Believe It or Not

All right. So Mom and Bob spent the night at Aunt Betty's, and after I dropped the kids off at school, I drove up there and picked up Mom, and we were off (like a... never mind).  We were finally going to go shopping for my birthday, hooray! Now if I could just think of something I wanted, life would be grand.

I was tired of my mall (who isn't), so we headed to Washington Square Mall in Beaverton... but while driving around trying to find it, we happened upon a cute little mom-and-pop home and garden store, and before long we were inside, inspecting their wares. We ogled the baby chicks, ducklings, and turkey-lings (what are baby turkeys called?) and reminisced about our little family farm in Brookings, including our baby turkey named Hugh Beaumont (seriously) after the actor who plays Ward Cleaver in "Leave It To Beaver." We watched the reruns every day after school, and Ernie named the turkey after him. We brooded the baby chicks and the turkey in our bathroom.

"Remember the day we came home from church and there were three dead baby chicks nose-down in the toilet?" she asked.
"NO!! How horrible!!"
"Well... I guess we didn't tell you guys about that."

Yikes.

This store's prices were INSANE (but not good insane) so I dialed up my trusty GPS lady to find the nearest Coastal Farm and Ranch, since it's just what the country needs, except when you can't find it and you drive all over Creation and past the Nike campus, and your mother keeps saying "I don't think this store exists" and you tease her back with, "It's just over those hills!".

Stupid GPS lady.  What a big stinky liar she is. 

So, back over the river we went... sigh... to my mall.  I still didn't know what I wanted for my birthday, but no matter, we were having a good old time anyway.  Once at Macy's, we meandered aimlessly toward the bedding department, when it hit me that we needed a new bed set ("needed" being a relative term) and Mom was alllll over it - a lot more all over it than she would have been about setting me up with baby chicks.  I can't blame her.

I ended up with this:

ahhhhhhh

At first I was going to get something completely different from our old set, but then I remembered the batik bird picture and we went with the same color scheme.  Which worked out great, because I kept two throw pillows from the old set and now it looks all FANCY.

Then we picked up kids, went to the store, picked up the last kid, stuffed him in the clown car with the first two kids and the groceries, and headed back to my house.  Then it was back to Aunt Betty's. 

Mom had mentioned to Betty that I like to cross stitch, and Betty had promised me all the cross stitch supplies I wanted, since Uncle Thos was also an avid cross stitcher - he was seriously an amazing man, cross stitching is just the tip of the iceberg.  We went through her closet and boxed all his cross stitch things up and they were now mine.  It was hard.  It's been a year since Thos died, and I never had the chance to meet him, but Betty had a hard time here and there and I wished with all my heart that Thos were still around so she wouldn't have to be so sad.

I drove home with my new stuff, grateful and glad to have it but feeling terrible for poor Betty.  And Bob, who lost his only brother.  And Mom.  CRAP I hate death.

Later I happied up with this:

 

Happiest TV show theme song EVERRRR.