The Monday Morning Epistle

Alex has obviously heard the “Momma was up on the roof…” joke, because he called home unexpectedly Saturday morning to tell us “I think I broke my bicycle.” When I asked him what happened, he answered cautiously “I, um, got hit by a car.” which was not exactly the answer I was expecting. Mary was hovering anxiously—her ‘mom alarms’ must have already been going off—so I chose my words very carefully and told her about the accident. Alex had called from work, so she immediately made the 5 minute drive to the mall to satisfy herself (and me) that he was OK. Alex is fine—a bit bruised and sore, with some small scrapes on one leg—and was genuinely more concerned about the elderly gentleman behind the wheel, who (not surprisingly) was quite distressed at the sight of a teenager suddenly cart wheeling over the hood of his car. We'll help out with repairs to the bike, but hopefully this incident will encourage Alex to wear his bicycle helmet more often.

Topping the roster of chores for this weekend was the start of the ‘Grand Bedroom Swap’: Jacob and Garion are switching bedrooms in an attempt to get Jacob a little more living space. He voluntarily chose the smallest of the three kid bedrooms a year ago, and since then has been literally tripping over his own stuff. Garion, on the other hand, has enough floor space to have all of his toys out at once, which means that his room is a minefield 99% of the time. The only downside to the swap is that Jacob is about a decade too old for the cute nursery-style Noah's Ark mural the previous owners painted on the wall, so a coat of primer and new paint is in order. We also decided to finally donate the cheap bunk beds that have lasted over fifteen years and all three boys, so the new bedrooms will include new beds. Jacob didn't object to an afternoon of shopping, but we wisely decided to do a little bit of reconnaissance before dragging Monkey-Boy into furniture stores. We knew that the loft-style bed with the slide and the ‘secret hideout’ underneath was a hit when he spent 10 minutes clambering all over it in the store, and then burst into tears when told he had to wait a week for it to be delivered.

Lastly, I spent a happy afternoon in our basement laundry room assembling the bench work for my N gauge model railroad. In true geek fashion, all of my measurements and blueprints worked out perfectly, and out of roughly 55 feet of lumber, I wasted less than 10 inches of wood. Unfortunately, the surface of the nearly-finished workbench ended up almost 5' off the ground, making it impossible for anyone (including me at 6') to reach the middle of it. After giving my bride the opportunity to laugh at my woodworking genius (which she lovingly declined) I borrowed a circular saw from a colleague, and will spend much of tonight busily sawing about a foot and a half off of each leg of my creation.

PotW: The hand-painted Noah's Ark mural about 15 seconds before we heartlessly painted over it.

Until next week…Tschüß!

,,,^..^,,,

2007.10.18-09:07