... (well, before 12:15 p.m.) I had most of what I wanted to do today done, and a little bit more. Not that I was planning to get anything too difficult done, but often it seems even a few little things are hard to get accomplished over the average weekend.
So I had three things I wanted to do: 1) get a haircut; 2) put up the second sconce (the first one went up last Saturday); and 3) enter my receipts into Quicken and pay a few bills. By 12:15 p.m., it was all done, and I still had time to pull some more vines and to clean the acorns from the street.
The first thing that helped get the day started off right was that Celeste slept very well last night. (And simply thinking that, much less blogging it, probably dooms us for tonight ...) With the current cold snap (Thursday night–Friday morning was our first freeze of the season), we thought maybe that night and the night before's bad times might be due to her being a bit cold. We've been putting two layers of pyjamas on Celeste, along with socks, and she has her blankie in bed with her (although it used more for snuggling than covering), but we do keep the house on the cooler side ... so I decided to move an oil-filled convection heater up from the basement to her room.
It was a little tricky figuring out where to position the heater so that it was a safe distance from the crib and from other furniture and where the on/off and temperature lights wouldn't distract Celeste, but we did find a place and it seemed to work. She slept through 'til 7:00 a.m. There were some little waking cries around 5:30 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., but no real "Hey, I'm awake!" cries.
With a full night's sleep, we were all in pretty good shape to deal with the day. After breakfast (Celeste wanted scrambled eggs; Evelin made us pancakes), I headed out to the barbershop. Perfect timing: Just after I got into the one free chair, three other people walked in ...
Soon after I got home, Evelin and Celeste headed out to the park to meet up with a friend. Celeste was dressed in a little snowsuit that made her almost as wide as she is tall. It was a bit difficult for her to maneuver in, but, as Evelin noted several times, she was warm.
While they were out, I added a new task to the list of goals for the day: the acorns. Around here, leaves are picked up by the city with a big vacuum truck. Everyone rakes everything out to the curbline and once a week during autumn, the truck comes 'round and picks everything up. It works pretty well, except that this year — because of the coolish summer, dry August, wet September, and warm October, I guess — we had a ton of acorns. The vacuum truck doesn't do a good job with things heavier than leaves, including acorns, so I came home Thursday night to several large piles of acorns in the street in front of our house.
I raked the front yard again, and then bagged all the acorns and some of the leaves and stuck things aside for the week after next (there's no yardwaste or leaf pickup next week, because of Thanksgiving).
I then moved to the backyard to see if I could pull the bits of dead porcelainberry out of the dogwood that I didn't manage to pull out last weekend. Using a polesaw, I was able to get most all of the vine out, although I did end up climbing the tree to get the last few bits from the tree. It added up to an 11th bag of vines ... and there's still plenty (dead) in another neighbor's trees.
After that it was on to the bills. Evelin and Celeste got home as I was finishing that up and Celeste went down for her nap ... leaving Evelin free to help me get that sconce up.
With the chores all done, the afternoon was free to take care of Evelin's other task for the day: a run up to Arundel Mills to the Stride Rite outlet to get Celeste some new shoes. She's walking a lot more and her Robeez are getting a bit slippy. (I've sanded the soles a few times to try and keep them rough, but they get slick fairly quickly.) I'd never actually been to Arundel Mills before and for some reason thought it was after BWI; instead, we ended up missing the exit and ran into a ton of construction traffic most of the way in to Baltimore. Considering that we were almost there, I suggested we bail on the shoe shopping and go to the National Aquarium or something, but we ended up turning back and finding the shoes.
Celeste wasn't too keen on the first few pairs she tried, but we ended up with a pair she was willing to wear out of the store. We then walked around the mall a little, and Celeste ended up going crazy over the Pawsenclaws & Co. store, petting the various stuffed animals, and walking from bear to dog to reindeer to bear, repeat ...
Technoarti tags: chores shoes acorns
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