The Dead Rubber Band Graveyard

I think I found it. [Or maybe I just interrupted something?] There were a dozen or more of these in the corner of the box that held our early mail.



Your recent postal increase, Not At Work. [How hard is it to throw something away when it’s broken? Oh, wait; I raised five kids. There was always one sheet left on the toilet paper roll, or a tablespoon of milk in the carton. Never mind.]

These were probably deposited in the box by the same people who Do Not Come to the Service Window when the very nice, very competent man who is stationed there, is on his break. Tuesday the courier for one of the big ambulance chasers plaintiff firms and I were playing a duet on the doorbell at the post office. To no avail. I walked out to my car with not enough mail to justify the gas used, right as the flag ticked over to “expired”. Twelve minutes, and a full chorus of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”.

We hope to debut at the Carnegie Hall Post Office later this year.

I rode the train on Wednesday morning. [We are currently enjoying an eBay hiatus, so I don’t need to bring (the trunk of) my car to work.] I was amazed at how many more people were on the train than ten days ago. The general level of FedUpNess must be rising. And after having driven in for most of the past week and a half, it was great to just park my car and let somebody else be in charge for awhile. I put two or three rounds on the Flared Lace Smoke Ring. I attempted to engage my seatmate in conversation. She was having none of it. I arrived at work, fresh as a daisy, with enough time to finish the round I had been working on.

My friend who owns the duplex left me a bubbly voicemail on Tuesday. They found the perfect new sink for the bathroom, and cute fixtures with matching towel racks, etc., and vintage-inspired ceiling fans, pretty much all on sale. She is sending my key early, so that I may go in and mark where the towel racks and TP holder should go. [Imagine: towel racks at a height that is convenient for me.] I even found my blue painter’s tape in my toolbox, just where a normal person* would expect to find it. It’s now in one of my bags so that I can mark my territory, so to speak.

*We are all agreed that while I am rarely boring and intermittently charming, the world would be a livelier and Oh-Look-Shiny-er place if I were the norm, right? Good; that’s settled.

I fought sleep all Wednesday afternoon. Funny how that happens when you stay up until midnight one night and 11:00 the next, and get up both subsequent mornings at 5:00 as if a full night’s sleep had deposited itself beneath your eyelids.

The phone number for the attendance office at the high school has been cheerfully deleted from my cell phone. Unless Heaven pulls a “Sarah” on me and I end up having baby #6 at the ripe old age of 90, I will never again have to deal with chicken pox, puberty, Midol [oh please, oh please, oh please!], “you look like a hoochie mama, go change”, or on-campus suspension, ever again. Although I suspect that when BittyBubba thinks up his senior prank, it will make thirteen mice and four doves seem quaintly tame. He already strikes me as the sort who will dismantle the coach’s Jeep and reassemble it atop the boys’ gym. I think BittyBit is going to be a goody-good like her Gram; we can only hope.

Last night I tackled the spillway at the foot of my bed. And I shifted a bunch of boxes to where those two bookcases used to stand. And then I went to bed. I had hoped to curl up on the couch for a bit of knitting, but sleep seemed a better idea.

And now it’s 3:59 on Friday morning, and we are out of milk, and I am vaguely hungry. I think there are still some carrots in the fridge. I think I will eat a handful and put on my shoes and make a quick dash to the grocery store for moo juice and bananas and a fresh jar of peanut butter.

Finishitis lurks just around the corner, both for the Flared Lace Smoke Ring and for packing. I don’t know if I’m going to dinner and/or the singles’ dance tonight.

One more day.