What I've been up to...

This has to be a quick one.

I just had to waste a bunch of time scooting over to the mall to the Apple store to buy a new MacBook charger because Apple seems to make them intentionally fragile. When mine (well, my second one since I got this laptop in 2011) started to fray, several weeks ago, I shored it up with white electrical tape to wring some more time out of it, but this morning it gave up the ghost. It seems, from reading product reviews on Apple's website, people tend to get only about nine months out of them, though, so I'm at least satisfied that I did my best to make it last.

Meanwhile, and working backward for some reason:

• Declan, my sweet little monster, screamed from somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 am on this morning. (As it turns out, he cut a tooth for our trouble, so perhaps tonight will be better.) On my way back from my Apple errand, I ran into the sweet lady who lives downstairs and apologized to her for the noise. She said, as she always does, "No problem! Babies will be babies!" But she'll probably be as happy when we move out in a couple of months as we were when our old upstairs neighbors went. (Of course, we went from wild hooligan children -- old enough to know better, unlike Keira who genuinely doesn't realize she's stomping sometimes, and even if she does she doesn't realize what it sounds like to someone downstairs {judging by her blank face when I tell her to "for the LOVE, stop stomping!"}, or Declan who may cry inordinately sometimes, but is just a baby -- to wild hooligan dogs who whine and wrestle with each other all day long, so it's not exactly a huge improvement.)

• My mother came to visit over the weekend and she babysat for us on Saturday night so we could go out for our anniversary. We thought about it and realized we hadn't gone out on a real date night in two years so we could afford to blow it out a little and so we went out to Ruth's Chris steakhouse and feasted. So delicious. 

• Last week I had coffee with my new friend Mary, whom I met when she hosted a Blessed Brunch. We sat at Starbucks and laughed like loons about every-darn-thing in the world. I said after the brunch that my soul felt refreshed and it's no less true about three hours in a comfy leather chair with a pumpkin spice latte (yes, I'm one of those, what of it?!) and a friend. Delightful. I hope to do it again soon!

{image via}

Also, unrelated: I think Karl Keating must be reading my blog because this column reminds me of something... ;)