A surprising trip

The other trip--to the inlaws (leaving Sunday morning, returning Tuesday night) had a few surprises. First off, a basic recap of the events.

Sunday morning we left--not at 8 but close to 10, to no great surprise by me. (In fact, I was part of the reason for the delay due to some computer-related work that I can't remember right now--entering UYRL transactions?) The drive went quickly anyway, and we got there about 2:30. The sisters were there, and everyone huddled over the kitchen table and tons of family pictures, which they were dividing up.

They put me to use, too, because of my skills in operating a scanner and a color printer. They had me scan in a number of color pictures--mainly the sisters when they were in high school--and making color prints of them on heavy duty paper. A pair of baby pictures, too. Anyway, lots of scanning, lots of printing. One picture was torn, so I had to do some picky restoration work to get it to look good. They were happy with the results. All that went on well into the evening, about 8 or so. Not much after that--we went to bed fairly early.

Monday, we made a trip to Eau Claire, hitting the bigger places we like to hit, such as Best Buy, Borders, Office Max and so forth. I got a few DVDs and a few other things--nothing major. We had a big grinder for lunch at Mancino's (didn't know they had them in Wisconsin) which served as a combination lunch and dinner for us.

On Tuesday, we left for home in the late morning, making a detour to the Wisconsin Concrete Park near Phillips. It was created by some guy years ago, who made figures of concrete decorated by bits of colored glass--bits and pieces of old bottles of many different colors, electric insulators and the like. It was weird and interesting--I shot a bunch of pictures. We stopped at Pizza Hut in Rhinelander for supper and went home via Laona due to the construction on the M-73 bridge, which will be continuing for a few more months.

Now for the surprises. One came fairly early in the trip when my wife said I can get a laptop computer with David's money. OK, let me explain. Since he is autistic and considered disabled, David gets SSI checks from the government in addition to the work he does through Trico, and it's supposed to be for him to use (minus reimbursing us for his share of household expenses).. Except he hardly buys anything for himself--mainly spending what he gets from his earnings through work--and the funds accumulate near the threshhold they are allowed. At one or two points, I suggested we could use some of the money to get a laptop computer that I can use, since I don't have one. She seemed fairly uninterested in the idea, so I dropped it and hadn't mentioned it for a good six months before this. Meanwhile, David had gotten a laptop of his own earlier this summer and has been using it a lot. But that's his computer, not mine.

Anyway, now I'm starting research on laptops--this came so out of the blue, that I was in no way prepared for shopping during our trip. I've been doing that on and off over the last few days.

The other surprise had to do with my wife's dress. More explanation needed. To be blunt about it, she is a incredible prude in how she dresses. Very uninteresting, out-of-style clothing. She wore a greenish dress during the Sunday trip and opened a few buttons for me during trip. That was nice, and I thought that would be the highlight of the trip--back to the kitty T-shirts for the rest of the weekend.

Not so. For the trip to Eau Claire, she wore a denim dress she had bought recently that has buttons down the front. Apparently her seat belt helped work the second button loose--she will undo one button herself while with me. So now she had two open, and I (and anyone else interested enough to look) could see between her breasts and the part of the bra between the two cups. Besides that, she had on her underwire bra. Singular. She has one, which she was very reluctant to get and wears rarely.

She would occasionally button the second button from time to time, but most of the time she seemed quite satisfied with having it open--even when walking around stores and malls, etc. And I was delighted. Am I going to be seeing more of this in the future? So anyway, this qualifies as a major surprise, and a quite pleasant one, too, because of the way she is and the context (read: frustrations) of some 30+ years of being married. You go, girl!

It made me a lot more willing to invest in the flowers and the steaks yesterday.