Busy spring weekend

Wow! It’s been a busy two weeks. Time to catch up.

Mrs. Poolman is half way through a two-step cataract surgery sequence. The first surgery was last week; the second next week. She is having new “multifocus” lenses implanted in each eye.  In addition to replacing the clouded lenses, the multifocus lenses will allow her to see without glasses or contacts for the first time since she was five years old. She is very excited.

We had a busy time last weekend. We were sitting around Friday night when we got a call from Poolboy. It seems he wanted to go out and party with his friend Ronnie. Unfortunately, Ronnie had not cleared his plans with his wife, Kate. Turns out Kate had separate plans also. The problem is the third member of the family is four month old Tommy.

“So do you think you guys could babysit Tommy for a few hours this evening?”

This actually isn’t as much of a stretch as it may sound. The mom, Kate, is one of Writer Princess’s closest friends and Kate has been hanging around our house since she was in middle school. She and Ronnie recently bought a house just a couple of blocks away from ours. ­­_­­­­She is well aware that when it comes to taking care of babies, Mrs. P is a legitimate pro (neonatal ICU nurse), and I’m a “gifted amateur.”

Mrs. P, Tommy and two of the furry ones who were fascinated by the little one.

We had a great time with Tommie. He is a real cutie with a very nice personality. I’m just sorry we didn’t have him a little longer.

On Saturday, we took off to shop second-hand shops for a set of dining chairs for Writer Princess and Son-in-Law. We had a nice lunch out; found the chairs; and even found an office desk for me. We found this desk at Goodwill.

The Goodwill desk

The finish is bad, but it seems structurally sound. WP swears she has a paint that will stick to anything. We’ll see.

Our plan on Sunday was for massive amounts of outside work. We are just coming to the time of year here in Savannah when massive amounts of biomass falls in our back yard, courtesy of this oak tree.

The oak tree is great during the summer, but a pain in the spring.

We really can’t do much fixing up for summer until the fall of leaves and seed pods stop. So I mowed the lawn, cleaned the pool, cleaned the solar blanket and put it on the pool, and raked, swept and cleaned up about a ton of leaves.

Unfortunately, this was a solo effort. Mrs. P had gone to run a couple of errands, and when standing at the vegetable stand, “fell out” of her flip-flops. She went down like a bag of wet cement (according to her.) The real damage was to her toe, which may or may not be fractured, but is definitely in bad shape.

Ouch!

She spent the rest of the day on the couch with her foot propped on the coffee table.

I don’t know what we will accomplish this weekend, but we’ll give it a shot. We’re trying to get the “heavy lifting” done before the pool and beach season begins, so we can kick back and not worry about major projects during the summer.

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We love our Goodwill store!

The store opened in a strip-mall in our part of town several years ago.

I don’t think we had visited it at all until a good friend and neighbor called Mrs. Poolman to say that she had been in the store and saw an entire set of our everyday stoneware dishes. Mrs. P ran right up to the store, but they were already gone. When Mrs. P mentioned to our friend that she wasn’t quite fast enough, the friend said, “Well, that was a week ago that I saw them.” Oops!

Now, hardly a week goes by that one of us doesn’t stop in for a quick survey. (Yes, we always check out the dishes first.) Over the last year or two, we have picked up some outstanding bargains at rock-bottom prices.

I had been looking for a desk chair for my home office. I found one identical to the one I have at work for $10.

Poolboy moved into a new apartment and didn’t have any lamps. I found two brass lamps for $3 each. They cost another dollar for the shade, and about $1.50 to replace the switch in one of them.

For the past several months, Mrs. P and I have been going back and forth over what to do about a freezer for our garage. We had inherited an old stand-up freezer from her parents that was so old, no one can remember when it was originally bought. It finally bit the dust a few months ago. We didn’t really want to spend a ton of money on a new full size freezer or even a combo refrigerator-freezer. I suggested a small chest-freezer which we could pick up at Sam’s Club for under $200. Mrs. P vetoed that for a number of reasons. So we have been at a stalemate.

A week or so ago, we dropped into Goodwill for our weekly survey, and, lo and behold, there was a refrigerator-freezer in the back of the store. It had no price tag or sold-sign. The manager said we could have it and quoted a price under $50.

The next day, I borrowed my friend Robin and his pick-up truck and carried the refrigerator to its new home. I plugged it in; placed a cup of water in both the refrigerator and freezer compartments; and held my breath. Two hours later both were frozen solid. Clearly, we need to adjust the thermostat, but the important thing is that it works!

I hope it is happy in its new home, because I know we’ll be happy with it.