Wednesday, August 17

Woke up at 6 a.m. to a thunderstorm, so I turned on the TV to see if it was predicted to leave our county by the time I needed to go to water aerobics. It appeared that it wasn't leaving until around 9 a.m. So we stayed abed until around 7 a.m. By that time, the storm seemed to have eased, so we got up and had breakfast. Soon after, it began thundering again, though, so I gave up on the idea of going to the pool.

My problem, sometimes, is that I have trouble changing course when things don't work out the way I planned. So I debated with myself for a while before deciding to get on the treadmill. Decided I needed to do an exercise session today, since I'll miss it tomorrow, when I take the ladies of our scrapbook club on an outing to another town for lunch and shopping.

It was 11 a.m., before I finally got ready for the day, and then I didn't accomplish much after lunch. Mother usually stays home on Thursdays, but since we are going on an outing tomorrow, she decided to stay home today.

She wanted to do a few household chores to get ready for the weekend, but the first thing she discovered was that her little vacuum cleaner wasn't working right. Hubbie checked it out and found that a belt was broken. So he went to the WDCS to get a new one, but couldn't find one the right size. He decided to buy a new lightweight vacuum...one he thinks will be much easier for Mother to handle. He still plans to fix the old one, as soon as he finds the right size belt.

As for me, I finished a report of our scrapbook club's community project. It's not due for a few weeks, but since I submitted all my other reports late, I thought I'd get ahead of the game with this one.

For supper, I decided to pick up a rotisserie chicken at the WDCS to have with the rest of the potato salad, corn-on-the-cob, and sliced tomatoes. Mother came over around 4 p.m., and at 4:30, Hubbie and I went after the chicken.

At the deli, there were only three chickens ready, and a customer ahead of me picked up two of those. The other one was not a flavor we prefer. So I asked when the next batch of chickens would be ready. I was told there wouldn't be any more today, since they were cleaning the oven. Maybe there would be some in the display case up front.
We hurried up front, and luckily found two chickens in the flavor we like.

Mother went back home right after supper, and Hubbie went out to the yard for a while. Meanwhile, I got a call from one of the scrapbook club members, who asked if it would be out of my way to pick her up in the morning for our trip. Well, it is, but I could hardly refuse this older woman who has had so many troubles in her life.

I'm not sure why she feels threatened by the idea of driving to my house. I know she drives to church and to the senior citizens center. It's amusing, too, that this lady who rarely joins us at scrapbook club meetings, rarely misses an opportunity to join us when we plan an outing...particularly one that includes shopping.

In the local news: Several days ago in our newspaper, there was a report of an employee (the director of information services) of the college where I go to water aerobics being attacked in one of the buildings, while he was working at night. He said someone sneaked up behind him while he was in a closet and strangled him until he fell unconscious. He also said that his girlfriend and her mother had been receiving threatening letters.

Tonight there was a large photo at the top of the front page of the newspaper showing the police leading this guy away in handcuffs for terroristic threatening. The story reported that he had confessed that the attack was false. He had strangled himself, and he had written the letters to his girlfriend and her mother in a scheme to get out of marrying his girlfriend.

This story will no doubt be the topic of conversation at water aerobics Friday morning.

Later, Hubbie and I watched a DVD I picked up for $3 quite a while ago called, "Lions for Lambs." It's a 2007 movie starring Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, and Meryl Streep. A professor (Redford) tries to inspire a student to do better; a senator (Cruise) pitches a new Middle East war strategy to a journalist (Streep); and two of the professor's former students are trapped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan. These Americans will change each other's lives. I remembered seeing this movie before, but Hubbie did not.

Funny: email today included the minutes of the last Master Gardeners meeting, which I read. Later, the secretary sent another email saying, "I'm not sure what MINUTERS are." I'm surprised I hadn't noticed she'd spelled "minutes" incorrectly in the heading. Provided a good laugh, though.