Fried Day

Last night, I mentioned that I intended to make French toast this morning, and had put out some of the ingredients as a reminder. We'd made it with some challah (bought, not made; I'm not good enough with bread yet to do that confidently) when we had our friends over, and it was pretty good, so we thought this would be a good use. To my surprise, when I got up (that sluggard!) my wife had already started it, and the coffee. What a deal! She asked me to go tell our daughter that breakfast was just about ready, adding that the daughter was in a snarky mood, telling her at one point to just go away, and when she persisted, asking if it was possible to get a restraining order on her. I didn't know she knew that phrase. So I talked to her, and she was brittlely cheerful. At the breakfast table, she was fine unless you talked to her, which she apparently took as a contravention of her constitutional right to sulk. No idea what the problem is. We did the classic probing questions, and for our efforts got some nice verbal shrapnel back. We'll see.

My wife also told me something a little disturbing. My mother tests her blood sugar (part of the genetic makeup she passed on to me; what fun); the other day, she told my wife that the lancet she uses wasn't working. Turned out it was working just fine; she simply hadn't pulled it back far enough to cock it . Upon being shown this, she got a confused expression, kind of like When did this change? She's done this thousands of times. That she should be abruptly surprised is unsettling.

When we talked to the people who designed our bathroom remodel (we still want to hear from the guy who gave us the other estimate, but these people are really good, and we'll likely go with them), one of the things that startled me was that they're proposing putting actual tile up around the walk-in bathtub, and a granite countertop on the vanity. This will likely end up being the classiest bathroom in the house, and damn near the classiest room, period. And we look at each other and think Once we do this, we're going to be even less likely to want to move. In fact, this morning, we were talking, and I mentioned that it looked like the birds were starting to come back. My wife replied that it was one of the nice things about living next to the farm -- you got to see that more often. Another reason not to move -- even though we expect that some day it'll be houses. But not quite yet, hmmm?

Yesterday, I added two freeware packages to this PC -- Spybot Search and Destroy, and AdAware2007. Both are anti-infestation tools. Not bad.

This will be a busy day, or what passes for busy for me. I have a physical therapy appointment at 10, then at about 1120, my wife and I are going to lunch together. This afternoon I'm baking some cookies for a bake sale for the color guard people, and tonight taking my daughter over to practice for said event. Somewhere in there I want to hit the library, assuming I can wrap up reading one or two books. I'm just about done with Almost French; I'm enjoying it. So thats why the French are like that, I find myself thinking; also, that it sounds like if you're willing to make some major changes in attitude, living in France can be pretty enjoyable, and better than living elsewhere in some ways. Okay, but would I have to like Jerry Lewis? And I'm still reading Dead Certain; it has some interesting insights about Bush. Its not pro-Bush by any means, but it impresses me occasionally, as when it foreshadows his presidential campaigns by the characteristics, style, and just plain luck of his first campaign for governor of Texas. Not bad. Not sure I'll read the whole thing, but I'm enjoying it.