I Suck At Staining

on saturday, karen had plans to meet up with her cousin (karlene) at their grandmother's house. their plan was to continue scanning the oodles and oodles of old pictures from nana's photo albums in order to distribute them to every interested relative.

so needless to say, i had the house all to myself. in order to feel somewhat productive, i decided to work on the house. in particular, i wanted to stain a few pieces of molding. unfortunately, i suck at staining.

before i could even really begin my staining project, my mother called asking if my father and her could stop by. my mom wanted to use my computer so that she could... of all things... check her email.

my mom has an old basic dell computer that my brother got for her for christmas many years ago. neither of my parents use the computer often. because they do not use the computer that much, having high speed internet did not make sense. so instead, they opted for the free dial-up modem. the problem: dial-up... very slow. it's like that comcast commercial with the talking turtles (the slowskys).

anyway, my mom had spoke with some of my relatives in hong kong and learned that pictures had been sent to her email address. viewing the pictures, however, would have taken forever on her computer with the dial-up modem. knowing that i had fios internet, she asked to stop by for a visit.

after visiting my son (braden) at the cemetery, my parents arrived. the first thing i noticed when they arrived was that my father had a bucket with him. my father wanted to take some rocks with him to use at their place for some unknown project. (my dad gets these projects in his head some times.) for anyone curious, i currently have a huge mound of rocks sitting in my driveway. i also have a huge mound of dirt sitting next to the huge mound of rocks in my driveway. both piles were remnants of a late summer project that never really got finished. so needless to say, i was quite thrilled to be able to get rid of some of the rocks.

needless to say, i had to show my mother how to use my computer because connecting to the internet through my computer is much different than connecting to the internet through a dial-up modem. from there, i had to walk her through the basics again of... well... web browsers and how the little finger icon generally means that the text can be clicked on and whatnot.

my mother generally forgets things on the computer. she will write down the instructions on how to do something (like check her email)... only to never look at the instructions again. it's very frustrating because i have to repeat myself... many times. perhaps that is why i tend to lose my patience with my mom whenever it comes to teaching her things on the computer.

anyway, while my mom was looking at the pictures sent to her email account, my father shoveled some rocks into his little bucket. not wanting to interrupt my plans for the day, both of my parents urged me to continue with my staining project as though they were not there.

so, i quickly threw on the pre-stain... waited for some time to elapse... and then threw on the stain. to say i get my anal nature from my father is an understatement. as i was staining the pieces of wood... my father was watching behind me, pointed to a point on the wood and told me "you missed a spot".

following my quick and terrible staining job, i went back to helping my mom on the computer... because apparently she forgot how to do something on the computer. when all was said and done, it was practically dinner time. thinking nothing of it, i asked if my parents wanted to stay for dinner. after all, i would have been eating alone otherwise.

naturally, my parents agreed to stay for dinner. so, i cut up a few vegetables and made an indian curried rice... complements of trader joe's frozen food section. my mom was excited. she had that silly grin on her face and basically said "wow, you cook? how come you never cooked when you were growing up?" i told her that reheating frozen food really isn't cooking. as it turns out, both her and my dad enjoyed the indian curried rice. thanks trader joe!

my mom enjoyed the indian curried rice so much that she wanted to know how to make it from scratch. in fact, my parents went to trader joe's on their way home after dinner to pick up a few bags of the rice to see what the ingredients were.

hours later, my mom called saying that she figured out how to make the indian rice from scratch. she was quite excited when she called. my mom likes to do things like that... figure out how to make certain dishes from scratch. we'll see if her indian curried rice is as good as trader joe's.