Bella reminded us last night that she had a gig at Barnes & Noble tonight, and we still had no way of getting her bass home from school, or taking it to B & N this evening. I put out a notice on Facebook for my local friends about borrowing a minivan for the afternoon, and Mallory Ha... came to our rescue. Love that girl! We agreed to meet at Bella's school later.
My boss (I hate calling her that, it's weird since we've known each other for years) called around 8:30 to tell me she wasn't feeling well and was going to take the morning off, so I should come open the shop as usual and be prepared to work with her hubby and Mary doing popcorn, and work only half the day. So I dressed warmly to work in that freezing back room, but not very "cutely," and went to work. I ended up being alone there with nothing to do until after noon. I kept busy with a couple of customers and running up to the bank when I was down to one $1 bill and washing windows, but it was still slow.
Cute Hubby showed up around 1:00. After a couple more customers (Hooray!), Boss' Hubby took me aside and said "thank you" and told me I am the only one Boss trusts to take care of the shop by myself. He didn't say why, but I have a couple of ideas; it was very rewarding to hear. Hubby and I left and met Mallory at Bella's school, and managed to maneuver the bass into Mallory's tiny-looking but amazingly accomodating car.
Got the bass home, then went to work on reviving Amy Fisher, our blue minivan (past nicknames for this car are "Joanne Greenwald, you horrible thing" from Better Off Dead and "The Fire Swamp", because it keeps us on our toes, from The Princess Bride). Amy Fisher sat at our friend Jim's mechanic shop for the better part of a year while we tried to decide what to do with the stupid old thing, and once we decided to fix her and got her home, her tabs were quite expired. Then, her battery died. Last month, when Charlotte (the white minivan), our only working car, started having issues, we were in the position of "Quick! Do something, anything, with the other two cars!"
At the Department of Licensing, I planned on renewing Amy Fisher's very expired tabs, but was told it would be cheaper and smarter to just license Brennan's car instead (a great day for me - I still owe that lady fudge) and wait until Amy Fisher's tabs had been expired for the whole year. With Bella's bass situation, today became a good time to take care of Amy Fisher's battery and buy a three-day driving pass to stick in the back window, lest our very expired tabs be noticed by the authorities.
So we did that. Hubby put the battery in the car and I shopped for groceries. We took Bella to Barnes & Noble; her orchestra did very well as always. I love watching them play, it's inspiring to see these funky-looking teenagers drop their silly antics and get serious about playing serious music on serious instruments. They work hard. It's always fun watching my baby girl play her enormous bass. She's awesome.
After dinner, I watched old Bugs Bunny cartoons on the netbook with the kids till I passed out asleep on the couch.