Today is my "getting back to normal" day. After being gone for four days I feel like I'm finally finding my way again. Here's a brief recap of our weekend:
Thursday: Drove to Atlanta. No rain, praise God. Lots of traffic, though. Who ever heard of road crews doing construction on the Interstate at midnight on a Thursday? They were pulling three lanes of heavy Interstate traffic down to one lane through the construction zone. We moved four miles in an hour. Finally got to the hotel just after midnight Eastern time. Stayed up until 1:30 AM to finish drying The Tall One's laundry. A word of caution to all parents of teenagers - teach your kids how to do their own laundry at an early age, and make sure they're paying attention. There are rules. Learn the rules, live the rules, love the rules. Save yourself from having to sort out a monstrous pile of clothing of all kinds (jeans, underwear, t-shirts, uniforms, etc., and yes, she did it all in one load) and forking out two bucks in quarters to dry said pile in a hotel laundry room at 1:30 AM.
Friday: Didn't have to play our first match until three in the afternoon, so one of the other team Moms and I took the girls (eight teenagers) to Atlanta Station to shop. I hate shopping. HATE it. For me, shopping ranks right up there with, say, cleaning up dog barf (more on that later). Anyway, The Tall One, who loves to shop and doesn't understand my philosophy on the subject at all, found a really cute outfit at Old Navy and yes, the jeans are long enough. Tough to find pants long enough for a kid 6'4", ya know? The Old Navy people are now my heroes.
The volleyball matches went so-so; won 1, lost 2.
No time to write on Friday. Read my book of the week instead.
Saturday: A better day for writing. Worked on some character development in the current project. Spent a good amount of quality time with ... myself ... in the hotel room while the girls went - you guessed it - shopping. Different mall. They took the Marta system. I think it might be a bus or possibly a subway, I'm not really sure.
Also a better day for volleyball; won 3, lost 0. Whoo-hoo! Watched basketball and read - finished last week's book.
Sunday: Last day of tournament. Played one match in the AM and lost. Packed up and headed home. Managed to avoid the nasty weather until we were about an hour out.
Sunday night was awful. If you live anywhere near the middle of the country, like we do, you know what I'm talking about. Horrible storms. The news and Weather Channel reports said there were something like 19 deaths in Tennessee. I found out yesterday that one of our school bus drivers was killed when her car hydroplaned on one of our steep-hill county back roads. Dreadful. My thoughts and prayers are with her family.
The electricity went out somewhere around 8:30 PM and didn't come back until the last wave of storms went through and the last warning expired, about 12:45 AM. All nine of us (5 people, 3 cats and 1 very large dog) were hunkered down in the basement, listening to our little portable radio that tunes in TV stations (yeah, don't feel sorry for us - it's a finished basement/family room with the WGH's recliner, big screen TV and a sectional sofa with a fold-out - but hey, it's a basement, our port in the storm). Everyone else went to sleep. I stayed awake to monitor the weather.
Somewhere between the second wave of storms and the third/last warning, The WGH, The Tall One and The Boy went back upstairs to try to get some "real" sleep, and Little Bit and I were piled up on the couch. McCartney sprawled himself out on the area rug and promptly threw up his dinner. Cleaning up dog barf at midnight is not my idea of fun. Ranks right up there with shopping (see above).
Monday: Fortunately, all loved ones survived the storms and although we didn't get much sleep everyone managed to make it through the day yesterday. In between checking all the emails I missed over the weekend (while I had NO Internet access - horrors), I discovered that my friend J.T. Ellison and some other writers she's hooked up with got their new blog launched. It's called Murderati and you should check it out - it's terrific, and I'm not just saying that because she's my friend.
No time to write yesterday, either. Had to work my "other" job (it's part-time, but the Sunday part was pre-empted by the lack of electricity at our house).
Today is the day I get back on track. Going to dive into that plot hole and see if I can't fill it from the inside out. The new CD/tape player/radio boom-box thing (a birthday present) is cranking out Prokofiev, I've checked all the emails and here's the post for the day, so I'm ready to roll.
Book of the Week: We'll Always Have Parrots by Donna Andrews
If you don't want to read that one, find something else. Just read a book. It's good for you.
=) JB
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