Carla Schoepfle

On my walk to work today, I saw a strange sight.  There was what appeared to be a lot of smoke coming out of one of the mulch rings that the county puts around all the small trees in the parks.  Since there were no actual big flames, I didn’t believe it was actually smoke till I took a second look.  An unfiltered cigarette butt had lit the mulch on fire.  Two dog walkers asked if I had a cell phone.  So I called 911 (for the first time in my whole life).

911 asked where the fire was, and I gave them the nearest cross street and the address of the apartment building across the street.  Then they asked how close it was to the building.  It feels very silly to say – “Uhh it’s in a park next to a tree and not near any building and it’s a small fire”.  So they took my name and telephone number and hung up.

However on the walk home, the fire was definitely put out (and mulch moved to double check).  Apparently Pete and Ian saw the fire trucks that came to rescue the tree from the cigarette butt.

Do Over-

So some days you have days where you wish they could just be done over.  Friday was one of those days.  First of all - I was excited because it was my birthday and we were leaving for vacation the next day.  So all the hype was there for a letdown.

As I hate coming home and having a mess - I wanted to get a few things done around the house.  But it’s almost comical about how everything that could go wrong did…

• First - It took a while to find the screwdriver and allenwrench to take apart the crib that Ian doesn’t use any more.
• Then when I started sweeping - I gashed my thumb open on the welding rods in the basement.  As the blood was dripping on the floor - I definitely needed a bandaid.  However, we were extremely low - and only had some gag bandaids left.  At least there was the duck-tape themed bandaid though. 
• Then when getting the old cat tower out to the trash - I managed to fall down the stairs.  To add insult to injury (OK - just a small scratch on my neck) I landed in wet cat litter (since I’d shaken the rugs out earlier).
• Then there was the 18 sticks of Trident in the washing machine (Luckily I found the damage before it all went in the dryer)
• Finally after 5 hours of cleaning and packing - it was time to go-to Target for some last minute supplies.  But when I get there - I search my pockets for the list.  Then I search the car.  Why would it be any of these places (since I found it after I went shopping in the recycle bin).
• But apparently everywhere in the world is out of medium size swim diapers and they only have small or large.
• After getting Ian (and forgetting the chocolate milk for the car), as Pete had asked me to not put things in the car (going to totally ignore that request in the future), Ian un-packed all the toys that I’d gathered up for the car ride.

I guess the main part of the day that makes the whole day not a do-over, was going out for a date at the nearby wine bar.  Definitely a place for a re-pete. 

So I’m really late on keeping my blog up to date… As anyone who looks at the archive list would notice. 

Pete and I recently decided to discontinue the season tickets to the Shakespeare Theater.  We were getting home kind of late – and with Ian, that made the next day (and the weekend) kind of rough.  So my folks have agreed to babysit one night a month instead of for the theater season.  So the first non-theater date was to a restaurant that called Coco-Sala a co-worker thought I’d be interested in.  All she had to mention was “chocolate” and I was definitely interested. 

So after a last minute “oh-my-god-what-should-I-wear” (so not me) dress/shoe drama (Hint: look for LBD more than a week ahead of time).   I finally found one last minute at the Macy’s around the corner.  It was not the one I’d fallen in-love with on-line, but at least it fit (where as the one on-line didn’t fit at all when it finally arrived). 

Dinner was tons of fun.  We tried lots of stuff including: Lobster Salad, Bacon Mac-and-cheese, shrimp-Mac-and-cheese, tuna-tar-tar, a plate of meat, and some cheeses (Pete ordered this instead of dessert as he is not a dessert person).  I saved room for the Aztec Experience dessert, which was definitely worth saving room for.  Pete also tried out the gelato – it was just as good as the place in Claranden (so that’s definitely good). 

And as a total bonus – after a 3 hour dinner we were still home just before 10 pm, so I still got some reasonable sleep.