I hope all you moms had a lovely Mother's Day!

My husband came home from his four-day business trip late Saturday night, and since he didn't go to work yesterday, he let me sleep in. Then he and the kids woke me with gifts of jewelry! A gorgeous drop necklace and matching earrings with my birthstone. I praised my husband for managing to hold the gifts until yesterday morning, since I knew they'd probably been burning a hole in his briefcase the night before when he got home. He's never been good at keeping gifts from me--he usually gives the me things he buys for me as soon as he brings them home.

Later in the afternoon, we took the kids to buy new bikes. Since my daughter's been riding a hand-me-down bike from her half-sister that's so not her and my son just learned to ride without his training wheels, we figured it was time. As we were leaving the toy store, I said, "Funny. It's Mother's Day and the kids are getting gifts." My husband replied, "These bikes are for you too. It'll keep the kids out of your hair." He was right. After he got the bikes assembled, we didn't see the kids until it was time to drag them in off the street, kicking and screaming, for dinner and their baths.

Yup, it turned out to be a nice day.

On the writing front...I took the day off yesterday. But I did find out that my RD Bootcamp Mentor would like me to send her a copy of my edited chapter once I'm done. I've almost finished--just a couple more edits to make. I'm hoping to finish those today.

A couple observations I made yesterday...

Why is it whenever there are just two cars out there, me and the person waiting to turn onto the road I'm traveling, they always choose to turn directly ahead of me at the very last second? I would say it's because the other driver is in a hurry, but that can't be it because they get on the road and always seem to go ten to fifteen miles under the speed limit. So there I am, jamming on the brakes to avoid rear-ending them, and swearing up a storm. And this happens with frightening regularity. Are they blind? Can they not see my giant black SUV barreling toward them? Or is everybody just that inconsiderate these days? Must be one of the dangers of living in a rural area.

Sometimes you've just gotta wonder how people's minds work. After we bought the kids' bikes yesterday, we were waiting for the toy store folks to bring the bikes out to us. There was a car ahead of us, a Volvo wagon, whose owners had just purchased a large item. They had the back seats down in their vehicle, the large box slid inside, and the husband was trying to secure the rear hatch door with a ratchet strap. He got it hooked to the door, and was searching for a place to secure the strap at the bottom.

My husband was highly amused as the guy crawled all over the ground, searching for something under the bumper to hook the strap to. This must have gone on for a good ten minutes, the guy going this way and that, searching with his eyes, feeling with his hands, and getting nowhere. His wife came out of the store, stood and watched him a few moments, then went up to the front of the vehicle and started moving stuff around. Next thing we knew, they were putting the front passenger seat down and sliding the box all the way up.

"Is he going to strap his wife to the roof?" my husband asked.

"They probably don't have an extra ratchet strap," I told him. "I'll bet she's going to lay down in the back next to the box."

It was then the husband finally spotted the other tie-down spot my husband had smugly mentioned to me before the wife came out--the hook the hatch door latches to when it closes. The man in front of us latched the strap to that hook, and after his wife climbed in next to the box (I was right!), he tied the hatch down.

Both my husband and I wondered why, once the guy had found the hook, he didn't pull the box back out, pull the front seat up so his wife had a place to sit, and tie the door down as he'd originally planned. Instead, he left his wife laying in the back (not completely laying down, she was up on her elbows) with a couple of small boxes piled on top of her body. Must have been very uncomfortable.

My husband kept wondering aloud why that guy had made an easy job so difficult, and I reminded him that not everybody is mechanically inclined, and that poor guy had probably never had to move something so large in that little car. My husband agreed, saying, "I guess he hasn't toted as much stuff as I have."

My response? "From the looks of that guy, he's probably never used the word 'toted'."

We didn't stay to see how the whole ordeal ended. Our bikes came out, my husband quickly loaded them in the back of my SUV, and we took off. As we left, my husband assured me he would have never left me laying in the back of our vehicle like that. At least, not alone.