Subject: Weekend Update: September 17-22, 2002
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 15:24:05 -0400

Life sometimes isn't fair, but Joy is always terrific!
Last week, as soon as I left town on business with several
colleagues to eat my fill of company-expensed steak dinners,
things went pretty whacky back home.

I wrote in my prevoous journal entry that our waterbed
had burst a seam.  Joy spent the better part of the week
fixing the matter with the store.  The mattress was still
under a pro-rated warranty, which meant that we could
replace her mattress for $35 and 7-to-10 days of waiting.
Trouble was, because our bed had his-n-her water mattresses,
wouldn't we want to be safe by replacing his mattress at
the same time for $179?  Or we could buy a single queen-sized
water mattress for $199, which Joy already had in her posession
before she found out that a warranty still applied to her
mattress.  If you are confused, Joy was at wit's end by
Thursday, knowing that I was coming home Friday, my nephew
Tom and his wife Erin also on Friday, and my parents on Saturday.
I told her to fill the queen mattress and be done with it.

Meanwhile, Joy had also busied herself on transforming the
kitchen when she wasn't babysitting for Kayla, driving Mom's
taxi, or dealing with the waterbed hassle.  She moved all
the furniture to the center of the room and began to turn
the pale pink walls into purple plum walls.  The deeper,
darker color shows off the white cabinets better and makes
the kitchen a warmer place to gather together.  If that wasn't
enough, she also replaced her stenciling on the kitchen wall
near the ceiling with pink roses and green vines.  Just the
previous week she had stenciled the ceiling of the porch just
outside the kitchen.

Speaking of painting: Miranda has begun the third and final
panel of her annual mural.  August-through-November has
a sky and landscape, and August has the beginnings of a
water wheel, trees, and some other details.

I got email from Jessica last Tuesday telling me that
Ol' Lazarus was giving her brake trouble again.  I told
her to take it to a garage to assess the work. When I called
later in the week, we found out that the car needs a complete
brake overhaul and some axle work.  It was a terminal diagnosis.
I am afraid that this is the end of the road for Lazarus. (Even
the real Lazarus had to finally stay in his tomb.)  We are now
working on alternatives for Jessica and planning Lazarus' final
resting place.

Tom and Erin arrived in the afternoon for a visit with us
before heading onward to Augusta, Maine to attend the wedding
of their friend, John Wheaton, who was marrying Charity's boyfriend's
sister. (Charity is Tom's sister.) I asked Joy to take the Scheuermann's
out to dinner before picking me up at the airport in the evening.
They went to the Outback.  We were happy to spend a little
time with our microbiological-scientist-nephew and his lovely wife.
And to think I knew him when he was a McNephew at McDonalds.

Joy got Andrew to the church early on Saturday morning so that he
could spend the rest of Saturday at Six Flags with other teenagers
and teenager agers (aka chaperones).  Andrew arose very early indeed
to get his paper route done, but didn't return until after midnight.
Thankfully, Miranda was at the coffee house (with Emily) until then
to bring Andrew home from the church.

Joy also helped Miranda dig up about a hundred dollars worth of
plants and bulbs (if you purchased them retail) from our yard on
Saturday morning.  Mandy and Emily took them to the Spanish Church
of the Nazarene in Lowell and replanted them in a plot plan that
they had sketched out.  They returned later in the day, filthy and
worn from the work, saying that they had a lot of weeding that needed
to be done in addition to the planting.

On Wednesday of last week, the shed came and was erected in the
back yard.  We got it to house the riding mower and whatever
tools we start cramming into its space.  I devised a couple of
ramps to the door opening and started thinking about adding more
cramming-space shelves.

Mom and Dad arrived early in the afternoon.  They attended a
funeral (Ann Patch's mother) in Wollaston.  This gave us a
welcome break before returning to our major chore of the day:
closing the pool.  I think we have the knack of it now, because
Joy and I closed the pool fairly quickly despite having to stop
and replace the filter plug, and work with some stripped anchors.
The cover is on, however, and we left the stowing of the pool
furniture for another day.

The Nashua Church may be coming near to bringing on a new Pastor,
which is a bit disappointing to me. Dad always gets compliments
on his messages, but the church there needs more than a preacher
and so I mustn't be too selfish.  We have enjoyed Mom and Dad's
weekly visits and they seem to enjoy them, too.  Even Schatzi
feels quite at home, although she had trouble Saturday night
ascending our bedroom staircase.  The front stairs were dark,
so she decided to use ours. She got most of the way up our steeper,
narrower stairs and then got scared of the turn at the top because
she didn't think her paws would be able to grab onto them.  I was
right behind her and knew that going down was not an option for
the big old dog, unless gravity had a say in it.  She whined a bit,
but finally made it up.  She doesn't like our wooden stairs but
likes sleeping without Mom and Dad even less.

Back to the bed, Joy got overly enthusiastic with the water in the
mattress. We felt as if were were on a bubble of water instead of a
mattress.  So Sunday night, I grabbed one of our hoses, Joy connected
it to the bed and I threw the rest of the hose out the window to the
ground below. The water inside the hose acted like the siphon that I
knew it would as we returned our bed to its proper level.  And with
that we hope to close the chapter on a very hectic week.

Mark