FRIDAY NIGHT: we went to see “lincolnesque” at the abraham lincoln museum and it was quite entertaining. the reviewer said the play itself wasn’t so great, but clearly the guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. it was especially relevant because of the upcoming election; it’s about a guy who used t be a crackerjack campaign strategist and now thinks he’s Lincoln. his brother is a speechwriter, trying to deal with caring for his brother. ed mcmurdo is the crazy brother and he’s so incredibly good. he’s always exceptionally good in everything i’ve seen him in, but for some reason i haven’t seen him in that many things. a while ago, when i was living in LA, he was will rogers in “will roger’s follies,” and i wish i could have seen that.
patrick russell is the brother trying to cope, and mary young is his boss and DAMN she wears high heels. they’re at least four inches and very pointy and although both patrick and mary were of course good, i couldn’t help but think about how painful it would be to tromp all around onstage in those heels. but mary’s so good, she probably didn’t even notice em. tom lawton is the fourth character, playing a homeless guy as well as a big mover & shaker. i haven’t seen tom in many many years, and he was especially good being two different characters.
i have such a short time before people start showing up (the big 114th civil war regiment picnic starts in 58 minutes, maybe less), and i didn’t intend to sit here and write about the play because so very much has already happened this weekend, but i really hope you go see this show. the crowd was OK, but there could have been a lot more people there. Interestingly, it was mostly older people. young people need to see it.
just like young people NEED TO VOTE. man, they better vote.
anyway, we got home and kevin had distinctly remembered closing the pantry door, and when he got in the house it was open. so mollie definitely knows how to open the door. she then reached up to a pretty high shelf and helped herself to a bag of kitty treats – the wrapping was all over the floor and she was still digging through them when kevin got home. she had also procured at least two more bags of treats, and had devoured some already.
kevin went into the bedroom to change his clothes and mollie jumped up on the bed and dug around in the pillows and pulled out a treat she’d been saving for later. she ate it, because later doesn’t have to be that much later, and she was really wired up from all that eating of treats. later i opened the closet door and she dove in there, jumping on my huge pile of shoes. she started digging around them in the corner and, of course, pulled out another treat.
crazy dog. now the treats are much too high for her to reach. until she figures out how to get out the stepladder and climb up it. which i’m sure will be any day now.
SATURDAY MORNING: i started furiously cleaning for the party today. i started with the bathrooms. on friday the drain in the basement had backed up when i did laundry and my dad said THE WHOLE DRAIN IS GOING TO BACK UP AND TOMORROW YOU’LL HAVE POOP COMING OUT OF THE DRAIN IN THE BASEMENT.
I went down into the basement on saturday morning, and sure enough, it was a very disturbing sight down there. plus it was saturday morning, how were we going to get somebody to come out and fix it? people were coming over today, and somebody would definitely want to use the bathroom. not to mention the smell that was starting to permeate the house…
dad insisted that i call a guy he’d used before. the guy came over and i was so happy, and the guy couldn’t rememer being here before. and the WET JET that you HAVE TO USE on the drain was broken. dad came over and couldn’t remember the guy either and the guy tried calling a few other guys but nobody was answering their phones.
we were supposed to be cleaning, and i was cleaning everything i could without water. like dusting.
kevin called a friend who told us to call somebody and he called them and the guy came out and i didn’t even go outside when all the excitement was happening (they had to put the wet jet into the manhole out in the back yard) because dad and kevin were both there already and i had CLEANING TO DO.
oh, and the guy who showed up was the guy dad had called last year. that’s why the other guy couldn’t remember being here. yeah, it looks like it’s a once-a-year problem that has to be dealt with because the pipes inside the house are very very old plus there is an L-bend in the pipe which is probably the big problem. whatever, at least it was resolved for now
so i thought the cleaning would be done in the morning but of course it wasn’t because of all the drain hubbub and the guy charged a LOT of money but at least he was able to fix the drain. whew.
we’d talked about renting a porta potty if the drain wasn’t fixed, but that didn’t seem like such a good idea. or cancelling the party, not a great idea either. but it all worked out. i cleaned a lot today, as did kevin, and now everything is ridiculously clean and ready.
but then yesterday afternoon we still had to go over to our other house and trim and weed and put in new, brighter light bulbs and weed some more and put down some more mulch, because of the open house today.
maybe somebody went in and bought it. that’d be nice.
but highly unlikely.
SATURDAY NIGHT: we were exhausted because of all that activity and dad suggested going to the Cracker Barrel but i hadn’t even had a shower the whole day but kevin wanted to go eat right away so i put on a pair of jeans and a clean t-shirt and felt very very grimy there at the cracker barrel. luckily it’s not such a fancy place, and the food was good.
i don’t have to clean anything else today. we can flush the toilets without hideous and smelly repurcussions. it’s a gorgeous sunny warm day today, in the 70’s.
so really, life is good.
good.
ok then,
OCTOBER grace.
p.s. we got the many many MANY boxes full of halloween decorations out of our old attic yesterday. there was no place to put them when we got here because of the party today so they’re all still piled in the van. i’m looking forward to getting them out and starting to put them up.
but hopefuly not tonight. hopefully the rest of the day will be stress-free.