Another week down...

Here I am on another Monday. Days and weeks of my life are just ticking away. I survived yet another crazy week, and this one may possibly be a bit quieter... I hope! (Until the weekend, that is.) Monday night we did not have much success at all at Home Depot. We liked the table set, but wanted to look around some more. We found none of the other items on our list. Instead, we decided to go for dinner at El Vaquero, quickly realizing it was Cinco de Mayo... boo! never mind that. So, we ate at Shane's Rib Shack instead - very good! Then we made a Target run to look at their home and garden goodies. I found a trellis for my clematis there and then we bought a canvas doggy travel crate for Brutus. We thought, wouldn't this be the most awesome thing ever to cart to my parents' house if we could get him to not tear it up!? Well, tearing it up isn't the problem, but getting him to go in it is... That's a work in progress.

On Tuesday, I worked on chores and errands. I attached my clematis to the trellis... very... carefully. Then, I cleaned the piles upon piles of dishes we had accumulated and carelessly left laying around. Yeah, that's a good clue about how my week was... My next job was to stop at the bank. I got a business checking and savings account set up and business credit cards on the way. Yay! I applied for a vendor's license and an employee ID number. I should be all set to go now. After a long time at the bank, I had a ton of groceries to purchase. I found so many new things I wanted to try - P.S. frozen cinnamon "Bagel-fuls" are awesome! I did so much shopping that I was 30 minutes late for work at PetSmart! Oops! After work, Adam had surprised me by purchasing and assembling (in the dark) the patio set I wanted. Then, Adam and I watched a DVRed American Idol - wonderful!

Wednesday I taught my usual classes in the morning with a potty training lesson for THE cutest beagle puppy ever! Right after work there, I headed to CSCC for extra hours. We were sooooooooo not busy on Wednesday, so my office mate and I talked plants, shrubs, trees, and flowers. I planned what I was going to buy to help landscape around our deck. It was a rainy bummer night again, so we just watched Idol, when justice was served. Bye, bye, Jason!

Thursday was another long, boring work day. Not much happened again. That night (as I had every other night this week) I continued to edit the graduation photos. Finally, I finished them LATE Thursday night. Friday I got up early to do some chores and post the photos. I feel pretty good about them. I got an email Saturday morning from my client who said "The photos looked GREAT." I guess that's a good sign. Friday was again a yucky day, I worked for a few hours, and then, I got home uber-late due to an accident up north on I-71. It took me an hour and a half to get home! Then we had a greasy finger-food dinner, beer, and watched "Into the Wild." It was a good movie. It was long, and depressing, but it made you think a lot.

Saturday morning, I tried to sleep in, but wasn't too successful because the neighbors were having a garage sale and the doggies were greeting all the shoppers through our open windows. Adam was at work for a few hours and then the gym and the weather was beautiful. So, I used that time to get some work done. I caught up on all the dishes, a little bit of laundry, I cleaned the grill, mowed the front and backyard, and sprayed the weeds. By that time, Adam came home and I was ready to shop for plants! We headed down the road to Oakland and dropped a load of cash. I was thrilled with my plant selection and the fact that I had coupons! I thought we got quite the deal. So, Adam ended up digging up the grass around the front of the deck and flipping it. Then he dug a trench for the plastic bed liner. While he was doing this, I planted my potted New Guinea Impatients (my favorite annual flower) and assembled our patio swivel chairs. Then I planted our new shrubs along the front - a red and pink double knockout rose bushes, two little princess spirea bushes, and a dwarf korean lilac bush in the center. The lilac caught my attention because it smells SO good! We mulched everything and all was good. By that time, we had to stop for a dinner break. Adam cooked burgers, corn on the cob, and steak kabobs on our grill on the deck for the first time! Then, it was back to work. We had bought another Rose of Sharon tree to accent the side bed next to our deck. We extended the bed against the house out to the deck stairs. This time we got a Minerva variety of tree. It will be pretty! It started to get dark, so after we got the tree planted, we ended the night. I still need to buy another bush for that bed, so we left it as-is for now. I got some DQ for us and then we took a nice long bubble bath. We started to watch SNL in bed, but I fell asleep.

Lilac:

Roses:

The Full Bed:New Guineas:
Our "Big Helpers":

Sunday I had to work my LAST Sunday at PetSmart - wooohhooooo! Hip hip horray! It was an eventful one, too. I just thought it was a normal, dreary day, and out of nowhere, the vet tech was asking for the store manager because supposedly a tornado was on its way! Yipes! A few minutes later, there was word that it was seen about a tenth of a mile from our store (not sure that that was true) so we had to have all the customers (dogs and all) and employees take shelter in our breakroom). I was determined that if I was going to die, I was going to see what was going to kill me, but I saw nothing. Then we were released and I heard the funnel cloud was headed straight for our house where our doggies were home alone! I was worried, but Adam was in Dayton and had no idea what was going on. Needless to say, everyone and everything survived, thankfully. I taught my last two class graduations and was on my way out of that place. It was still drizzling, but I had my scheduled my second official photo shoot for that evening. My co-worker and her daughter wanted some nice Mother's Day photos and some "glamour-shots" for her daughter's e-Harmony profile. :) We still decided to meet at the park and it started raining harder. So, we agreed to start taking pictures under the picnic shelter, which worked well. Then, sure enough - it stopped raining for us! We got lots of great shots in. I think the puddles helped add to the scenery. It was a lot of fun. After the shoot, they invited me over for a family dinner. All the food was delicious, and I tried baked beans for the first time ever, and loved them!

Sunday night I got home around 8pm and Adam still wasn't home. He had gone home for Mother's Day on my behalf and also picked up my parents' old carpet and couch for our basement. (Free stuff is good!) He crashed as soon as he got home and ate dinner. I decided to start editing the photos. Sure enough, I stayed up REALLY late and got them all finished in one sitting! They look great! I'm excited about them. It's fun to take portraits when you have good looking models. :)

Now, I'm sleepy this morning. It's slow. Marilyn loved their pictures. Did I mention that I'm tired? Thank goodness I have no editing to do tonight, though! I'm just going to work on getting our house in order.