Midwest Living

Events of the Day:

Mom takes me on a tour of the garden. Besides the abundant summer flowers she's expertly planted on the patio and in the yard, she also has taken on a few vegetables and herbs: tomatoes, peppers, basil, oregano, and mint. She's very proud of the mint. "It's like, oh, I'm out of gum! Have some mint!" Cute, mom.

Buying a shower curtain. Macy's doesn't have the one I like for sale, just on display, which the clerk refuses to sell. Instead, he calls a different mall and assures us they have it and will hold it for us, but just for today. We go to the other Macy's, which is boiling hot and deserted in the housewares section. When the oldest employee alive finally shuffles to the front with our hold, it's the wrong shower curtain. The manager appears and, finally, takes the shower curtain off the display to sell to us. It's very cute, worth the trip.

At the dinner table, we start talking about spiders. I recount how Ryan cried once because we saw a giant camel spider in our car, but then could never find it. When the story is over, I spy a strange blob on the ground by my chair. I bend down to wipe it up - it's a smashed spider. Big. Missing some legs, which are on the ground next to it. The next second finds the spider on my brother's dinner plate, subject to examination, and me perched on the back of my mom's chair, sick to my stomach and too afraid to stand on the ground. Much family yelling ensues, mostly centered around the identity of the liquid on the ground around the spider. Did the dog throw it up? Or did one of us accidentally smash it as we sat down for dinner? Still unknown. (Tucker is fine.)

My proudest moment - getting a new drivers license. Good riddance to the old, which was a vertical "under 21" issue that I hid behind credit cards in my wallet, so unattractive was the picture. Whenever I had to show my ID (say, at government facilities), the checker would spend 10 minutes trying to find my birthday even though it said "under 21 until 8-10-2005" in big red letters. If I was lucky, the guy might even comment on how decent I looked now compared to the picture. So . . . happy to be rid of that thing. My grown-up license will last until 2012. Same as my passport.

Productive day in OK.