the weekend's a bust

...pretty much. nothing's gone as planned. once again the chaos that is Loren's mom's house contributed to his not coming here this weekend. an entire weekend of time to spend with my son, down the tubes. for anyone that might not know, this time is pretty much the aim of everything i do- so what to do when it doesn't work out?

for me it boiled down to doing a buttload of chores. if i'm going to sit here by myself (not counting Chowder), i'm at least going to do it in a clean house. bathrooms are passably clean, kitchen's clean, living room, dining room....laundry done....windows passably clean, most of the dusting done. damn i sound like a proud housewife- but actually i just can't stand being mired in my own filth....that's not quite the same thing, i don't think.

Thursday Loren's last basketball practice was cancelled- i'm sure he was a little disappointed, since he was psyched for it. last practice of the season is kinda special, after all. needless to say, i didn't get to see him Thursday night either. wasn't all that annoyed with that, considering he was coming the next night for the weekend....but Friday night i drove out to Loren's mom's only to find out Loren wasn't coming. i left more than a little angry when i realized i'd not only made another trip up there for nothing, but Loren wouldn't even give me any kind of a straight answer about when he'd come the next day. serves me right for forgetting my cell phone, but the chances were slim that anyone would've picked up the phone had i had it and called; the extremely annoying trend lately is the lack of phone-answerage on their part. it's not a big deal for anyone but me- i'm the one that has to make unwarranted trips when there's no answer. in any case, Loren didn't really deserve the things that wanted to come out my mouth so i figured it was time to make tracks.

Saturday afternoon Loren's mom called me to tell me that the company that was the cause of Loren's decision not to come to my house was going home, and that she'd call me back in a little while to tell me when she'd bring Loren over. she never called back. can't say i was the least bit surprised. back to cleaning for ol' inf. thanks for the interruption- and for the reminder of what's buggin' me- now go away.

i trimmed the hydrangea bush back, and burned all the old brown flowers. a little gasoline helps immensely when you're trying to burn stuff. the hydrangea is pretty much the only thing i care about in the whole yard, it's beautiful when it blooms. it looked pretty sick in the middle of winter....hope it comes back decently this year. it'll prob'ly be ok. a year or two ago i noticed that the stalks contacting the ground grew roots, so i pushed a couple of the bottom branches down into the dirt and held 'em down with a couple big rocks. sure enough, it grew out and sprouted a couple new small bushes. should be interesting to see how they come in this year. they look like they're doing pretty well, maybe better than the remainder of the bush.

i also got the rearview mirror i bought (too long ago) installed on my truck. hopefully that will get me out of the ticket i got for not having one recently. much thanks to my dad for donating a (very) old drill, as the project would've been an exercise in futility without it. turns out the mirror, which was supposedly made to fit my truck) was the wrong type, but Yours Intrepidly managed to make it work. i don't give up all that easily. the truck's no fashion plate, so the mirror doesn't look too out of place on it. and hell, it'll be nice to have one again.

Saturday night was Loren's last basketball game of the season. he played decently in the time he got to be on the floor. they played against a team that was a fairly even matchup to them, not out of their league (literally) this time around. they lost by two points in OT. it could've gone either way, right up until the end. Loren's team jumped out to an early lead but the other team battled back by mid-way through the first half and it was close for the remainder of the game. none of the refs knew what to do when the game ended in a tie, and they decided on a 2 minute OT period. Loren was up for that- though he didn't get to see any action in the OT. all in all i think he was on the floor for less minutes than his effort and skills deserved, but that's not surprising considering the track record for the coaching staff the rest of the season. to their credit, they've been nothing but encouraging to him- and all the kids- and i think all the kids improved in skills throughout the season. here's hoping Loren finds another sport to sink his teeth into this season. love to see the boy play sports.

my folks came up to see Loren's last game, as did Loren's Aunt Melissa and Uncle Jason. my (basically) bad attitude toward Loren's chances of coming for the remainder of the weekend colored the evening a little worse for everyone, for which i'm properly ashamed. in the end, Loren decided to go with his mother- which surprised me not at all, considering the same company he stayed at her house to be with in the first place was still there- and staying the night again.

i screwed around too long before the game for us to make dinner beforehand, so after the game my folks took me out to dinner at a Mexican place down the street from here, decent food but not the best. service wasn't as good as usual either. kinda fit with the whole progression of events though. afterwards we went back to my place for a cup of coffee before they headed home. always nice to spend time with my folks.

i didn't have a lot of energy left so i worked on updating the stats for my NBA fantasy team and setting my lineups, etc., then hit the hay.

this morning i've been hangin' out, read the email, played with Chowder. been listening to a lot of music on Rhapsody radio. they make somewhat-customized radio stations based around pretty much any artist included in their offerings, so i added a bunch of stations based around guys like Joe Satriani, Pat Metheny, Al DiMeola...all the interesting guitar gods. right now i'm jammin' to the Joe Satriani station. there's certainly a lot of music included which doesn't float my banana, but skipping past songs you don't like (or don't fit with what you're trying to get) is part of fun. and you can always change the station and change back to sort of refresh the whole thing. discovered a guitarist called Buckethead (the bucket he wears is a KFC bucket....go figure)- the guy's interesting.

Loren's got a post-season basketball shootout thing this afternoon. it's sort of a shooting competition and the last man standing wins Sonics tickets. Loren didn't do very well last year, but i think he has a shot this time around- his shooting's a lot better than it was last year.

and now we're up to date, so- duty fulfilled- i'm outta here. time to to squeeze something out of this day before starting another work-week grind.