few short minutes into their play, Clara was issued a warning about screaming and temper. It's become a problem for her lately. Not five minutes later, another major temper outburst got her swim rights for the night revoked, and sent her upstairs for immediate shower and bedtime prep. To say that she was acting red headed tonight is the understatement of the century!!!
As I was tucking in the foul tempered Clara, Ben came in and asked me about the huge scab on his knee. He had a bit of a bike crash this weekend. The day before yesterday. He's dangerous on that bike and is forever having some painful encounter with it. You'll remember that it was also Ben who had to have stitches in his chin due to a bike incident. You'd think he'd just kind of shy away from bikes by now...but he just gets back on it again and again. More often than not the bike whoops up on our sweet boy! As it did this weekend. He got quite a nasty skinned knee from it. Many layers of skin removed across a vast surface area. We cleaned it up and hit it with some antibiotic cream. He tried to swim the first day after he did it, but it was just too painful. But it did not hurt to get in the water tonight. Anyway...as I was tucking Clara in, Ben comes into the room to ask me about the scab and what I thought these wicked red lines shooting out of it might be. One glance told me that this one might be trouble. I sent him to Dad to see what HE thought. He too thought it looked troublesome, started googling stuff and put in a quick call to his own REAL doctor dad. After having the wound described to him it was suggested that we seek medical attention...TONIGHT. Not to wait until tomorrow morning. And so...Chris and Ben have headed up to the ER (urgent care closes at 7 here...the hours are very brief that you can get "urgently" sick and be seen!). They will check him out and hopefully fix him up and send on home at a reasonable hour. He has exams first thing tomorrow morning! And so...as you can see...it's a never ending swirl of activity and excitement here in the Roberts house. We love to cram as much as possible into these last 3 1/2 days of school! Come on Friday! I'm SO ready to be done with the 2009-2010 school year!!!!! Life is NOT boring in the Lonestar state!
