My wife quite surprised me last evening by not arriving home from work with any help from either of her two sons (this is her first week under a three-month Immediate Roadside Prohibition). Instead, she availed herself of an Uber, if that is the correct term to use for one of the conveyances serving as a Uber 'taxi'.
She said it cost her $15 (and the male driver apparently did not live far from us), which is far less than a cab would have cost. No wonder regular taxis hate having this organization move into their territory.
It also turned out that she had not gone to work to actually work. Rather, she had only gone there to deliver one or two orders of products that she carries as an agent for Thailand's The iCon Group. Apparently the restaurant ─ and it may not even have been the one she usually works at on a part time basis ─ needed some help in the kitchen, so she got impressed into service.
I now cannot clearly recall just when it was that evening that I sought my latter evening nap session upon noting that my younger brother was arriving home from wherever he had gone to drink, but it may have been 9:10 p.m. By then I had consumed some Cabernet Franc wine and a can of the strong (8% alcohol) beer that I try to keep myself stocked with, while I watched an episode each of Good Girls and Last Man Standing.
The wine, incidentally, was from a bottle that I had bought my wife last month, but which she does not favour. I have to admit that it does taste remarkably bitter.
Concerning Last Man Standing, I'm not much of a fan; I am only watching it out of habit. It was in fact the actresses playing the various female Baxters that kept me watching.
As another fact, not 10 days ago I did not even know that there were new seasons when I last watched the final episode maybe a couple of years ago ─ I thought its run had ended. I've started watching from the beginning of season eight; but after having seen three episodes, I think that I'm going to check out season seven because it may have been where I ought to have begun.
What struck me with season eight is how different the daughters all seem to look. I even wondered if a couple of the actresses might have been replaced, and I now see that one of them has been.
The dumb, flighty daughter Amanda had been played by actress Molly Ephraim with black hair, but now she's being played by actress Molly McKook who is blonde. Provided that the link remains valid, you can compare the original (left) with the replacement (right) in this photo.
Since this replacement took place in season seven, I would have seen and noticed it if that was the last season I had watched. I only remember the raven-haired daughter Amanda.
By the way, why the heck would Wikipedia include just a single photo of Molly Ehraim (the original Amanda Baxter) ─ and as a blonde ─ in their article on her? She looks just like replacement Molly McKook in the headshot!
Anyway, apart from a new and apparently taller actress playing Amanda, Amanda herself seems more 'tuned in' (i.e., less dumb) than her former incarnation.
However, I have badly digressed. Back to my past evening.
After getting to bed in the latter evening yesterday, and after some initial napping, I was disappointed to find myself wakeful enough to be checking the time around two hours after I had gone to bed. My hope was that it was at least into the midnight hour.
It was too soon to be getting up, for my brother would still be watching T.V., so I bided a little time. And the next thing I knew, my wife entered the bedroom and closed the door ─ a sure sign that she was coming to bed. (I wear a bandana blindfold.)
Once she was in bed and had finally turned off her bedside lamp, I waited some further time; and then I rose, correctly figuring that once I was into this room where I keep my computer (the room is immediately next to our bedroom), by pulling the door until it was ajar as my wife usually has it when she spends her evenings in here, my brother would have no idea that it was I and not she in occupation of this space.
Further abetting his impending erroneous presumption was to be the fact that my wife had been in here during some of the evening, and she had even left the room's light on. So when he soon decided to have an early night of it and come on upstairs to his own bedroom, he would just naturally accept that she was still in here with the door ajar, not knowing that it was I.
And so it was that I got an unusually early start at adding content into the post that I am still developing at one of my two hosted websites. And likewise, I next completed a post in my private blog far ahead of what is my usual schedule.
So did I celebrate this good fortune sagely or to good effect? Of course not. It became time to surrender to addictive behaviour.
As a result, it may have been around 5:30 a.m. that I finally did return to bed ─ it may even have been later than that. Yet I could have gone to bed as much as two hours before.
