The Mango Men in the Park

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Our day turned out rather free-form, even for us. The girls did wait until 7:30 a.m. to wake us up and mom, though tired, was able to get out of bed, get dressed, come to the kitchen, and eat her own breakfast. She does seem to be getting stronger as the effects of the antibiotic begin to wear off.

Yesterday, when we were leaving the zoo, my passenger-side car door would not open. As tired as I was, I climbed through the driver's seat and over the console in our Honda Pilot to get into my seat, and then had to climb back out again when we arrived home. I had not mentioned that when Beth came over early the day of the picnic, she asked if we were aware that our car window had been shattered. Before we went to the picnic, Saul spent an hour vacuuming up glass with his shop vac, finding nary a trace of anything that could account for the breakage. We had uncharacteristically left it out of the garage and unlocked. Not a dime was missing from the coin holder. It appears to have just shattered by itself. Saul was able to arrange for the glass to be replaced in Norristown and left us at the picnic for about 2 hours to take care of it. When the door lock jammed at the zoo, we assumed a piece of glass fell into the wrong place. This morning, first thing, Saul offered to bring the car back to Norristown, but they said they were too busy and that they would send someone out to our home to repair it between 12 and 5 p.m. today.

Our whole day changed from minute to minute. We had decided to go to the swim club if the weather warmed up, but when we came out of Costco after buying milk and orange juice and getting the girls pizza for lunch, we got caught in a huge downpour. We had decided on the next rainy day to take them to see Kung Fu Panda, but we had to wait for the repairman. The girls watched Thumbelina and The Jetsons, which I had recorded on TIVO for them. I dozed off for an hour, and Larry Shipper stopped by to return Saul's wedding ring which he had kept during the colonoscopy and forgotten to return. The repairman showed up about 3:45 p.m. and was really ticked off at his co-workers because he didn't have the proper tools to fix the door which needed to go to the shop based on what Saul had said was wrong in the first place. First thing tomorrow, hopefully, it will be repaired at the shop.

My work finally came in and I worked on the computer for several hours while Saul supervised the girls riding their bikes and got dinner together. I had to shut down the computer as a large thunderstorm hit just as they were all sitting down to dinner around 5:30 p.m. The Wednesday concert in the park was scheduled for 7:00 p.m. and we were sure it would be cancelled. As we were finishing dinner about 6:30 p.m. the sun started to peek through the clouds. Fifteen minutes later, we decided to ride by the park to see for sure whether the concert had been postponed, fully expecting that it would. To our surprise, The Mango Men were setting up their equipment, brushing some of the puddles away with a broom. The concert began a half hour late, but we really enjoyed the Jimmy Buffet-style music in the unusually chilly, but clear evening. At one point, they organized a limbo line for the children in front of the grandstand--great fun! Some of the photos were taken by Izzy and Sami. Izzy took the very close-up photo of Sami's mouth. Sami is about to lose a baby tooth and has been playing with wiggling it all day. She let Saul try to remove it with dental floss when we returned this evening, but it is still not 100% ready to come out.

After tucking the tired, but happy, twosome into bed, I spent another few hours on the computer, hopefully finishing the publication and sending it to the printer tomorrow so I can finally be done with it.