My first day back home, after being gone for a whole week, was, in a word, busy. It was such a beautiful day that I had no choice but to prioritize cleaning up the back patio. Of course, cleaning up the patio became an “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie” project. We’ve been piling shit on the table for months. How many months? Well, there was a whole ass pumpkin buried under the pile of shit, so do the math.

I had to find places to put everything, the largest being a big wooden rocking chair that my kid brought home with the intention of refinishing. It’s been out there for going on two years, and I’m sick of it being in the way, so I cleaned out the shed to make room for it in there. Cleaning out the shed was a project unto itself. I got so involved that I forgot why I started cleaning it out in the first place and that I needed to make space for the chair.

We hardly got any rain this winter, so the ground is already too hard to pull out the weeds. I got them all, though. And there was, oh, so much laundry to do after Bonnie and I had both been gone for a week.

We ate dinner with both kids as a family on the back patio. We haven’t done that since the last time the table was clear before the pumpkin. After dinner, Bonnie and I went to Dairy Queen. We invited the kids, but they weren’t interested. Dairy Queen was a fucking scene. There was a Muslim woman and her teenage daughter and younger children ordering when we arrived, and behind them was a line of 6 other parties. The Muslim family was using a coupon on their phone or something, and the clerk was having trouble honoring it. I’m not entirely sure what the problem was, but it held up the line for several minutes. Then, just about every part of their order got fucked up and had to be remade.

Everyone else in the store seemed to have a severe neurological disorder. They all walked, talked, and moved very strangely. It looked like a scene out of a mental hospital. It was kind of freaky that everyone was walking like newborn deer, and they all met up at DQ at the same time. I wonder if all Dairy Queens are like that or if we caught it on a weird night. We’re not DQ regulars, so I don’t know what goes on there normally.

I went for a walk tonight to try to counteract the ice cream and to try to find a pic for today’s post. I really liked the lighting on this old church building tonight. It used to be a Christian church, but now it’s a Hindu Community Center. I think that’s funny. It’s like when a mom and pop take over a restaurant that clearly used to be a fast food chain.

I also found this cash register drawer. The job must have been a success.

And I found a sign outside a business that was putting out really good light, so I took advantage.