My son and I had to play at church today for the Southwestern service. My son plays the trumpet. I play the clarinet. It was great fun! Of course, we had to get up this morning at 5:30 AM. Not so fun but you take the good with the bad. The good was the music and the fellowship. After the second service, we ran a few errands and then returned home.

My husband, who had been sleeping when we left the house in the morning, was up vacuuming. Unfortunately, when my husband decides to vacuum, he expects group participation. He doesn't like to see others not working when he is working. I often fall victim to this little bit of mania since I like to get up early to do all my daily chores while my husband is still in bed. Then he gets up and expects me to help him accomplish a completely different new list of chores.

This mania reminds me of a tale that my Grandmother used to tell us about how her sister and she were each given equal bags of candy. My Grandmother's sister would hurry to eat all her candy and then she'd expect my Grandmother to give her bits of her candy which my Grandmother had been saving savoring at a far slower pace. I suppose it is a bit of a jump to equate work with candy but somehow it seems to fit. I get up early so I can complete my chores and have a little time to enjoy with a book or a movie or the computer. My husband likes to sleep late and do his chores after breakfast...but he expects me to work on chores as if I had been sleeping all morning too (give him bits of my bits of candy).

So my son and I, having very little choice in the matter, started cleaning as things were either shoved into our arms or in response to, "Could you please get rid of that thing?" I then felt compeled to clean and clear off the countertops in the kitchen as well as the top of the stove because he was grumbling about what it would take to get the house ready so we could call a realtor. Apparently, while me and our son were at church, he was laying in bed thinking of all kinds of stuff that needed to bed done, immediately,though I don't think he actually started vacuuming until a few minutes before we walked back in the door at noon. As far as I'm concerned, my son and I had already been "working" since 5:30 AM and now we were supposed to work some more. And I hadn't even had the chance to more then put away the groceries. I was still in my church clothes.

I was just finishing up in the kitchen when I overhear my husband request about 30 minutes of our son's time. Alarm bells rang in my head. I go to check out the reason for this 30 minutes of time. My husband decided that this was a great time to drag the 20 foot ladder into our dining room so he could take the imported Italian chandelier down from the ceiling. We want to keep the chandelier so we can install it at our new home. This chandelier goes together and comes apart like a puzzle. A delicate puzzle made of handblown Murano glass. Each piece must come off and go on in a certain way or the whole thing could crash to the floor and shatter. Have you ever seen that game with the marbles supported by what looks like pickup sticks to me where each person must remove the rods that keep the marbles in place and yet not allow the marbles to drop? Every marble that falls counts against you. In the movie, The Man Who Knew Too Little, they were playing this game in one of the scenes. Great movie! After getting up at 5:30 AM, I had no desire to play this game and taking this chandelier down is a far more treacherous version of this game. One slip up and we'd lose a very valuable light fixture.

The chandelier came down and so far we have no breakage. I still have to wrap each of the pieces and pack them away until we're ready to install it again. I sure hope we can remember how this thing goes back together. I sure hope we haven't lost any pieces. I'm still in my church clothes. My husband just left to go pick up bubble wrap so I can wrap the individual pieces of the chandelier. I'm not sure if it's worth changing out of my church clothes at this point. They're all dusty and dirty. Maybe if I hurry up I can change into a clean non-church outfit that I can get all dusty and dirty too. Hopefully he won't decide that today is the day to clean and pack away all the outside planters.

Today's Little Bit of Trivia

If a desperate bride's stingy father refused to give his daughter a dowry, friendly townspeople would "shower" her with gifts, allowing her to marry the man that she wanted. This is the origin of the "bridal shower".