I woke-up this morning with bad onion breath. Sarah and I had taken stock of our spending habits in a minor joint panic attack on Friday night after a dinner at Vintage in West Roxbury that cost over a buck fifteen. We self prepared a thrifty taco dinner last night. Initially we forgot the onion at the local Stop and Shop but I made a special run on my bicycle back to the market to pick-up one good looking white onion. We split it in half diced for the meal and I probably ate a third of it along with my tacos and salad. The bicycle was handy because we had to move the bikes out of the basement where they were fumigating for mice and they were going to throw out anything in the basement in the morning. I ate a big second portion of the taco stuff because Sarah had gone into the kitchen to see a mouse run away from the counter top. The mouse was probably a refugee from the fumigation. They don’t normally bother to come to our apartment on the second floor both because there isn’t much food and because it is easier for them to hide, nest, and munch on garbage in the basement. So I ate the taco mix in fear of the possible terrible diseases that a mouse could cause for a pregnant wife balanced against my extreme love of taco meat and extreme fear of food wastage. I’m going to wait a few days to see whether it is worth declaring war on the mouse population. For now we cleaned up any scraps that might interest the vermin.

We spent the day catching-up on sleep after a session of apartment work with Sarah’s parents. They had come over to do things like set the dimmer boxes better in the holes in the wall, put together the bed, and help to add to our window coverings. I managed to use the time to put the second high tech shade up in Madeline’s room. Sarah had changed her mind that she wanted curtain rods back in Madeline’s room so I needed to put them back in. We also spent some time putting a shelf above the desk in the bedroom and used the laser level that Sarah’s parents bought me last year during the holiday season. It wasn’t very helpful since level is a relative term in an old Brookline apartment and level with the floor, ceiling, desk, whatever is just a matter of making something look level. It is always fun to play with lasers.

I was doing fine until we moved on to putting a valence over the shades and curtains already in the bedroom. A valence is a decorative piece of fabric that is used to piss off men who want nothing to do with putting shades and other crap up on their window. It was the harder of the many items to put onto the window so I got stressed out about it and was ready for a six hour nap by the time Sarah’s parents left.

The nap was going ok until Sarah decided to read my high school yearbook. It is almost impossible to ignore your wife when she is paging through old pictures of you, your friends, and possible past crushes and lovers. So I took Sarah through the yearbook. With the yearbook and past relationships all stirred-up in my mind we rented Grosse Pointe Blank to watch while we ate our tacos.

It was a good day in the end including sleep, cheap food, hiding out in our little world, and some productive work.