This is the kind of day it has been

Could not decide what I wanted for breakfast after dropping LittleBit at seminary. Headed down to J-I-T-B but was confounded by flashing lights and a roadblock of sorts, half a mile or so down the road. The city, or the county, or possibly the state, is finally doing something about South Cooper (the south end of State Highway 157, which has to be one of the busiest roads in North Texas). They started down in Mansfield near my favorite TexMex restaurant, putting concrete barriers in where the two-way turn lanes have been, filling the gaps between the concrete curbs with brickwork. All very charming and colorful, and I hope that there will be fewer accidents as a result. I will definitely miss dashing from the kolache shop across the road to the gas station, or vice versa. And I hope it won’t hurt the kolache man’s business. He’s a good guy who makes superb pastries; he deserves to prosper.

So, no J-I-T-B this morning. A U-turn at the cut-out near the tattoo shop that is also a notary public, and back to kolache land I went. Then a brief wait at the church for LittleBit and my best friend’s kid so I could take them to school. Lots of good knitting time after I devoured my jalapeno sausage and cheese kolaches [rather more like gourmet pigs in blankets than the Danishes his fruit kolaches resemble]. I have a little less than two full repeats remaining on the central portion of the hood, woohoo!

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig, because this morning I got to go play at the dentist’s. Nothing major, just a cleaning. If I don’t get one every three to four months, my mouth is not a happy place to be. I spent about an hour and a half puttering in the dining room before the appointment, and when I left, the table was cleared of clutter, the sawdust was gone, the tablecloth shaken soundly outside then replaced, and my nice slate hot pads were the only decoration.

My dental hygienist is a lovely human being, kind and gentle and patient. And no matter how careful she is, my mouth is often very tender afterwards. Today is no exception. The corners of my mouth feel as if I’d been spitting grapefruit out. *Whole* grapefruit. Pommelos. My gums were getting cranky before I went in this morning. They are marching around with tiny picket signs as we speak.

I discovered at the end of my lunch hour, when I was two rows away from finishing the penultimate pattern repeat, that I’d done one two-over-two twist instead of a two-over-one. So on my break this afternoon I dabbled my toes in the frog pond.

The incoming-fax machine has been doing a credible impersonation of a McCormick reaper since late yesterday afternoon. A little less than 24 inches from my right ear. Repair dude came as I was leaving for the frog pond.

When I came back from my break, while he was still doing exploratory surgery, I decided to grab a paper towel and dust the corner where the fax resides. In doing so, I knocked one of the connector wires down through the hole in my desktop, way behind the file cabinet in the dark. Thankfully, one of the legal secretaries came by and fielded the phone for me so I could crawl back there and retrieve the wire. And she grabbed the connector bit as I threaded it back up through the hole.

[Here comes the comic relief part.] We looked up to see our IT person standing there, asking if we were all right. I assured her that we were. Then she explained that I had set off the panic alarm when I snaked my arm across the top of the file cabinet.

Oye.

Good news is, the fax is fixable. Bad news is, not until Monday. It will require a $4 part and two hours of labor. I am *so* not in the right business!

Tonight is Lark’s junior high choir concert. My living room is presentable. My dining room is astounding. The kitchen should only require an hour or two to whip into shape. My friend from Alohaville will be here tomorrow night. She is going to teach me how to crochet a lei. I am going to feed her TexMex until it comes out of our ears like the quail in Moses’ day.

Good times.