Dr Copa

I decided to buy my mother a digital picture frame for one of her Christmas presents this year.  To make the gift nicer I asked my wife to copy some of our family’s pictures onto a SD memory card to put in the frame, so when she gets the frame and turns it on she will see a variety of family pictures on it.  I’m really excited about her getting this gift!  I’m sorry I won’t be there to see her open it and turn it on.  I know she’s going to love it!

My wife has been really busy working two part time jobs, so she asked me to try to help out more this Christmas than I have in years past.  Since I’ve been staying home because of my injuries, I try to help out when and where I can.  It is hard to help out, though, because I am still in a lot of pain.  So I’m limited in what I can do around the house.  Well, with the help of a friend we got our artificial tree out of the attic and put together.  One of our dogs has decided that she likes to chew on the bottom string of lights and that has caused quite a problem, we can’t seem to break her of that.  I guess next year we’ll be getting a different tree, one that is short enough to put on a table to keep the dog from chewing on the tree!

So over the course of this week I’ve been trying to decorate the parts of the tree that I can reach without hurting myself.  I never realized how many ornaments we had!  I stopped decorating when I thought the tree had enough ornaments on it, and there were tons of ornaments left over!  I thought it looked just fine, but my wife said that I was only about half-way done.  So today my wife has been spending some time decorating parts of the tree that I didn’t think needed decorating – you know – inside the innermost branches, and the back of the tree.  It’s looking pretty good!

I’m very particular when it comes to our vehicles.  My wife says I’m “fussy” about it.  Well, I say tomahto, and she says tomato, but the point is that I care about the way the vehicles look.  Every dent and scratch puts one more gray hair on my head!  Every time I go outside the house, and am near one of the cars (or trucks or motorcycle, as the case may be) I scrutinize it for any new signs of abuse.  There are some dents and scratches I can take care of myself, but not all of them.  Some of them require the assistance of a good body shop.

Being new to the area, I’ve been at a disadvantage when it comes to finding good local service providers.  My wife told me that she found a website I can use called collisionrepairexperts.com to help me find a list of the best body shops in the area.  She explained that it was set up so that you typed in your zip code and a list of body shops comes up in the area that are in their network of experts.  She said that the network is nationwide, so we could find California auto body shops or Virginia auto body shops and anyplace in between.

My wife heard from a dear friend of hers last night through the magic of Instant Messaging that she had not heard from in about two years.  This friend is actually the young adult daughter of a close friend, and the girl calls my wife “auntie.”  Anyway, it appeared that the young lady needed a shoulder to cry on about how hard marriage is (she’s been married only three years.”  And of course, bemoaning how tight money is, and all the regular complaints that young married women have.

After the “conversation” was over, my wife was telling me that this young lady was complaining about how tight money is, and my wife was going to give her a tip on how to save money on groceries.  My wife asked me which one of the couple does the cooking, and the answer was “we eat all of our meals out.”

Well, so much for tips on saving money on groceries, and so much for complaining about how tight money is if you are eating all of your meals out!  That really gets my goat when people eat all of their meals out and have the audacity to complain that money is tight for them!

Well I’ve been reminding my wife every day this week that we need to get the Christmas gifts in the mail to the folks in New England so they will arrive in time for Christmas.  She kept telling me that she didn’t have time to deal with it because of her work schedule, and for me to go ahead and get them ready to mail and we would mail them out early on Saturday morning when the Post Office was open.  Sure enough, this morning she said “get the gifts together and we’ll take them to the Post Office.”  Well, she wasn’t too impressed with the information that the gifts were not yet gift wrapped or boxed in shipping boxes.  So now I am in the process of gift wrapping them and getting them ready to ship, although the Post Office is now closed for the weekend.  Oh well, I guess the gifts will be arriving late this year!