Oh, oh...am I in trouble?

No posting yesterday! Two on Monday does not count for missing one on Tuesday....

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It was a full day for me, but really, I can make no excuses. When I first got up, before Joanne did, my time was spent with the Windex and dust cloth, polishing glass and moving dust around, as Mom would say, in my formal rooms. When Joanne came out, we sat and talked a while as she filled me in on her first day at Court. After cooling her heels and being interviewed much of the day, eventually she was selected to serve on a jury for a criminal case. While she cannot tell me any information regarding the case or what is involved, she can describe for me the process and processes she witnessed. The jury was finally seated at 4:30 pm and heard opening testimony until 5:30 on the dot.

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She was exhausted when she got home, late, because she still had work to do at the office afterward. Joanne said she was not the only business person on call for jury duty and wonders how other people do it, when they are the bosses and not simply another person's employee, how can they leave their business for sometimes weeks. Joanne is not allowed the discuss the case, read the papers, listen to the news, or conduct research on her own. An example is, if she heard an expression or a word she did not understand or wanted clarified, she must wait until the end of the trial at deliberations to ask for clarification. Wow!

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Early in the day I spent time playing a bit of phone tag with the carpet cleaning people I use. Sunday night I spoke with Adam who was going to turn me over to Aaron, who usually takes care of things for me, and have him call me Monday. Well, that day came and went, with me sort of forgetting about it, too. Tuesday I called back and Adam gave me Aaron's number to call directly. He had forgotten to call me back and now we had to shuffle to get the rugs cleaned before Thursday's dinner. Wednesday he was not working as his wife and he were going with their daughter on a field trip to St. Augustine. After much forth and back, we finally came up with a Tuesday afternoon appointment. Okay! Great!

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EXCEPT...Kathy B., who has never been to Joe's Crab Shack before, had planned to go out there together after my dental cleaning appointment, arriving at the beach about 1:00 pm. She wanted badly to look for shark teeth after lunch which means it would have been late afternoon for us to get back here. When I called her, she immediately suggested we regroup and come up with an alternate plan, which turned out to be Whitey's Fish Camp, on the water, lunch, with clean teeth! The carpet man said I should call him when I was done with lunch and he would meet me here to do the rugs and carpets, finishing before I had to leave to meet Martie for supper and Art Guild. Whew!

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Kathy and I had a wonderful time on the porch at Whitey's, enjoying the delightful weather and equally delightful food and drink. I had the "Jamaica Me Crazy" fruity drink and she had her diet beer. One of Justin's former teachers was there and she asked about "my handsome son". I gave her the Reader's Digest version, telling her how he must make up some lost time, lost credits over summer because of messing up his last semester. His teacher told me she retired a couple years ago from St. Johns, was remarried, and has done lots of traveling. She has just gotten back from the Mediterranean and I told her Justin and I had been there a couple times together. Nice lady!

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After lunch I stopped in at the booty shop to make an appointment for a hair cut for Friday morning. Jennifer R. had already called Tuesday morning to ask me to breakfast on Friday but we will be done with that before my hair cutting time. Once in the car and driving home, I made the call to Aaron, giving him the "all clear" to meet at my house with his machinery. He said he had one stop to make first and then he would be there. It was around 2:00 when I called him so I made sure to go straight home so he would not have to wait for me. Martie and I were meeting before Art Guild for a quick bite so I knew I had be out of here by 5:45 at least to go meet her. Aaron and Jennifer, his wife, did not show up until almost 4:30!!! Kathy and I could have gone to the beach after all!!!!!

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As always, though, Aaron gave me an amazing price for the carpet cleaning, and said he would close the place up for me when they finished, so I did not have to stick around to wait for them. It was great to come home to freshly cleaned rugs and carpets, and they even got the chocolate stain from the river room rug, dripped there by someone's darling granddaughter.....Martie must never know.....shhh!

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Martie and I enjoyed a light repast on the porch at Dairy Queen, close to her office and only blocks from our meeting place. She was quite excited to be going on a cruise, courtesy of her son and family (including the chocolate dripper!) in July. I nearly asked if I could go along, but I will be traveling up until June 14th myself. We shall see....might reconsider and invite myself along. They would not have to entertain me, I can certainly do that myself on the deck of the ship. Anyway, we arrived at Art Guild in time to not have to set up chairs. As Mentor, it is my job to greet people when they come in, have them sign-in, introduce myself to new members, etc. The official membership Chair was not there with the sign-in sheets so we had a piece of tablet paper to work with. The area was small where sign-in took place due to the art swap happening after the meeting, so I hung back a bit. I recognized most of the faces, only a few visitors last night, making my job quite easy.

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Martie, Dee, Anita, and I shared a row of chairs and both Dee and I were called forward to receive our gift bags from the retiring President. Every year Caroline has prepared these lovely bags for the Board members, including some special thing in each bag, personal to the member. Mine including a 20-ounce bottle of Diet Coke!!!! Oh, how I loved that! In fact, I just finished the soda now as I finished this posting! Thanks, Caroline!!!