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Yesterday was the official start of the Girl Scout Cookie selling season in Rhode Island. A tiny little Brownie who lives across the street rang our bell (while her mother and younger sister and baby sister waited) with her order form. I quickly ordered two boxes of thin mints, a box of peanut butter cookies, and one box of some kind of coconut cookie (at my daughter's request). I might have been tempted to order more, but I thought one of my nieces would be selling them as well (besides which, there are lots of kids in this neighborhood). Well, it turned out that my niece has outgrown the Brownies and not signed up for the Girl Scouts, so when a Girl Scout rang our bell today I quickly ordered four more boxes from her (three boxes of thin mints and another box of peanut butter cookies). Later this afternoon, Nancy and I went for a walk. A few houses down the street we saw a young Brownie and her mom starting out on a cookie selling expedition. I told them that we were going out for a long walk and wouldn't be home when they got down to our house, but I would be happy to place an order right then. So I ordered three more boxes of cookies. Our walk today took us through the three-car-garage neighborhood ( My entry last Sunday 01/02/00 describes my neighborhood and the two adjoining neighborhoods.) Since I ran two miles on Friday and three on Saturday and plan to hit the Y at lunch time tomorrow, I figured that I could skip a run today and just enjoy our walk (especially since I was busy enough this afternoon that I would have had trouble fitting everything in otherwise). Had a slow morning -- I enjoy slow Sunday mornings -- got up, fed the cat, made coffee, read the Sunday paper with breakfast, sitting there with a second cup of coffee, reading section after section. Then I went online for a little while, check various email accounts and follow a heated debate that's been going on in a Yahoo club the past few days. Then back to the newspaper with another cup of coffee, clipping coupons, reading the supermarket ads. Usually Sunday means a major supermarket trip but I had done some shopping Friday night and had gone to a local produce store Saturday so I didn't need much today. I did a major cleaning and organizing of the refrigerator....not just one of those wipe off a shelf cleaning jobs, this was one of those empty it out completely and take the shelves out to wash them cleaning jobs. So now I have a nice clean refrigerator. Threw away a lot of junk... half empty jars of salsa sauce, wilting veggies, etc. Then Sean and I went out to run errands. As I was backing out of our driveway I could see a pair of Girl Scouts going door to door down our street. I was tempted to order more cookies but I wanted to get on with our errands. Hmmm, maybe Nancy ordered something from them, I never thought to ask her. Well, I'm sure that we will have another one or two young cookie peddlers come to our door before the cookie season is over. Stopped at the library to return some books and pick up some new ones. Jennifer and two of her friends were there, doing research for a project for their sociology class. She wasn't finding as much information as she wanted and I told her that if she wanted I would help her with the URI library. (Actually, I think that between what she's found on the Internet and what she got today, she has all that she needs.) Sean needs wrestling shoes. I had never realized that there was such a thing until he decided to go out for wrestling. There was not much of a selection at the sporting goods store in our local mall -- a grand choice of one model -- but the clerk suggested a store in Warwick. Normally I would first try the local running store where I buy all of my running shoes but I assumed that wrestling shoes were such esoteric item that he wouldn't carry them -- besides, he's not open on Sundays. Maybe I'll give him a call tomorrow just to check; if not, guess I'll have to take Sean up to Warwick some night this week. (It's not quite twenty-five miles each way.) Then we hit the supermarket to pick up some fresh fruit, milk, stuff for lunches, etc. I had two meals going at once in the oven -- porkchops and a turkey. The pork chops (boneless center cut, they'd been on sale the other day for $1.89 a pound!) were for tonight's dinner (plus enough extra to freeze for future use) along with baked potatoes, corn, peas, apple sauce, a salad and a loaf of fresh baked french bread (okay, so I cheated, it's one of those Pillsbury things). Later, when the turkey was done, I stored it in the refrigerator for tomorrow night's dinner (and also to be frozen for future meals). We tend to follow what I call Big City eating hours, not eating dinner until seven or eight o'clock most nights, sometimes even later. I guess that's really called if-Dad-doesn't-get-home-from-work-until-6:30 and starts cooking at a quarter to seven, then dinner is going to be fairly late. In other words, this is not one of those dinner is on the table at 5:30 on the dot every night households. I think that a late dinner hour is quite civilized, but I would like to have more time available in the evening after dinner... and now that Sean is going to be expending vast amounts of energy at wrestling practice every day after school, he will be coming home even hungrier than normal 14-year-old male appetites dictate... so I am trying to do enough advance preparation so that I can get dinner ready earlier, perhaps even have things set up so that Nancy could start to heat up something I've prepared ahead of time. Tonight, after getting the kitchen cleaned up from dinner, I cleaned and cut up carrots and celery and oranges, so now everyone's Monday lunches have some orange slices (and Sean has a lot of carrots and I have carrots and celery to go with our turkey sandwiches)... and my nice clean refrigerator has some plastic containers filled with carrots and celery sticks and orange slices all ready for use. Goodnight. |