Leapin' Lizards

I slept OK but by no means as soundly as I had for the past week or so. For starters, my nose & throat were extremely, a sure byproduct of the beer and sauerkraut from the night before. I rolled out of bed right about 8am. I was sure that Mindy would elect to sleep in but she said she’d be down soon. I wasted little time beginning my routine. I made a pot of coffee then exercised and walked Ykraps. I ended up with oodles of free time. Mindy didn’t get out of bed until after 9am. She told me that I was snoring loudly through the night. I wasn’t too surprised given how dry my throat felt. We hung out for an hour or so before I got ready for my run. Mindy asked if I would be prepared to go Xmas shopping when I got back. That wasn’t my plan, at least not until after the noon Buckeye game. I was eager to watch the Illinois game. She understood. She mentioned that she might head out on her own. She spent the morning shopping Target online for XMAS toys only to find their shipping charges a little too exorbitant. I helped her locate the doll house Bella’s hoping for. I left for my run just after 10am. It was a good run, although it seemed like a long one. I was surprised to find Mindy still not showered when I got back. However, it was much longer before she was showered and leaving for some Xmas shopping alone. In addition to some Xmas shopping, she was gonna stop and get crickets for the lizards. But just before she left I found one of them dead and dehydrated in the terrarium. Sad! I asked that she pick-up another lizard, too. The kids would never know. I stayed in my running clothes throughout the game. The Buckeyes took an early lead and never trailed. However, they never got the touchdown to seal an easy victory either, at least not until the closing minutes. Illinois made just enough mistakes to keep their own hopes of victory at bay. Mindy arrived home around 3:30pm. By then, I was just finishing up with a shower. I offered to help carry in the presents she bought but she had carried most of them in by the time I got downstairs. I did help her stow them. Even though Mindy was gone Xmas shopping for most of the afternoon, we still planned to head back out for even more Xmas shopping. We left the house between 4 and 5pm. By then, the weather had taken a serious dive. It was raw, wet, and rainy. It was even spitting a little snow. Our first stop was Old Navy, where we would enjoy 25% off our total purchase thanks to a work friend giving me a friends and family discount coupon. We thought we might be able to get all the grandkids clothes there. Traffic was quite messy, just as one might expect it to be out off of Hilliard-Rome Rd. Old Navy is just south of the new Target. We spent no more than ten minutes looking around. The store was in total disarray - a giant mess! Neither of us cared to shop in such squalor. We promptly headed for the door. Mindy went on to Kirkland’s while I stopped in Office Depot to look for CD jewel cases. They had them but were asking $9.99 for 50. Please! I paid less than that for 100 blank CDs. I met up with Mindy in Kirkland’s. There, we perused all their offerings. They always have a few things that we like. Today was no different.We found two pieces of metal artwork that we both liked. We’ve been looking for a piece of metal -3D artwork for the purple wall just north of our fireplace for nearly a year now. Finally, a piece that fit the bill. We also agreed on a metal piece for the kitchen. This one looked like three cups of steaming coffee. We thought that it would work nicely on the soffit above our sink. We picked up a couple other small items, too. I picked up the Kirkland’s tab. Next, we went next door to Target, Mindy’s second visit of the day. Our primary goal was to shop for the grandkids, clothes and toys. Surprisingly, I really enjoy shopping for kids clothes, especially the girls. We found some really cute stuff for not a lot of money. As usual, I found lots of stuff in black. I could tell that Mindy wanted me to consider other colors. I like bright complementary colors but usually with a black base. We found clothes for all the grandkids. While there, we also bought Jacob & Bella outerwear for snow skiing after deciding last evening that we’d be turning them on to skiing this season. We even got them wicking undergarments. On to the toys. We moved from clothes to toys. Mindy’s quite adept at picking out toys for the young kids. Me, not so much. I do better with the older ones. While she shopped toys for Olivia and Landon, I went to look at the Xmas light selection since we plan to light up the house’s exterior this season. I’ve been looking since Halloween. Included in this year’s scheme will be icicle lights. There are so many choices to choose from. Sometimes too many. I get where I can’t make a decision. The first decision is white or green wire. Next, multi-color or clear/white. Then there’s LED versus standard. Next, there’s regular or heavy-duty. Then there’s twinkling or constant. Next, there’s dense or normal spacing. I like the dense look better but considering the three strand limit, that would screw me. So many choices. I decided to go white wire, clear standard, regular, normal spacing, normal length. In addition to the icicle lights, I bought enough light nets to cover our two layers of shrubs. I bought four nets – 2 multi-colored and two clear. Lastly, I bought 800 heavy-duty clear lights for the 20 ft pine tree. I even kicked around buying an inflatable snowman or Santa for the kids, but decided first to measure Mindy’s opinion. I left the 11 boxes of Xmas lights off to the side and went to fetch Mindy and the cart. I found Mindy still looking at the kiddie toys. We settled on a few things for Olivia but drew blanks for most others. Perhaps a fresh brain tomorrow. We left the toy department and headed back to the Xmas decorations to load up my lights. Our cart was full. We looked at a few other items as we made our way through checkout. The idea was for Mindy to pay and then I would write her a check for half. That sounded dandy but her card wouldn’t work. Oops! We had to reverse the strategy. Or just maybe that was her strategy all along? The weather was no better after spending two hours shopping. It would best be described as a wintry mix. We headed home to unload our haul, both of us now getting really hungry. Where ever we ended up for dinner, I wouldn’t have been able to relax with so much crap in our vehicle. We unloaded everything in a hurry and then walked Ykraps. Soon we headed out for dinner. It was no big surprise that we settled on Barley’s. That’s right – two nights in a row. We kicked around CBC, but both of us were ravenously hungry for gourmet style burgers. Barley’s burgers are the best – check ’em out. Besides, they have Centennial IPA on the tower and it’s fresh and tasty. I’ve got to get as much as I can before it’s gone again. As usual, the Saturday crowd was much thinner than a Friday, although we were again surprised at the number or cars in the lot. Most patrons were in the dining room section. We happily bellied up to the bar where Beth was our server for the second night in a row (No Jersey). We like Beth. As planned, Mindy ordered a Russian, and I had an IPA. We didn’t order our burgers until my first beer was all but gone. When they finally arrived we attacked them. I had the Texas. It was incredibly good. Mindy’s burger was gone before I had consumed a third of mine. Holy smoke! Where’d your burger go? I asked. I had just one more beer. Mindy stuck with the one. We settled our tab then left for home. We didn’t want to stay out late. It was just after 9PM when we arrived home. I turned on the TV to catch the final scores from all the late college football games I’d been following. We didn’t stay up too late since both of us were so tired. We headed to be before 10:30pm.