Saturday in the Park

I love Saturday. Even though it ends up being a work day I at least have no schedule. I can sleep late, enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee and the newspaper. Thinnest paperbof the week but whatever. 

Today, not so good. Turns out Emily has Saturday school. You know, make up school for all the kids who have no good excuse for missing a day. And, of course, you need a teacher, my wife,  who has not missed a day since Clinton was president. 

Well, if you got school, you got to get up early. And I can not sleep with all the noise and lights of someone trying to be quiet while she gets ready. So, no sleeping in. The first hour of my day is like any other. 

After Emily was out the door, I got a leisurely read of the paper and a cup of coffee. Mostly good, but I needed the coffee. 

Not much planned for the day. Just many hours of wrapping Christmas gifts. A tradition since the gift at Christmas requires lots of wrapping. After shower and getting dressed I started in on the gifts. First, I had to wrap all the things I got for friend Cissie in Tacoma. Have to get those moving since shipping costs go up the closer we get to the big day. I always seem to forget how long it takes to wrap. Plus there’s the back ache from bending over the table. I don’t enjoy the process. Once I got the traveling presents done, I went to the UPS store to ship. That was not much fun. They have a gauntlet for customers to go through to get a box shipped. They are also kinda rude. The people running the local place are a family from some southeast Asian country, not sure which. They don’t speak English clearly and I would bet don’t celebrate Xmas. And they really pushed the $36 shipping service. I opted for $14 which did not please them. I hope they don’t screw with my package. 

Back to the house. I spent the next 3 hours wrapping gifts. Fun. And since I don’t like TV, I do it in silence. It’s a little like meditating. 

Emily came home by 1pm. I took a break for lunch with her.  She was not interested in cleaning the house. So I guess my cleaning the master bath was wasted.  

We went shopping instead. Mostly stocking stuffers but also boxes, tape and tags. And groceries for dinner. We went to Workd Market just to find the hidden gift cards but it turns out that promo is over. So forget that. We went to the Coach store and picked up gifts for my office staff. I am way to nice to them. 

Back to the casa. What now? I wrapped gifts for more hours and Emily joined me. At the end, though not done, I realize I have wrapped a lot of packages. Six hours of wrapping gets a ton finished. 

We quit doing the wrap thing at about six.   Time to feed animals, and feed us. So dogs and cats took no time. We threw a very large sweet potato in the oven and made a salad. And waited on the potato for quite awhile. Emily waited it out watching some horrible entertainment news show and I, wait for it, went back to wrapping. For another forty minutes at which time I cooked a steak to share with the wife for dinner. 

We had a nice dinner in front ifnthenTV. The dining table being covered will th the detritus of gift wrapping and not in condition to support our meal.  Dinner was fine though Em complained about the steak. We did not pick up any more wrapping again. 

We watched a little TV after dinner and  went to bed