Bring your dog to work day.

[That was Friday.]

One of my favorite attorneys was working remotely, because the rest of that half of the office was getting painted. He sent this to me and his former secretary:

HIM: “Did anyone bring their dog to the office? I have little Charlie here with me in my home office. Should I bring him downtown?”

ME: “Thankfully, I have no dog. Although I once had a fiancé named Charlie. Your dog is probably a more dependable character than my fiancé was.”

HIM: “He is a ‘rescue’. He came with some issues, too.”

ME: “His issues notwithstanding, I suspect he did not bring a peyote bud into your parents’ house.”

I hadn’t thought about Charlie in years; now I remember why.

Signaling a lane change: Leslye asked about the ice cubes. I learned that from my roommate, Shelley, who learned it from her bachelor brother. If you have a clean but wrinkled perma-press shirt [as you would if you brought it home from the laundromat and laid it on top of something clean, where it got covered up with a foot and a half of other somethings-clean] and you toss it into the dryer with an ice cube or two and tumble it at the appropriate temperature until you can no longer hear the ice cube clunking around in the dryer, the combination of moisture and heat will revive the shirt.

Although I can’t say the same for the ice cube.

I unearthed four such shirts when I was picking up my room so I could paint. A few wrinkles shook out when I hung them up, but not enough that I could wear them to work without looking like I had slept in them. So I took them to Secondborn’s and liberated a kid-size cup full of ice cubes and visualized whirled peas. Or at least whirled shirts.

So what did I accomplish yesterday?
1. dropped off stuff at the swap at the stake center
2. took one stuffed animal and two audiobooks home with me
3. did the something for my church calling, about which more later
4. [it did indeed eat up the rest of the morning and a bit of the afternoon]
5. did a quick load at the laundromat
6. paid my library fine ($1.25) and checked out three DVD’s
7. took a nice nap
8. called my second counselor and asked her to conduct
9. [she called people for opening and closing prayers in RS]
10. finished my cheat sheet for the various meetings
11. read my RS lesson, taken from three recent General Conference addresses
12. watched one of the DVD’s, about which more later

I also took the Annie wig to Secondborn’s and visited with her and the kids while my shirts tumbled, but that was not an errand, so it doesn’t go on the list. This morning I:
1. found my copy of Preach My Gospel in order to dredge up:
2. a spiritual thought for my 7:00am meeting
3. thought about reading my Sunday School lesson

Regarding item #3, yesterday: I drove to my bishop’s house down by the stake center, then over to the Bishop’s Storehouse in Carrollton to pick up food orders for two families in our ward, then back to Fort Worth to deliver the orders. Normally, if I were to drive 50+ miles one way and return almost immediately, I would be hearing from my knee. Tenderness, at the very least, but more likely a full-blown I am never going to let you dance again tantrum.

Nada. Only the slightest early-morning stiffness, which a bit of walking will take care of. I did a small thing yesterday, a few hours of my time in order to perform my calling, and I am blessed all out of proportion to the effort expended. I remember thinking, as I got into my car again in Carrollton, Oh man, this is gonna hurt. And it didn’t.

I did pull off the road midway, long enough to get a mango smoothie at the drive-through because I was feeling parched, and I picked up two of those infamous partying tacos once I got back to Fort Worth, and then I did my laundry [with no knitting to keep me company; somebody around here is falling down on the job] and came home and took my nap.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you what I thought of the DVD I watched after my nap last night. But now I need to hop in the tub and figure out my church knitting and get out the door in half an hour. Could get interesting in the next few minutes...