I survived the Chicago trip, skipped the conference but opted to drive home with the wives on Monday rather than fly home by myself. I waited until the last possible moment to make this decision because I forgot to bring my flying tranquilizers with me and I was not really looking forward to the flying. Plus it seems like a huge hassle for what is essentially 45 minutes in the air. We are only 4 hour drive from Chi-town.

Anyway, the other two women were very nice and I felt comfortable enough with them to make the drive. My dad met us in Ann Arbor and drove me home from there. It was a nice weekend and we actually had a really good time. However, I spent the rest of last week paying for the partying we did. It seems to take me a week to recover from a couple late nights these days. We saw 2am both Friday and Saturday (although I really didn't drink that much).

When we go out of town, Dave's mom stays at our house and Becca gets to sleep in the big comfortable bed that is in our spare room. As an extra bonus to her, there is a tv in that bedroom with cable so she gets to watch Hannah Montana in bed which never happens when we are home. So when I showed up at home a day early, she was mad at me for shorting her a night in the big bed. She even treated me to the crossed arms and the pouty lip. So I let her spend the night at Dave's mom's house and as a bonus to me, I had the house completely to myself for an entire evening. I think it has been about a year since I have been alone in the house by myself for more than an hour or two. I read a book, uninterrupted for for 3 hours and stayed up way past my bedtime thereby adding to the lingering exhaustion of the Chicago weekend. It was bliss.

Dave got home Wednesday evening which also happened to be our 3 year anniversary. We celebrated by having dinner at Cracker Barrel and renting a so-so movie called Defiance which is another WWII period movie of which I sick to death. There wasn't much to choose from. I would have rather watched Friends all night.

Then Dave got the brilliant idea to paint the inside of our house this past weekend. I hate painting. I detest it and I'm a total perfectionist, want it to be perfect and am sucky at painting so it is never perfect. So this is not what I wanted to spend the weekend doing. But, he was right in one respect, our house needs to be painted. It is still the builder special of flat white paint which shows everything. And with two kiddies running around the house, there is a lot of everything on our walls. The reason I have been putting off painting is three-fold, #1 the aforementioned suckiness at painting of yours truly, #2 the lack of funds to pay some one to paint it for me and #3 the fact that we have an open floor plan in our 1st floor means that every wall bleeds from one room into another thereby necessitating either a) painting the entire downstairs in the same color, or b) choosing colors that complement each other which brings me to hidden point #4 which is that I do not feel confident in my decorating abilities. All that translates into 3 years in a house with flat white walls everywhere.

So to say the least, I was resistant to the suggestion to paint, but I acquiesced on the promise that I would not have to participate in the actual painting. I was disturbed by Dave's plan that he was not going to tape, but I dutifully went to Lowe's on Friday night, chose four colors that seem to complement each other and off we went.

So of course we ended up taping and I ended up helping, but in the end, I have to say, the house looks beautiful. We still have to tackle the fireplace and the foyer, but the hard stuff (the living room and kitchen) are finished and Dave made me tell him every hour on the hour how he was right. So for the record, Dave was right and I was wrong.