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9:48 p.m. - Sunday, Aug. 12, 2007
Toffee Peanuts and Heavenly Bodies
So the guy who's supposed to start waterproofing my basement on Friday shows up at my door this afternoon. "Hi! I've been checking my schedule and I thought I'd start on Tuesday! Can I have a set of keys?"
He lives just down the street from me, so it's merely inconvenient, not bizarre, that he should show up at my door on a Sunday afternoon.
I was going to have another set of keys made for him, but I thought I had until Friday to do it.
"Sorry, I'm down to my last set," I say. "How about I get another set made and I'll leave them inside the porch on Tuesday morning."
Not exactly secure, but hey, what am I supposed to do?
So off I go to the local hardware store, hoping they don't close at noon on Sunday anymore, now that they're competing with two big boxes. My hunch is correct. I get the keys made. On my way out I see a spading fork for $30. Why, yes, now I remember, I do need a spading fork to dig up the Yukon gold potatoes that (according to my Google research on How to Dig Up Potatoes) should be ready in my garden right about now, since it's midsummer and the potato vines have died.
But not for no $30! No way!
So off I go to the big box store in search of a cheaper spading fork.
I intentionally went to M3n4rd's. Know why? Because they have food there. Bad, bad Lily! They have cheap cans of toffee peanuts. Bad, awful Lily!
Did I get my cheap spading fork? Yes. Did I get my toffee peanuts? Yes. Did I eat 8 ounces of toffee peanuts today? Yes. But I've got an excuse: everybody and his freakin' brother will soon have a key to my house. (The guy working on my front porch also has a set.)
It's stressful to have strangers in my house. It's stressful when I'm there and when I'm not there. It's stressful to be taking a bath after spending the afternoon mowing the lawn and sweating like a pig and all the while you're in the tub you know that some guy has the key to your house. It's stressful to be betting $$$$ that this basement waterproofing will really work and I'll finally, for the first time in the 17 years I've been here, be able to store stuff in the basement without it getting destroyed by dampness, or by mice, for that matter, since last year I found out how the mice were getting in and stopped up that hole.
Where was I? Oh, yeah, stress. So I have an excuse for eating 8 ounces of toffee peanuts.
And then I took my cheap spading fork out into the garden and found out that the How to Dig Up Potatoes website didn't quite apply to my situation. The type of potatoes, the lousy weather, what do I know? I harvested a grand total of two small (or one small and one TINY) Yukon Gold potatoes. The rest I will give a month or so to grow.
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I'm going to set my alarm for midnight tonight in the hope that I'll be able to haul my fat behind out of bed and go outside to watch the Perseids. I usually manage to get up for midnight on New Year's Eve, so maybe I can do it; but on the other hand, I don't have to get up at 5:00 a.m. on New Year's Day.
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