I Did Not Have Fun In Uranus! | How Much Did I Spend Last Week? April 8-14, 2024
…and other frankly vulgar puns.
Once again, there is no audio for today’s post. I’m sorry… but when you see how long it is you’ll understand. (I’m still taking a daily inhaler and my breathing is still probably at around 50% of full power.) I’m sorry. I can’t. Don’t hate me.
It’s not every day you go to a town called Uranus, and it’s not every day you visit their fudge factory – and let me tell you, THANK GOD, because that was the least enjoyable experience of my life. You’ll see.
Monday
Atlas is off to Robin’s today, where I drop him off at around 8am and she tells me they have a pretty low kid count today thanks to the eclipse. Oh, I think, giving everyone far too much credit (and also feeling a tad guilty, I’ll admit), they must be keeping their kids home to watch the eclipse. “I’ve heard a lot of people say they’re not leaving the house today, just in case,” she says, ominously.
Ah, just in case… If I wasn’t in America, I’m not sure I’d know about this, but a lot of Americans seem to think that today’s full solar eclipse (well, 99.9% in Fort Wayne, 100% about an hour’s drive from here, which seems like far too much work) marks the moment of the onset of apocalypse, and as such, they have stocked their cupboards with canned goods and are bedding down for the day.
Another friend of ours has a son who’s preparing for a full-on Doomsday scenario. “At first, we were a bit worried he was going overboard,” she tells me, “But then I thought, well, if everything goes to shit I’ll know where to go for food!” Finding the bright side, indeed.
Once Atlas is happily ensconced in Robin’s, chowing down enthusiastically on Pop Tarts and pushing his apple sauace away from him with great disdain (this child has become very fussy and I have no idea what to do about it), I head home to begin… well. To begin the world’s worst task.
Once again, I have to try to capture a “sample” (ugh) of Vinny’s wee in a Tupperware container, so that I can drive 30 minutes across town to the vet we’ve always gone to (but honestly I am considering switching from because who has the time to drive 30 minutes each way every 10 days), to check said sample to see if Vinny’s UTI has been cured.
The last time I tried this, Vinny decided that, after each and every little pee he did in the garden – and he likes to do several each morning, dotting his trail around the grass like some kind of sick ode to Hansel & Gretel – he was going to kick his back leg out like an angry little donkey, and succeeded, not once, but twice, in kicking the container out of my hand.
Not today, Satan.
Prepared for his kicking, I manage to get the pee on my first try, and high-tail it back into the house to put the airtight lid on my little container of poison and scrub my hands until they chafed.
I then decide that I may as well go over to Veterinary Services right away – this is partially because I wasn’t sure what to do with the pee, once I’d got it. Should it be refrigerated? Kept at room temperature? Would the… I don’t know, the cells that indicate the presence of a UTI be damaged by exposure to sunlight? None of these were questions I wanted to call and ask, or even Google, terrified of what targeted ads I’d inevitably receive as a result.
So I drive over to the surgery while listening to podcasts – probably Miss Me? and The Rest is Entertainment, two of my current faves – and hand over my little container, then proceed to wait almost 50 minutes for the result. It turns out that they’re closing at noon for the eclipse (see!), so the morning is busier than usual.
Good news! Vinny’s UTI is pretty much gone, and I’m sent on my merry way with instructions to keep an eye on his behaviour for a recurrence. ($45.50)
I’m honestly still not really sure what behaviour I’m looking out for, because he’s always been a very enthusiastic marker, and the main tip-off we had that he had a UTI in the first place was when he started marking inside the house (something that resulted in us having to clean the entire downstairs carpet, and throw out the expensive cat tree, which Mel Brooks would no longer go near, the sensible thing).
I get home at around noon and start tidying the kitchen – my sister once told me that the detritus on my kitchen counter (piles of crap which, no matter how often I tidy up, somehow reappears by the end of every day) stress her out, and as she’s coming over later to watch the eclipse, I am determined to impress her with my cleanliness – and then sit down to do an hour’s work before she and a few of her boys arrive to watch from my back garden. (Her back garden is basically a garden inside a forest, so she thinks visibility will be better in mine.)
I bake scones from a scone kit I was sent by a lovely, lovely friend – I know I can make them from scratch, and I have done so, but I swear to God the flour in America is different because they never quite turn out right – and we watch the eclipse before tucking into some scones with jam and whipped cream, and then the visiting eclipse-hunters head home while I go and pick Atlas up.
When Brandin and the boys get home we have a bit of a back and forth about what to have for dinner – we really need to start making a meal plan, if just for Mondays and Tuesdays, when the boys are with us, because we frequently end up having two options (pasta or pizza), and today we have just one (pasta) as we’ve no cheese – and ultimately decide to order from Papa John’s, which the boys say is their new favourite because they love their barbecue wings. ($67.76)
Fellow parents will recognise what happens next: we spend the guts of $70 on dinner, and when the barbecue wings are opened, they are pronounced “not the same” and we are asked, several times, “Are you sure these are barbecue? These taste spicy. I don’t like them.” I have never quite felt a rage like it.
For my part, I eat garlic knots and some pepperoni pizza (Brandin got the extra thin base and why is he like this?!) and some of the baby’s cheese pizza (he’s the happiest baby you’ve ever seen, loves any and all pizza) and then we do baths and reading and bedtime.
Once everyone’s locked away in their rooms (not quite, but I have occasionally been tempted), Brandin makes some decaf and I sit down to read my book while he watches TV.
In case you missed what I’ve been reading lately:
Daily total: $113.26
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