Would you like that gift wrapped?

Sh!t. Someone stole my good scissors. I left them on the bar after fixing something two days ago cuz HannahC was pestering me to watch a movie with her instead of putting them quickly away, and now they are gone. I keep them at the workbench so that I can always find at least one pair of good scissors.

I plan to go all Spanish Inquisition on them. I am Spanish, after all, so this is my birthright.

Ah ha! The Mrs. fessed up without me even having to actually drill any holes through her teeth. I'll have to figure out how many Hail Marys to assign her.

Another installment of the continuing saga of painting the "playroom." No, not one drop of paint has touched the room yet. This is more to do with the clearing of the room, but I didn't want to include it in my rant as it would have lessened the effect.

As part of converting this particular playroom into a "school room", leaving a mere three playrooms for the poor, neglected childrens, The Mrs. decided to get rid of some of the older toys that The Childrens never play with anymore.

In particular, she decided to get rid of some of the very large plastic house stuff. Two plastic playhouses, a plastic oven, and a plastic kitchenette. Plus various and sundry smaller toys. Now, the way The Mrs. likes to get rid of larger toys is to put them up for sale or for free on a homeschool mailing list. Homeschoolers are notoriously cheap (because one of the parents has to not work), so anything offered for free gets snatched up in a fury within moments, and anything with even a nominal fee (like $10 for a toy that new costs $300) will never sell.

When she told me she had put the outside play house up for free, I asked, "Did you put a limit on the distance for free delivery?"

She said, "No. It's free. They can come and get it."

"Do I need to disassemble it today?"

"No. We're giving it away for free. They do all the work."

I said, "Hah! I don't believe that for a minute."

See, I remembered the time she gave away tumbled river rock for free. I ended up having to load the rocks into the pickup, deliver the rocks to two different sites, and do most of the unloading as well. This is because, to The Mrs., my time and effort are of absolutely no consequence. We actually discussed this with her pastor during our mandatory pre-marriage counseling, and she promised him that she would try to do better. But, like all things, without the threat of retribution, backsliding is inevitable.

What he should have said was, "Son, if you expect your future wife to change for the better in any aspect whatsoever after you say 'I do' then you are in for one rude, rude awakening." I forget what he actually said, but I think it was something along the lines of "Run!!!!!!" only in a much more subtle fashion like, "well, I hope you continue to communicate your feeeeelings to each other on this aspect of your relationship."

Anyways, within moments of sending out the email, one of her homeschool buddies snatched up three of the free things, including the big giant plastic playhouse that lives in the garden. She was to come over the next morning (Sunday) with her husband and their Suburban to haul away the loot.

Sunday morning, I went outside to see if there were any remaining infestations of yellow jackets in the playhouse. I found four and spent some time killing them off so that the disassembly process would go smoothly.

At the appointed time, the lady drives up not in a Suburban, but in a Taurus. And she is also sans husband.

This is odd.

After being greeted by The Mrs. and a brief conversation, The Mrs. comes sashaying over to me to announce, "She did some research and people on the web all say this playhouse doesn't fit in an SUV, so she decided not to take it. Except she really wants it. So I told her you would take it to her house in your truck. Can you start disassembling it?"

We have established that the free delivery radius is at least 15 miles. And it only cost me an hour and a half plus two gallons of gas to give away a $600-when-new play house for free.