Copious Free Time

4:13pm: life skills
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Today was another day of box wrangling, which includes sorting boxes, stacking boxes, putting things in boxes, taking things out of boxes, and heaving boxes around. I sorted some stuff in the attic and then rearranged the boxes to look neater. I sorted some magazines. I cycled some dishes and laundry. I straightened the living room just a tiny bit. I looked at my watch, and it wasn't saying anything. It was not 100% blank, but the numbers only showed if I angled it the right way. It was still keeping time, and it beeped if I pressed the right button, but it was just a bit less useful than I like my watch to be.

So I hied me off to a well-known electronics chain to see about a new battery. The young woman at the counter asked if I could open it, so I borrowed screwdrivers (flathead to unfasten the pin holding the watch to the strap, and phillips to unscrew the back). I carefully stowed the tiny screws in the lid of the screwdriver case. There was some perplexity about how to get the battery out, even when it was open. I borrowed a magnifying glass and figured out how to do it. She brought me a new battery, and I paid for it before proceeding, to spare myself the embarrassment of forgetting.

I got the battery in, pressed the tiny switch indicated by a sticker inside the case, and started putting it all back together. The second screw dropped from the watch to the counter, a distance of about two inches, after which it was never seen again. I spent some time inspecting the counter, crawling on the floor, patting myself down, and running my hands over the rug. The clerk even found a magnet and we tried passing that over the area where I suspected it might be, but to no avail.

While this was going on, the counter person called somebody. "I know somebody's there," she said. "Pick up the phone. Pick it up." I was interested enough in this to note that somebody did pick up, then I resumed my watch surgery. A few moments later, she reacted to something she heard on the phone. It was clearly bad news. Trying not to pry, I looked at her back as she hung up and tried not to sob, without success. She retreated to the back room, where the older guy talked to her a bit. I don't know what they said.

I left without finding the screw, though I found a penny in my searching. I told the guy I had an older watch at home that I'd saved for just such a reason. I stopped on the way in to go back to the corner and excavate the "for sale" sign that points to our house from the snowdrift the plows had buried it in. Then I searched through the last place I'd seen one of my old watches, having no success. I ended up finding a pair of sunglasses with tiny screws in them, and one of them did the trick.

Then I synchronized my watch to the clock that keeps atomic time, just in time to go get Sarah from the bus. She has candy and a cookie from today's valentine exchange at her school. She let me have a bite of the cookie, and two little candy hearts.

One more day to prepare for the weekend. We'll be at Boskone, and the agent will be showing the place several times while we're out. I have to make the place look really appealing somehow.

Next week is Sarah's "Winter Vacation," which means she'll be home every day. This might be my last entry. Cathy will be around on Monday, then after that, it's just Sarah and me. Well, there'll be a plumber to look at stuff and make an estimate on some watery items, but only for a little while, and helping me keep my sanity isn't part of his job description.

ps: Now the numbers on the watch look just the tiniest bit crooked, like they've been rotated one half of one degree. Not enough to warrant taking it apart again, but enough to bug me when I think about it.
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10:32pm: party girl
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Sarah had a pretty good birthday. It helps that her birthday was on "sushi day," so after she was home long enough to pick up the loot (Spirograph, lightup hula hoop, video journal, and Yoshi's Island for the DS), we went to Oishi and did pretty much what we do every other Friday. Sarah had miso soup, a veggie roll (a couple of pieces of it, anyway), three pieces of shrimp, and a share of Cathy's soba, plus green tea ice cream afterward. She was able to use her chopsticks unaided (by the standard device of rubber-banding them together around a rolled-up paper axle), because her teacher taught the class some about the sticks in honor of Chinese New Year. We also gave Mr. Dong the news that we'd be moving. He is Sarah's "sushi friend" and she always looks forward to seeing him on those alternate Fridays.

Saturday was fairly normal.

Sunday morning, Sarah and I had breakfast and then went by the grocery store to pick up her Kim Possible cake. We also got some sodas, which turned out to be unneeded, as the bowling alley provided drinks at the party. We gathered stuff up and headed over a bit early, just in case. As we pulled up, Sarah said, "Do we have the goodie bags?" We didn't, so I drove back home and got them, along with the unopened bag of candy that had been in the cupboard since the end of October, to add some sugary goodness to the goodies.

When I got there, kids were already bowling up a storm. I stuffed goodie bags. Then, having missed my regular bowling time, I rented a lane and bowled two games by myself. I rolled two strikes along the way, but about half the times I rolled, I ended up in a gutter. So much for my first time without bumpers in 30 years. I ended up with about 100 points less than I got last week. I did something I'd been meaning to for a while -- got two balls so I wouldn't have to wait as long between rolls.

Sarah had a great time. Three of her worlds were represented: school friends, neighborhood friends, and the ones she's known the longest, Molly and Emily and Madison, three of her friends who were also adopted from China. I helped light birthday candles and took pictures when I wasn't socializing with other parents. I spent the most time talking to Neil and Karen, parents of Colin. I worked on a slice of pizza and allowed as how now I had tasted bowling alley pizza and could retire any trace of curiosity I had about that. (Once you've had bowling alley food, you'll never go back to bus station food.)

Sarah opened presents with gusto. She seemed most thrilled with a bulky plastic device that goes around her arm and fires five different projectiles inspired by Spider-Man's webbing. There's a nerf dart, plastic missiles, three plastigoop web thingies, a water squirter, and (most interesting to her) a spray can of what you and I might call Silly String. She wanted to play with that right away, but the wind was kind of brutal for a while, and she had to delay that pleasure. She tried, though. She was outside for a while, feeding grey spray string to the voracious zephyr.

So she had a pretty good birthday event, which went on for days. Even after the party, she was still getting more stuff in the mail (her grandma had a date written on her calendar that was three days late). She managed to keep the living room floor pretty evenly covered with presents for at least a couple of days, despite our efforts to keep cleaning the stuff up.

I suspect that the attention she got from her birthday and from Valentine's Day (more candy loot along with the valentines at school) has given her second thoughts about moving. Tonight she told me she doesn't want to move to another state and leave her friends. I know how she feels, but that ship has sailed.
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