An Easy Weekend

This weekend was pretty relaxing - I spent Friday night with the husband, out for a delicious birthday dinner and to bed early.
Actually...to be more accurate, we went out to The Keg for steak (since I have turned into a complete carnivore again) and I ate so much salad and bread that by the time my actual meal came out it was all I could do to stay awake to force myself to eat it. I was so full and tired that I was curled up in a ball on our bed (while Chris lay beside me reading) by 9:30. Talk about a wild birthday night.
Earlier in the evening when I got home from work there was a bunch of monarchs flitting around the lilac bushes near our apartment. It took me forever to get a couple pictures I actually liked because every time one of them would move I would panic and start screaming, then run a few steps away. That went on for about 15 minutes, until I'd had enough mini heart attacks to last me for the evening (I love butterflies, but I think they were trying to scare me).
Believe it or not - I was actually very close to them...my camera was about a foot away.
LOL - it makes me laugh now to think about how ridiculous I must have looked - walking up to the bush with my camera, focusing, then turning around and squealing as one would move its wings even a tiny bit. Then I would turn around 5 seconds later and walk back over to the bush to do it all over again.

Saturday I drove home to Ontario for my cousin Krista's graduation party. She just finished her teaching degree and can now unleash herself on some poor, unsuspecting students. I say unleash because we are a lot alike - laughing fits and hysterics abound when we are together. She's great fun.
My grandparents and a bunch of other relatives were at the party too - and while I was sitting at the table with my mom, a couple of her siblings and my grandpa, I started to notice my grandpa's hands. He has worked with his hands all his life, and at 80 he still goes out to his shop and fixes and builds things, even though he is blind in one eye and has poor vision in the other.
I leaned over with my camera to take a picture and he pulled his hands away, thinking he was in the way of something else I wanted to take a picture of.
I explained to him that I wanted a picture of his hands because they looked cool. He could not grasp that I would think that, insisting that they just looked old. I assured him that they did not look "old" but instead told a story about what a hard worker he was and the life he had led. He just smiled, patted me on the head and said "alright Alison, do what you will". Afterwards I grabbed his hand and held it for awhile - he told me that was much better than just his old hands.
Tonight I have been practicing Ramona. Or, trying to practice anyways. My guitar is out of tune, and I am too lazy (and impatient) to tune it - and oh dear lord, the C and F chords are the bane of my existence. My little hands simply do not stretch to get either one of those chords cleanly. I can stretch my fingers to reach them, but a nanosecond later they are sliding together and forcing poor Ramona to emit a hideous sound - nowhere near what it should sound like.

I think I will go curl up in bed with a book now - I'm sleepy, the husband is out at baseball, and I'm trying to ignore the disaster area we call home. What better way to do that than to hole myself up at the end of the hall in bed with a good book?