I might be taking this "Tuesdays are my big days" a little too seriously. It was supposed to be closing day for the last house I had under contract, but we know how that turned out. (I'm still trying to think of home inspectors as my friends, but it's hard these days.) So I thought today might actually be an easy Tuesday. Nope. Non-stop from first light until nearly bedtime. Mostly good stuff. Some great stuff. Some mishaps that turned into bonuses. Some absolute catastrophes.
I woke very early this morning, compared to usual, and checked my messages earlier than normal. I had two requests to see houses that came in overnight, and I needed to send a stack of new listings to the client who wasn't closing today, so I got up and at 'em before 7. I couldn't sneak around the house silently enough not to alert the dogs, so I thought I'd be nice and let them out before the old dogs' bladders gave it up for the morning. The cats noticed I was moving through the kitchen at breakfast time, so I thought again, I could take care of one more task for Mr X, so that he could sleep in a tiny bit on his birthday. No good deed goes unpunished, and within ten minutes, Alfred was throwing up his hastily-eaten crunchies onto my family heirloom rug. My first instinct was to bring in a vomit specialist, so I opened the back door and invited Elsa inside (Bump came in too). They each spun in excited circles and before I could blink, Elsa was vomiting up something even more disgusting onto a rug made by blind Pakistani girls. Mr X woke on his birthday to the sound of me screaming, "No! NO! God DAMMIT!!" Happy birthday, kid. Welcome to Chaos.
Eventually the world settled into a semblance of normalcy. Mr X went to renew his drivers license while I worked and went to Rotary. I was volunteered to go to a surprise mixer in two days, so I'm trying to figure out how to reorganize my schedule to fit it. I came home and waited for the kids to arrive with a dead vehicle being towed here for repairs. (They can't do auto maintenance on the street at the condos. Against HOA rules.) As the tow truck was backing it into our driveway, the driver turned too sharply and smashed in the back window with his crane. Luckily, they had gone with the company most people recommended, and the owner not only agreed that the window would come out of his insurance, not the kids', but he removed the charge for the tow also. Once the glass was cleaned up, Mr X set himself to troubleshooting the problem, and I kidnapped my daughter to run some errands. I got the last two items for the tablescape, and food for a birthday dinner.
I baked a flourless chocolate cake this afternoon, combining techniques and recipes from multiple sources and from what I was craving on this particular day. It baked up almost like a souffle, but by the time it was chilled, it was much more dense. It was rich but not overwhelming, and the flavor was superb. I need to write down what I did. This one is going in the cookbook.
One of the things required for repairing the vehicle was removing the fuel tank from the car. Mr X drained as much of it as he could, transferring surplus fuel into other vehicles when his gas cans filled up. A few drops spilled in three different places. Is it super redneck that he got them out of the concrete by burning them off? Is it worse that I let him? Is it even worse that I sang Happy Birthday to him over one of the flames? I suppose the balloon that daughter-2 and I got him was more prophetic than we realized. The messages on it were congratulatory, as in "yay, you made it all the way around the sun again!" Didn't know it would be an exclamation of surprise that he didn't immolate himself this evening.
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