Friday

I slept in this morning--which means I stayed in bed and read till 8:00. I SHOULD have slept, but couldn't. I got up and did some chores, checked blogs and email, and studied for my exams. I have to take them in about a week.

My sister, Lila, called from Germany. We talked for nearly three hours. Her husband is stationed in Afganistan until the end of December--her baby is due two weeks after that. She's a little down, understandably. She bought herself a new digital piano (Clavinova) to cheer herself up. I asked if that worked, and she said, "DEFINITELY!!" She makes me laugh.

Tabitha reminded me at noon that she had a party to attend (Annie's eleventh birthday), and we hadn't even purchased a gift yet. I got off the phone, and we left to go shopping. We headed downtown, where we could buy a gift and have it giftwrapped--no time for me to do it myself. We bought a flower press and two "Sisters Grimm" books for Annie. As we were walking across the street, a car beeped at us. Thinking it must be somone I knew, I waved. Two guys in their mid-twenties passed us--a wolf whistle came from one of them. Tabitha looked at me when we reached the other side of the street and said, "Mom, I don't think they were whistling at ME." I assured her they were--old ladies don't get whistles. She said, "Mom, guys don't whistle at little girls with no boobs." My eyes must have gotten as big as my head. I asked her where she'd heard that. She said one of her friends at school had told her. I suggested she investigate other friends. She said, very seriously, "Well, I'm still telling Dad that those guys whistled at you. I think he needs to know." I didn't laugh, but I REALLY wanted to. I took Tabitha to Annie's house and went home.

Darrin took a few hours off for lunch and finished fixing the transmission on our car. I have to say, he never says anything when I do really stupid things. When I ran over the rock, one of the adult leaders asked me if my husband would be upset with me. I said, "Of course not!" That thought hadn't even crossed my mind. She said, "Mine would never shut up about what a bad driver I'd been, or he'd tell me how stupid it was to not be able to miss a rock that large." Wow, I could never live with a husband like that. We all do stupid things--we don't need the ones we love the most to make us feel miserable about it. When I told the leader that, not only would Darrin NOT say anything mean to me, but he would also fix my mistake for me, she said sadly, "You have no idea how lucky you are." Yeah, actually, I do. My husband is more amazing than I deserve.

Tabitha got home from her party around 4:00. She wanted to get some flowers for Annie. She pointed out that I always give birthday flowers to the people I love. I sent some to David on his birthday, and it was Annie's turn. We bought her a dozen multicolored roses and some Peruvian lilies and delivered them to her house. Annie and her parents were outside when we arrived. Janie wanted to arrange a time tomorrow for our families to go see "Pirates". We had originally planned to go tonight, but then my boys found out there's a new Monk episode on--they don't want to miss it. So they'll be happy to go tomorrow.

When Tabitha and I got home, DJ had made supper. Some sort of chicken, rice, beans, corn Mexican dish. It was actually really good. He's not a bad cook for a 16-year-old. We ate together, then went downstairs to watch Monk. There was another show following it that they wanted to watch, as well. We put the kids to bed at 10:00. Darrin and I went shortly after that.