I was trapped at home today by someone who wasn’t at home. It was all done just in case.

Today was a school day, although I didn’t have a full day, but because our youngest has been feeling under the weather, I was told by She Who Must Be Obeyed to remain near the phone lest we get a call from the school telling us that our youngest was sick.

In that case, I’d have to drag my lazy self down to the elementary school and escort her back home and then stand “bowl and tissue” duty, in case she got really sick.

As a result, I found myself stuck at home with very little to do. After I did some obligatory work because the company I work for requires I develop stuff to use at the school where I work (yeah, it confuses and annoys me, too) I found myself with little to do.

Oddly, rather than my usual time wasting and game playing (too many links to link to, but here’s an example) I set about finishing winter cleaning on the variety room. This involved clearing a shelf of defunct textbooks and tossing my moldy copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses which I’d kept as a trophy after I finally finished reading it many years ago. (Long story.)

It also meant filing away some “just in case” denial with my old karate bag and karate DVDs. The DVDs are filed away and the bag is slowly being converted to an emergency kit bag.

The result is a clean shelf for She Who Must Be Obeyed to fill and better organized shelves in my Black Shelf Tower of Doom (more on that in another post). There’s still more to do, but that’s tomorrow’s task. There’s a lot more “just in case” denial stuff that needs to go.

But first there are some games to play. (I did that today, too…)

If I hadn’t done dishes yesterday and today, things might have been different.

Today, in a very rare occurrence, I wasn’t the only one who was lazy. However, perhaps for the first time ever, every member of the family was lazy. In fact, I’m surprised anyone left the house, although not surprised I didn’t.

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that I did dishes more than once. Usually I spread those chores around, however, because on normal Sundays I am, by any practical definition of the phrase, one step away from being bedridden, I thought it best that I do dishes to prove that 1) I am actually awake and 2) my legs work. As a result, I did dishes last night and then after breakfast and lunch today.

Rather than earning me hosannas and thank yous, these acts infected the other members of the family with my usual Sunday affliction.

Granted, there were a number of reasons for this. Our oldest was still recovering from her entrance exam and slowly getting back into study mode for both school and her next exam. Also, she did lunch dishes yesterday so I thought I’d go easy on her. Our youngest doesn’t do much on Sundays but is usually more active than she was today. It turns out she might be catching what She Who Must Be Obeyed had last week.

She Who Must Be Obeyed is recovering from a 24 hour bug that took 72 hours to get over. She ended up doing laundry, but it all had a casual “well, I’ll get it done eventually” feel rather than her usual “If I don’t get this done now it will burst into flames” attitude.

Tomorrow things should be back to normal. I’ll still, more than likely, be lazy, but at least everyone else will be active.

Today marks the 700th post in a row since I started this bit of blather and it will be a fairly short one as I’m about to argue with one of my daughters and won’t have time to do a retrospective.

She Who Must Be Obeyed is sick which leaves me in charge of cooking and cleaning in addition to my usual duties of issuing instructions, being ignored, enforcing instructions, becoming bad guy, etc.

I managed to get our youngest sent to bed although there is no actual evidence she brushed her teeth.

Our oldest is studying for a high school entrance exam this coming Friday and believes that exempts her from doing the handful of dishes from tonight’s supper. I will soon prove how mistaken she is, especially when she takes a break to check texts and Twitter on her tablet.

A few steps will then ensue:
–I will attempt Daddy Logic first by saying “Since you’re not doing anything, go wash dishes”.
–She will ignore me.
–I will raise my voice slightly.
–She will ignore me.
–I will raise my voice slightly more.
–She will, at this point, remove one earphone–the one farthest away from me–and say “What?” in a way that indicates how annoying I’m being.
–I will repeat my request.
–She will snap that it’s impossible because she’s busy.
–I will tell her not to talk to me like that.
–She will snap that she doesn’t understand what “that” means.
–I will promise to turn off the Wi-Fi hub and cut her off from the net if she doesn’t go do the dishes “right now”.
–She will react with a huff.
–I will tell her not to huff at me.
–She will deny that she huffed at me.
–I will repeat my promise to unplug the W–Fi hub if she doesn’t go do the dishes.
–She will pretend she doesn’t care about using the net and return to checking texts because “teen logic”.
–I will unplug the Wi-Fi hub.
–She will panic and go do dishes.

She will, however, neither dry anything nor put anything away.

I spent part of today smearing ink with my fingers. Just to be safe, I did it on two different pieces of paper. I also took a lot of pictures.

As part of my occasional quest to, on occasion, appear productive, I spent the afternoon taking pictures of a few things I plan to review. For a future ink review I had to track down a quote from This is Spinal Tap. That, of course, led me to spend some time watching clips from the movie.

I call this “research.”

After a half-hour or so of research, I then had to write out the quote on a piece of paper, and then draw a few lines and see how many seconds it took them to dry. The lines didn’t dry quickly and I ended up with inky fingers.

That prompted me to try a different piece of paper and then to dribble water over parts of the pages to see how the ink held up to water.

Luckily, no one in my family saw me do this so I didn’t have any ‘splainin’ to do. (Although part of me is curious to know what the reaction would have been so there may be more “ink testing” in the future.)

I now have to edit the pictures I took and decide what day I’m going to write the actual review.

Then there were pictures of pens and a valiant but ultimately failed attempt to catch up on a few daily projects I’ve been neglecting. Yeah, I know that catching up on daily projects in a single day means they are not, technically, daily projects, but I want to catch up on them in order to keep up with something resembling a habit.

The day ended with homemade cheesecake as we finally had a full day to finish celebrating our oldest’s birthday (we had the celebratory dinner yesterday. More on that in another post.)

Now I have to get to bed because I’m working tomorrow. Perhaps I need to double check the definition of “weekend”.

One of the things I liked about Mississippi was that it’s acceptable for a young gentleman to take his date to a gas station for a meal.

The funny part is, I never took my then girlfriend to a gas station for dinner. Instead I got her catfish in the back of a grocery store. I also tried to convince other people to go there.

As I understand it, this a common phenomenon in the South and stems partly from the fluctuation in oil and gas prices, the need for income diversity and an exploitation of the Southern love of automobiles.

Oddly, when I was in Oxford, I never went to a gas station for a meal and I consider that a terrible mistake. I was more prone to get fast food rather than go next door and get ribs and an oil check.

My favorite place, though, was Taylor Grocery, which is outside of Oxford, Ms and is accessed by a creepy tree-lined road where you keep expecting to see an in-bred kid playing a banjo and Bill McKinney telling you to “squeal like a pig”. (Although, technically, that’s the kind of thing that happens in Georgia.)

At the back of the tiny grocery store is a restaurant that serves terrific catfish and hush-puppies and, if I remember correctly, allows you to bring your own wine but not your own beer. You might have to wait in line and at some point are expected to write on the walls.

I also tried to convince Mom and Dad Two to try it, although that suggestion was met with skepticism. Mom Two is from Cape Cod and considers mushy fish to be either a form of bait or a form or garbage. Eventually they went and said they’d liked it.

Now, in Japan, the closest I get to a good meal in a gas station is a coffee shop in a gas station and the rest areas on the expressways.

It’s not quite the same, though.