A crazy coupe and a baguette.

For the last two months, it’s felt as though nearly every day is a Thursday.  Mondays felt like Thursdays, Thursdays felt like Thursdays, and – saddest of all – Saturdays & Sundays felt like Thursdays.  You know what a Thursday feels like, right?  That’s the day when you wake up drained from Monday through Wednesday, mistakenly think that it might already be Friday, and hope that you can wait another two days to put your mountain of laundry away.

So imagine my pleasure when yesterday actually felt like – and was – a Saturday!  These days, Saturday mornings almost always consist of an hour and a half long color run.  Color runs are when I’ve stayed up until 1:00 AM the night before trying to get a grasp on which chemicals I’ve used in the previous work week, which ones I’ll likely use in the upcoming week, which ones I’d like to have as backup and which ones would be nice to have to broaden my professional color inventory.  To be sure, this process gets easier; but I’m still a new salon owner, so there’s a learning curve and I can’t afford to be ignorant.  The following morning, after I’ve made my list, Bennett comes with me to Fairfax as I carefully pick out each bottle, tube and tub of red, brown, blonde, bleach and peroxide.  Imagine his boredom.  At this point, he starts making eyes at the employees, hoping they’ll whisk him away (and they have) and let him push any buttons within a twenty foot radius (and they have).  By the time the transaction is complete, he’s made new girlfriends, colored himself with the pen that’s always at the register, sampled and resampled some test lotion, brushed his hair with a selection of brushes and dumped water all over himself.

So last week I worked extra hard to double up my color predictions so that I could have the weekend off.  Ahhhhh… What a payoff!  Brian’s mom and stepdad were able to come up and we enjoyed a breakfast at Mimi’s Cafe.  Afterwards, we strolled through some of our neighborhood’s yard sales where I was proud to have only spent $5.00.  My husband and son took a monster nap in the afternoon while I spent some time paying bills, making a quick return to a store, and getting to know my new salon software a little better.  In no time, we were back out having dinner with our good friends, Karen and Ian, at the Sterling Otani.  Brian and I popped into Three Lil Monkeys while waiting for our friends to show up and Bennett discovered a liking for the Little Tikes Cozy Coupe (similar to one he’s coveted at our neighbor’s house).  Impulsively, I asked the owner of Three Lil Monkey’s, Elena, to charge it to my consignment credit and Bennett “drove” himself to and into Otani.  We all sat at the sushi bar enjoying the fresh creations, while Brian had a cooked dinner from their hibachi grill brought over.  (By the way, the employee I’m training, Corinne, did a lovely job touching up Elena’s old makeover into a new makeover last week!  Beachy, right?)

After our dinner, the five of us strolled up the shopping center and realized that we were headed in the direction of a Safeway grocery store.  Both Karen and I remembered things we needed, so we wandered inside.  I was hopeful to find my favorite brand of pasta, DeBoles, here since the store closer to home has discontinued it.  Alas, no luck.  It looks like I’m going to have to put Amazon to work.  By the time we women reconnected with our men, Brian and Ian had turned Bennett loose to discover the wonders of automatic doors (which can be startling when you’re only one and a half years old).  At some point, Bennett grabbed a baguette from the bakery and began hammering it into the ground like a post hole digger, so we walked out with that, too.  I’m just thankful he didn’t choose, like, a jar of olives or something.

After all of this fun, I even got to fall asleep to the peaceful knowledge that my husband was folding laundry in the other room.  That’s like pixie dust right there.