A Nice Surprise

Last night my youngest son texted me and asked if I was working today. My plan had been to spend today getting the rest of the stuff out of my cabinets and catching up on other household tasks. Of course, I didn't say that to him. Instead I replied, "No. What's up?" It turns out that the maintenance workers at his apartment were coming to replace the windows and sliding patio door. Rather than wrangle the pets while that was happening, he wanted to take a day trip (with his dog and crazy baby cat). He wanted to make sure he wouldn't be interrupting me and that I didn't have plans before coming to visit for the day. My response was, "Yay! I'll be looking forward to it!" followed by a smiley face and a smiley cat face.

I got up early (as usual) and knocked out as much work as I could, finishing my set-up for my two second-half summer classes and grading some stragglers from my current class. (We have three days between the first and second summer session.) My son arrived just after eleven, and about a half hour later, my mobile mechanic showed up to fix some serious issues on my car -- right at the bottom of my driveway, which I think is amazing! So my son and I hung out, waiting for my car to be fixed, just chatting. He helped me clear out all of the base cabinets and decide what to keep and what to get rid of. We wanted to go to lunch, but I had to wait to pay the car guy and get my keys. In the midst of that, my contractor came by to do some outdoor work and he wanted to come in to see what had been torn out. (I didn't realize he hadn't been inside since all that happened.)

Finally around 3:00, we got to go to lunch/dinner. We browsed Groupon and found a good deal at a local seafood restaurant. On the way home, we stopped and checked out some cabinets and countertops, but nothing really struck me. I did choose some paint samples but otherwise didn't accomplish much. Once we were back home, my son said it was absolutely unacceptable that I hadn't watched Game of Thrones since the last time he was here (four or five weeks ago), so we watched the last four episodes straight through.

Really, I could have kept this much shorter. It didn't matter what we did. I was happy that my son wanted to drive over two hours to visit when I'll be seeing him at the end of the week. I know part of it was convenience, but I also know he could have gone somewhere else -- probably closer -- if he just wanted to get out of the house. I'll be playing catch up with work tomorrow -- especially with this week's class being the last of the session -- but spending the day with my son was worth every bit of extra effort I'll have to put in.