The Elephant in the Room and Other Stuff

Remember I mentioned I had ordered a roll of batting? Well, it arrived!

When I found out this past week it would be delivered on Friday, I thought maybe I should break it to Hubby ahead of time, so we had THE TALK on Wednesday evening. "Uh, honey? Just so you know, you'll probably come home on Friday from work to find a large box of batting on the front porch." "How large?," he asked. "Uh, you know, the size of a roll of batting. I don't know exactly. 30 yards. UPS says it's 50 pounds." He actually took it surprisingly well, although he was slightly concerned I may want to store the batting in the garage. No way! There's icky stuff out there that would probably be happy to take up residence in a roll of batting!

Actually, he laughed for quite awhile, making jokes about stuff like "parking" the box in the driveway and having the Boy Child spray paint it to look like a car.

Anyway, it's here. It's in the Boy Child's former bedroom. I still don't know where I'll put it, but it's not going in the garage, nor will it be painted to look like a car. And oddly enough, Hubby was a little disappointed it wasn't LARGER. I think he was making up stories in his head to tell the guys at work about his crazy wife and what he has to put up with!

Tomorrow--Sunday--is Hubby's birthday. Poor guy's getting kinda old! I made him a paperweight using, in part, a photo of him and his older brother when they were kids. His older brother is a cop, so I couldn't resist a donut joke. Hubby loves it! I've taken a couple photos to share but none of them turned out that well--the light and/or flash seems to distort the photo more than it does in "real life," but here's one of the photos anyway:

(I've put one of the other photos in the sidebar--that one's darker; the real life one is somewhere in between.) To celebrate Hubby's birthday, we went out to dinner with his sister Kathy and our friends, Terry and Lisa, to a fabulous Chinese restaurant where we dined on the patio. The weather was wonderful except for the less-than-clear skies--the smoke from the fires wasn't as bad today as it has been, but it will be awhile before we see blue skies again.

Lisa brought birthday napkins, candles, and noisemakers (good thing we were sitting outside!) as well as a gift of yummie cookies! Kathy gave Hubby a photo of himself and Ashley, one of our dogs that had to be put to sleep last fall. At the end of our meal, the restaurant brought the birthday boy a large piece of banana cream pie, and I realized that although I had my camera with me, I had forgotten to take any photos! I kept yelling, "WAIT! WAIT!," so I could take a photo, but everyone was trying so hard not to stab each other in the hand with their forks that I don't think they paid any attention to me. But I DID manage to get a photo of a half-eaten piece of banana cream pie.

Of course we went to Starbucks after dinner. No get together would be complete without a trip to Starbucks. And since Starbucks is next to Borders, we eventually wandered into the bookstore, where I bought this:

And this:

And I also picked up these from the grocery store and the thrift store earlier today:

The thrift store one looks a little racey, doesn't it? Nothing like a hip-cocked cowboy standing over a woman on the ground, huh? Actually, the guy looks a little gay, doesn't he? Brokeback Mountain maybe?! Hubby's been reading the Dean Koontz Odd Thomas series, so I bought him the newest book, Odd Hours, for his birthday.

Thanks for all your reading recommendations! I think I'm set for awhile now, but if you think of anything else I need to read, please DO let me know! And thanks for stopping in to visit!