This has been a really nice day. I awoke after a great night’s sleep, then enjoyed my coffee in the living room whilst working the Sunday crossword as Nettl and the girls talked and looked through the paper’s inserts in front of our fireplace. Well, it’s not really a fireplace. It looks like one, but upon very close inspection it reveals itself as a “special effects” fireplace, completely electric, with flames made by rotating lights…or something. Joel calls it the Disney fireplace because it looks like the fire in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. I call it the Disco Ball fireplace because in about 15 years it will go the way of those Venus drip lamps of the 1970s...As if that isn’t bad enough, it makes a repetitive, annoying noise like something’s rubbing against something else. This, too, has several names. I call it a bullfrog. Nathan says it sounds like an old man snoring, and Heather thinks it sounds like a honking goose. All we need now is a troll living under a bridge and we’d have a pretty good fairytale. I’ve tried to get into it to fix it, but somewhere in the move my large Phillips head screwdriver got misplaced. Guess I’ll have to call the handyman tomorrow.
Nettl made a wonderful Chicken Divan (I think that’s what she called it) and we all enjoyed talking and laughing at our usual Sunday afternoon dinner. Joel and Nathan nearly snapped their necks from craning to get an eyeful of the landlord’s wife when she walked past. I guess I should explain that our landlord isn’t quite 30, and his wife is a cute, shapely Malibu-type blonde. Joel tried to teach Nathan the fine art of discretely checking out a woman, but he’s only 12 after all, and doesn’t care if he gets caught or not.
After I did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, Nettl and I retreated upstairs to take a nap and when we woke up, we watched HGTV for a while, one of our favorite wastes of time.
Now I’m rambling on trying to think of something intelligent to say. It’s not happening. Maybe tomorrow.