If only I lived off in the natural world where I was not incarcerated within my own home, and where I could freely venture outdoors at any time of the day for as long as I desired without being oppressed and 'stressed out' by the overdevelopment and overpopulation that characterizes my present environment.
But that is a lament for other posts.
I was to find some sleep in time, but shortly after 8 a.m. this morning I was again checking the time due to wakefulness. Then around 8:30 a.m. to my surprise, my wife gave evidence of rising ─ it is a rare thing for her to begin her morning that early. Even on Fridays when she has to work a full day at the Thai restaurant, her start time is not until 11 a.m. and so she generally does not bother rising until around 10 a.m.
However, things are now different, of course. She would not be driving to work. She was going to have to use public transit.
So she rose and took occupation of the bathroom as she readied for her day, and I rose and dressed and came here to my computer.
It must have been around 9:30 a.m. that she was set to head away, so I came down the stairs to see her off. My brother offered her a ride, but she declined; and she left, not at all communicative.
I returned here to my computer; yet a couple of minutes later, I heard her come back into the house for something. I also heard my brother once more offer her a ride, but she declined a second time and was then away for good.
I joined my brother around 10 a.m. to watch some T.V. via our Android TV Box. We did so until approximately 12:40 p.m., at which time he announced that he was leaving especially early to hook up with a drinking buddy at one of the pubs that he (my brother) occasionally frequents.
I want to note now that the day has been overcast, and there was some early morning rain.
In yesterday's post I said that today I would seek to expound upon a couple of AliExpress orders that I made simultaneously to two different sellers in earliest February ─ one of the orders arrived yesterday; and when I investigated concerning the second somewhat more expensive order, I discovered the claim that the order had been cancelled March 9.
Certainly not by me! Why would I do that and throw away my money, for there has been no refund?
So I left the seller an enquiry yesterday that is still sitting unread. I will wait until next Thursday for a response. If there is none then ─ a week after I first launched the enquiry ─ then I will contact AliExpress and file a dispute, for this was their instruction in instances like this:
If your order does not arrive on 2021-05-26 , you can apply for a refund by opening a dispute.
Obviously I will not have to wait that long, for I have already seen this filed:
2021.03.09 11:43 (GMT-7): Shipment cancelled
So why should there be any need to wait until May 26 if the seller will not respond to my enquiry in a week's time and the order has so blatantly been cancelled? That is a clear sign that something underhanded is afoot.
I meant to promote the product that I did receive ─ promote the product and the seller, of course. What I intended was to photograph myself wearing the two items that comprised the order, but I want to do so on a sunny day, and maybe when I am home alone. Conditions within the house are too gloomy where photographing is concerned on days that are overcast outside.
I did take an entirely unrelated photo, though:
This was my accompanying description that I gave the image where I uploaded it into a Google Photos album:
Front lawn photo taken through our living room window at 12:48 p.m. on Friday, March 19, 2021.
Those flowers in the half barrel are mini-daffodils, and they are actually yellow ─ I have no idea why my iPhone 5 has them appearing to be practically white.
That barren garden plot surrounding the half barrel was choked thick with mostly leafless thyme 'scrub' ─ a virtual tangle of what I originally intended some years back to be ground cover.
Well, it certainly was that, but it was choking out some flowers that had also been planted at the same time. As well, when the thyme was in leaf, it provided a vast cover for untold numbers of slugs and snails that preyed on any flowers that did manage to come up.
And last year, lilies that are also planted in that half barrel never managed to bloom because the slugs and snails kept devouring them. So the thyme had to go!
It is already after 8:30 p.m., so I must close this post and get it published.
I only want to say that I have no idea if my wife will be home tonight. Normally after work on Fridays she remains away for the weekend (such is our sorry marriage). But now that she is without wheels, will anything be different?
We'll see soon enough.
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