What A Week!

Yesterday, I had to drive an hour and a half to attend a family meeting. I noticed that the thermometer on my dashboard registered 99 degrees. Someone on a local news show was baking cookies on the hood of a car. It was hot!

The family meeting involved a farm that's been in our family for many generations. No one in the family has actually farmed it since my great-grandfather, so now it's farmed by a man who has a neighboring farm of his own. Not exactly a "tenant farmer" but a "hired farmer" I guess you could call him. In order to share the farm with all family members, the family in my dad's generation decided to incorporate it so shares could be distributed.

As a corporation, we are required to hold a meeting once a year. So, this was the "farm meeting" as it has come to be known to all my sisters and cousins. They made me the secretary, so I have to keep the minutes. I find it kind of an onerous job, but no one else wants to do it. Instead, my younger family members wait for me to read last year's minutes, then they sit there and suggest all kinds of corrections. I wish one of them would take over, but they won't. They all sit there taking copious notes, so they can correct me at the meeting next year.

Also, I broke our shredder. It's supposed to shred six sheets at a time. We receive those pesky credit card applications in the mail and they have to be shredded to prevent identity theft. Once I noticed the man who picks up our trash standing in the street, reading discarded mail. It made me worry. Anyway, to shred all our dangerous mail we have to open it and make sure we are not shredding too many sheets at once. This week I got impatient and tried to shred something without opening the envelope. Turns out it was too thick and it got stuck in the shredder. The shredder is broken. I can't get the offending piece of mail through in either direction. So, I had to go and buy a new shredder. My husband was out of town and I haven't told him. I decided to quietly replace it with the new one and hope he doesn't notice.

As usual, I babysat my nieces on Tuesday while my sister went to work. Their aunt on their father's side took the youngest shopping for her birthday. All the girls in the family have "fake Uggs" because their mom and dad refuse to pay the price for "real Uggs". Well, the lovely aunt bought the youngest a pair of "real Uggs" so now the other girls are jealous and want "real Uggs" of their own. I thought Uggs were out of style! Maybe it takes longer for trends to catch on here in Kentucky.

My husband was out of town for the last two weeks in a row. Business trips plus a weekend-in-between visit to California to see his daughter and granddaughter. I made sure to do all the chores and keep the house neat and clean, so when he came home he wouldn't find me lacking in the housekeeping department (I know, I know... but it helps to keep the peace around here). I hoped he would come home and relax for a while, and we would have a chance to talk. He did, in fact, make drinks for both of us, and we had a chance to sit and talk. Then we went out to dinner. So, the week ended on a good note. (Even if he did retreat to his "man cave" after dinner to watch sports on the big screen.)