End of the Day Stories

The Childrens are in bed, the downstairs is picked up and vacuumed for the company tomorrow, The Mrs. is in the garage putting together the secret Easter baskets, and now I have a chance to sit in quiet reflection about what all I had intended to record here but did not.

Oh no wait. No I don't. The Mrs. needs help, "Filling these eggs." I'm off to the garage...

OK. Back. Where were we? Oh yes.

Let me start off by saying that once again, someone is complaining about something I wrote. This time, it's that I did not credit the knock knock joke. So, technically, I'm not sure exactly where the credit lies. See, BrainkyP was driving us (StinkyJ, JohnnyB, and yours truly) to CJ's (the burger place, not the blogger's place) for lunch yesterday. BrainkyP drives a truly horrible Jetta junker, the kind you might pick up at the Goodwill "GoodWheels" donated car lot, and I was sitting in the back, and I'm half deaf, and I don't really pay much attention with the other half when BrainkyP is telling a story, cuz they're usually kind long and not much goes on in them.

BrainkyP started off on some story about when he was in Paris and went to some restaurant, and then I punched him for living in France. And then he said something about having only been visiting, so I punched him again. Then I sat back and drifted off into my own world, where things are happy every day, and he's droning on about going into the basement and there being Sri Lankans living there, and then everybody was laughing and saying "Three Lankans" over and over again. I completely missed why. But for the rest of the lunch, people kept saying, "Three Lankans," and these three idiots kept bursting out in side-splitting laughter. I really don't understand why. Maybe StinkyJ can leave an explanation in the comments.

With that ripe in my mind, being that it was just about the only interesting thing that happened yesterday, I opened up with a knock knock joke that ended in "Three Lankans" just to see if it was funny in a wider audience. Apparently, I should have credited BrainkyP with this piece of genius, though I am pretty damned sure there was no knock knock joke involved in his story about the basement in Paris and his first experience with Sri Lankans and how he's never felt quite the same about butter since then.

Enough said about that.

This morning The Mrs. got what is often referred to as a "bug up her @$" and decides we need to go furniture shopping for HannieC's bedroom today. Why is that? Does HannieC not have a complete bedroom set purchased fewer than three years ago? Well, you all know how The Mrs. is. Always buying stuff and then deciding it needs replacing. It's one thing when it's flowers. Furniture gets more annoying.

But she's got a loophole. MaxieC has pretty much outgrown his toddler bed. He's in need of a normal bed. HannieC has a normal bed, only it's up a couple feet higher than normal and has drawers underneath, which is exactly what The Mrs. had to, had to, had to have for her when we bought it. Well, now The Mrs. needs HannieC to have a loft bed with a desk underneath. And she's unhappy with the quality of the furniture we got HannieC. So that furniture will go to MaxieC, and HannieC will get new furniture.

Then, in a couple years, she'll make me give away MaxieC's perfectly good bedroom set and buy him a brand new set that is in some way completely different from what she thinks would be perfect today. But by then, the furniture will be 5-6 years old, and maybe I won't raise quite so big a stink.

Unless I've had Mexican food.

We agreed upon one thing before leaving. That we wanted to go to three or four places and look at a few models before deciding.

I bet you can see where this is going.

We go off to this place called "Woodpeckers Furniture" first. I know, I snicker when I say the name, too. They have a sign on the front that says they're having a no sales tax sale. Sales tax is %8.25 here. The sale is today only. We go in there, and they have nothing on the showroom floor even remotely like what we wanted, despite it being on their website. But one of the guys knows what we're talking about and pulls out a catalog.

Oh, just perfect. That is exactly, exactly, exactly what I want. What is the price?

So while the guy is off behind the counter making up a price (I'm wearing my incredibly-dumpy Saturday clothes cuz I had no idea we were going shopping. Dunno if that helps or hurts.), I have a brief sidebar with The Mrs. We're still planning to hit three more places on this trip to comparison shop, not planning to buy right now, good good.

Wife has him write down a price quote while I try to keep The Childrens from killing each other or knocking over any furniture. We're about to go, and HannieC says, "I'm really happy I picked the dark one." The Mrs. says, "You picked the light one." Now the guy had told us the thing came in three different woods, each progressively $100 more than the previous. The Mrs. had gotten a quote on the middle one, and HannieC wanted the most expensive one. To be fair, I like the most expensive one the best, too. (We were looking at model MIS-L31, which is in the center of the top row.) So the wife turns to the guy and says, how much is the dark one? And he says, "It's $100 more." Same story as before.

Ok thanks. We start to leave. "Oh, but I'd really like it if you would buy it from me today. How about if I give you that one for the same price as the other? And with no sales tax, that's a really good deal." But we're not buying today. Just looking. Want to check out other stores. Look at other models. Maybe see the thing in person.

It'll be delivered in about 2 weeks.

Final funny story of the day. I'm playing outside in the back yard with MaxieC while HannieC practices her piano and viola with The Mrs. MaxieC unloads in his diaper. Nasty, foul, goopy stuff. Dunno what he's been eating. I go to take him inside for a change. I take off his shoes, set him down, start taking off my shoes, and he takes off running and giggling . "I not go inside! I not get new diaper!"

Then he stops dead in his tracks, looks down at his bare feet, and says, "Dog poop."

And that, my friends, was the highlight of my day.