Up and Down!

The last few days have definitely had their ups and downs. Rather than wax philosophical, I'll just give you some examples. The photos you see here are part of one of the "ups" I'm talking about. This is Dan of Danny Ray's Music (remember, he was my first Wednesday Wonder--now they have a better website) pretty darned excited to be opening the case of a new guitar. The guitar I had ordered for Tuba Boy in November. It finally came on Friday! I took a series of photos of him taking it out of the box, opening the case, etc., and I'm showing three of them here. Isn't it pretty? It's a Schechter Corsair with optional Bigsby thingie on it. So what's down about this? Poor Tuba Boy set off for Dallas on Friday for a debate tournament. He came home for three minutes this afternoon then ran off to work. He'd been patiently waiting for this new lifelong companion (OK, maybe not so patient--he asked me close to daily whether it was here yet or not), but has had to wait three extra days to see it thanks to his schedule. Oh well, I know he will love it.

Saturday was mostly good, but there was the downer that I seem to have been attacked by allergies again. Still, I got to see a few knitting friends, do some teaching, and go with Lee to get some wonderful outdoor furniture for the new patio (we'd been waiting and waiting for Home Depot to get some in, so we could use wedding gift certificates on it. Photos of that will come as soon as there's light to take a picture. Lee had quite the challenge putting it all together. That makes two weekends in a row of putting together furniture for him.

We did take some time out Saturday night to have an early Valentine's Day, since the kids were both otherwise occupied (Beccano was with his dad). Lee made the big sacrifice of going to a loud restaurant, and took me to Z Tejas. I love that place. We did have a delicious meal. We had these sizzling dumplings with shrimp and pork in them for appetizers, and for the meal I had crispy salmon with an amazing avocago/crab salsa on it, while Lee had seafood enchiladas. He had some rich chocolate pie for dessert. My dessert was a mango margarita. I probably paid for that with a poor night of sleep (that would be a "down") but it was worth it to me. As we were leaving I said we needed to go to a store to get dark chocolate to put in my Big Bowl of Self Esteem for my big boss at work. Then I heard, "Hi, Sue Ann!" and there was the big boss, right behind us! Good thing I hadn't said anything bad about him ('cause I don't have anything bad to say, actually--nice dude).

Today was a real mix. We did a song I like a lot in choir and I think it went OK. I hope we went up to the front and exited fast enough. And we got new church t-shirts, whee. Unitarian Universalist shirts are always so so lovey-dovey. But, they are cute.

After that, I am very proud of myself. I got through a music committee meeting AND a steering committee meeting. I had not been to a steering committee in a number of years, since some guy insulted me, called me names and raised his voice at me and no one defended me. The dude was mistaken, but I decided it wasn't worth trying to participate if I couldn't feel safe. I hadn't felt safe there for a while at that point, anyway. I finally decided things had changed enough that I could go back, and I decided I was needed again, too. Go me.

Of course, there was a down today. Darn me. I was a little stressed with all the meetings (I must have unresolved trauma or something, bwa ha ha). And I managed to leave my brand-new just-finished sock AND my Blackberry in the little room where the music committee had met. This was in a building I do not have a key to. Darn it!! Wah! I do hope I can go fetch it tomorrow at lunch. What if I missed an important text message? A fantastic job offer! Free ring tones! ACK!

I guess I'll survive. Anyway, those were my ups and downs, thank you very much. Now Lee, Beccano and I are enjoying the Grammys. I am now going to admit to this: I thought Miley and Taylor singing a duet about being teens was very, very sweet.