Painting the Town Red

My house is quiet. Jace left on Saturday night for a ski trip in Taos, New Mexico. I keep expecting him to, at any minute, pop out of his bedroom and say, "Hey, Mom. I'm hungry." I spoke with him briefly yesterday as they arrived late morning and he was busily meeting kids and figuring out what this week will look like. Here's hoping he can let go of his inner Eoyore and find a little Tigger in that head of his.

I heard recently -- I can't remember where -- that the author of the Winnie the Pooh series based the characters off of people in his own life. Clarissa, who has the office next to me, recently asked me about my kids' personalities. "That's easy," I quipped. "Savana is Rabbit, Darian is Winnie the Pooh, and Jace is Eoyore."

And there you go.

Roy and I decided that Sunday would be "our" day. We were going to live it up, paint the town red, experience what life has to offer. First of all, we intended to eat at a new restaurant -- somewhere brand new.

And so, Roy began to research online while I texted nearby friends to learn their favorites. Pretty much? We came to the realization that everyone has their own taste in restaurants and others' tastes don't match ours. Furthermore, anything new and intriguing sounded far beyond our budget. When it came to new and different...I would have enjoyed a fondue restaurant; that's a little too out there in Roy's opinion. French? Definitely not. Indian? No. Mexican? Let's try something new...we ALWAYS eat Mexican.

We settled for Red Lobster as Roy was craving seafood.

Red. Lobster.

Tried and true. Been there, done that more times than I can count.

Afterwards, we talked about going to a movie, or walking around downtown, seeing the sites...

Roy suggested swinging by HEB and picking up a few groceries that we needed for the week to get us by.

And so we did.

Afterwards? I remembered that I needed a few items from Walmart as I was running low on hair product and such.

We went to Walmart.

By now, it was around 2:30. "Do you want to go see a movie?" Roy asked.

I scrunched my nose.

"Me neither," he laughed and we headed for home. We unloaded our groceries, put them away, and then Roy headed out to his shop to work on who knows what project while I sat on the porch and threw the ball for Piper.

That, my friends, was our Big Day Out On The Town Painting It Red.

Last night as we were getting ready for bed, Roy said, "When we are all settled and all of our projects are done, we will go experience what life has to offer in this area."

I shook my head. "No. We won't. We will still be us. We will still be eating at Red Lobster or the local Mexican restaurant and then coming home to work in the shop and sit on the porch. Because that's who we are and that's what we do."

"No," Roy argued. "It will be different when we don't have projects to finish around here."

Let me introduce you to Roy. Roy is the man of the endless project. He has never ever in the course of his life NOT had a project. He could be named Project.

But that's ok.

And so, I let him dream. I let him believe that someday we will, in fact, get out of our box and do something different, unexpected -- something on the crazy side.

But until then...well, I'll just hang on my porch and throw the ball for Piper. For Piper? He is living the dream.

And frankly, it's not such a bad life for me, either.