The Learning Weekend

The Learning Weekend

This weekend was very enlightening. I had several key self-revelations. They are

1.) I’m lacking the home-repair gene. The next time I go to the hardware store and ask the guy how to do a home repair and the guy responds by saying, “Are you sure you really want to this all by yourself?” I’m going to put all the hardware products I’m holding back on the shelf and quietly leave the store. I don’t care how much I believe the gruff hardware guy is a misogynist. I don’t care if I’m convinced that his mom stopped breastfeeding him too soon and messed up his potty training. I don’t care if he’s condescending just because I’m a girl. I don’t care. The next time he says that I will swallow my pride and call Mike first.

2.) I’m addicted to my computer. Now that I have someone staying in my home-office, I can’t use my computer whenever I want and it’s killing me. The worst is the middle of the night. I have terrible insomnia and I wake up several times in the night. When I’m really stressed out and can’t go back to sleep I try to deaden my brain by playing mindless video games like Spongebob Collapse and Nerd Make a Word. Last night at 2:30 I was having the shakes because I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t get to my computer.

3.) I have too much stuff. It’s not that I have a lot of expensive stuff or that I have what you would normally think of as “material possessions.” But I still have a ton of stuff. When I cleaned out the office so that we could put an Aerobed in there I did it by totally messing up my bedroom. But I don’t want to get rid of the stuff. It’s good stuff. Some of the things I have are:

a. My dad’s ministerial robes and the Bible used for his ordination
b. Lots and lots and lots of family pictures
c. My ex-mother-in-law’s antique family heirloom crazy quilt. (I’m keeping it for Elizabeth.)
d. “Special” clothes that were Elizabeth’s (e.g., Her dress that my dad loved so much he bought it and paid full prize – my dad never paid full price for anything. Her baptism gown. The clothes she wore home from the hospital. Etc.)
e. My high school and college memorabilia.

That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about. I can’t throw that stuff away, but I’ve managed to fill up a whole house with it. YIKES!!!

I learned some other very critical things this weekend – although they are not specifically about me :

1) When a new au pair comes the garbage disposal is going to get broken.
2) It costs a lot of money to feed six people.
3) The folks at CompUSA are really nice. On Sunday when Elizabeth jammed a Barbie Ice Skating game CD in the drive and I couldn’t get the drive open and the machine wouldn’t boot up because it was trying to read the jammed CD; they fixed it for me for free.