A Day for the Proletariat

 

It was Monday, typically a work day, but a holiday this go round. I was up and out of bed at 730am which is pretty much my default wake time if left to my body clock. I felt good and ready for another day. Unfortunately, it was another cloudy start. After brushing my teeth I headed downstairs and started some coffee. We were expecting Lindsey to drop the boys by around 9am on her way into work.

I went ahead and did sit-ups but skipped the usual push-ups only because I thought it a good idea to give my arms and shoulders an extra day’s break. I enjoyed coffee & internet for more than an hour afterwards. Lindsey showed up with the boys just before 9am. They quickly carried in the dirty laundry then Lindsey left for work.

The boys know the drill well. Off with the shoes and quiet until the house is awake. As soon as the boys heard Jacob stirring in his room they headed up. Once they were playing I dressed and left for my run. It was a repeat of the past three or four mornings with cloudy skies, warm temps, and high humidity. I ran only three miles since it was an extension of the weekend. I do that a lot on holidays and vacation days.

I worked up one heck of lather in the humidity. When I got back home I noticed our bedroom door was opened but still no Mindy downstairs. After getting some more coffee and sitting at my PC I heard lots of raucous coming from upstairs. I headed up and found Jacob, Landon, Rocky, all three playing under our bed with Mindy lying there awake. Jacob shared that he made and delivered his mother’s coffee.

Mindy wasn’t downstairs until somewhere around 10am. Sounds to me like she’s getting sick, that horrible smoker’s hack she comes down with a few times each year. By the sounds of it, you’d expect to see a chunk of lung to come out.

Perhaps the gray, drabby weather, but I wasn’t in much a mood at all. Had a case of the blues. Here it was Monday already and we really hadn’t done anything special all weekend. The kids bounced between outdoor & indoor play. Landon spent more time inside than anyone else. I ended up spending the lions’ share of the day creating our basement design in Google’s Sketch-Up, the free 3-D drafting program Joe recommended Saturday night. I lost all track of time fooling around with it. I’ll bet I did 5 or 6 base drawings before I started to get the hand of it. Once I had something that seemed workable I began saving them as separate files. I’d walk away after an hour or two but soon return for more fine tuning and tweaks. By midafternoon, I had a 3-D drawing of our basement that closely resembled a picture.

Not sure what time it was when I finally took a shower, but think it was while Mindy ran out to Giant Eagle to pick-up a few things for dinner as well as few things she forgot at the grocery. Amongst them was another hunk of that yummy Beemster 18 month cheese I like. Mindy stayed on top of Lindsey’s laundry all day. I soon came to grips with the notion of not doing anything physical. Had the weather been nicer I would’ve like to have golfed.

I kept at the Sketch-Up project through the late afternoon and early evening. Mindy asked me to grill the burgers for dinner. I’m thinking that it was near 5pm when I fired up the grill. It didn’t long at all to grill 6 burgers. Mindy baked potatoes as a side. Planned to have brownies for dessert. Rocky wanted only a baked potato. And speaking ofRocky, we had to deal with behavioral problems all afternoon. Let’s just say he exhibited some extremely poor choices on multiple occasions. Of course neither me nor Mindy were foolish enough to believe it was all Rocky. He was likely provoked. Can’t recall what exactly Rocky did just before Lindsey came to get him, but he pushed it too far and ended up getting a spanking from Mindy. He was never happier when his mom showed up around 645pm to pick them up.  Mindy made it clear to our kids that they weren’t going back out to play after dinner. Bella was especially bummed, at least initially. Instead, we wanted the kids to read, settle, shower for the new school week.

There was a college football game on around 730p pitting Virginia Tech against Georgia Tech. Not having a horse in the race, I couldn’t have cared less which team won but still watched. Mindy and the kids were upstairs early. I’m thinking by 830pm. Yikes! I stayed up watching the game until they were well into the 2nd half. I also spent a little more time fooling around with the basement design in Sketch-Up. Bet I’ve got more than 8 hours into it so far. I’ll say this, the 3-D model revealed numerous potential pitfalls with the original 2-D design relative to walking space, furniture placement, etc. Great tool! I joined Mindy in bed around 1030pm. She was still awake struggling to sleep.