Another Day

Got back from Illinois late on Wednesday afternoon without problems. The worst part of the entire trip is the ten miles from Brownsburg to Plainfield on 2-lane roads at rush hour. Yuck!

Yesterday, I had a church errand to run, plus some shopping. I also cleaned out the refrigerator--a task that needs to be done more often than it is. Boring!

I had a great time at my sister's. Shari and Roger live in a lovely house in the country outside of Springfield, IL. It's warm and inviting, well-decorated for the holidays, and generally a very comfortable place to be. Most of the time when I visit, I sit around on my big fat you-know-what and eat too much. This trip was a little more productive. We ate out some, shopped some, and celebrated Shari's birthday on the 7th. (More about that in a bit.) Had a meeting with my nieces about a 50th anniversary party we are planning for the spring for my sister and bro-in-law.

The biggest deal for me, however, was taking advantage of their big, heated garage in order to clean out my car. I took out half a garbage bag of crap from the back seat (thank you, grandchildren!), used Roger's big shop vac to clean up the crumbs, dead leaves, etc., from the trunk and interior surfaces. I was asking Roger to help me check the car fuses because I noticed just last week that my rear window defroster wasn't working. Roger figured out in short order that one of the wires to the window coils was unattached. (Methinks that is also probably due to my grandchildren's antics in the back seat last summer.) Thankfully, Roger was able to get the wire soldered back on...and voila! The dead came to life again! He also used his air compressor to air up all of my tires--including the spare "donut" that hadn't been aired for the entire time I've owned the car. (It was supposed to have 60 psi of air in it. It had 21.) I'm not sure that either Shari or Roger know or appreciate what an enormous relief that all was for me, or how much more inconvenient it would have been to try to get it all done without a garage or the tools and expertise needed to accomplish all of that. I got a little weepy about it, actually. Just taking care of those things alone is burdensome, sometimes.

For Shari's birthday, she had requested a Manhattan and a lobster dinner, so we joined two other couples and our cousin for dinner at a seafood restaurant called Chesapeake...or something like that. (It's one of those places that lists a lobster dinner at "market price." If you have to ask how much it is, you can't afford it!) Well...I like lobster, but I LOVE crab legs, so I ordered their snow crab dinner, advertised as a pound-and-a-half. That, plus a salad and a baked potato. When the plate arrived, I couldn't believe it. The order was HUGE! The legs were big and full of meat. Poor me! I was the last one done and didn't even get to the baked potato. Never had a crab leg feast quite like that one!

I came home feeling a little guilty that I got more out of my trip to Springfield than either my sister or brother-in-law did--and it was HER birthday!