Let me tell you how my day off started. It started with my employer. Recently they changed their vacation policy to accomodate the many old farts like me who work for them. What they are afraid of is that their statistics shows that 60% of energy company employees are going t retire within 5 to 10 years. Now, I’m not going anywhere. I have a fifth grader with autism. (But don’t tell them that!)

What they did was give us credit toward vacation for time in the industry, up to 15 years. So, I instantly went from 3 weeks of vacation (for another 4 years) to 5 weeks. They just handed it to us. So, I’m very happy with the Yogi employer.

Anyway, so I have a few more days I can spend with Sweetie. Her birthday is coming up so I took a day off, courtesy of my employer, and we spent the day together. We went clothes shopping for her. I cannot pick out clothes for her and the problem with gift cards can be that at some stores the clothes are picked over. Plus the good sales are before Christmas.

I told her that this was going to be on the blog, she said no pictures, so no pictures. Sorry.

So we went shopping. She released me from the dress store after the mandatory 8 count. Whew, isn’t she sweet? Its kind of a safety issue anyway. Women’s stores have an excess of estrogen on the floors and so they get real slippery for men’s shoes. Its best for men not to spend too much time in them. I got to look at some of the other stores before going back so I could pay for the purchases.

I almost got my ass kicked while paying. I think I got high on the estrogen fumes. While I was waiting for Sweetie to finish I was talking to the cashier, “Char'” Char’ was sorting a bunch of % off tags into nice neat little piles and tieing them off with rubber bands before putting them into a basket. I stupidly said “It looks like you just go through with a big sale.”

She said “They drive me crazy with all these different prices. I have to switch the tags all the time and then resort them.” I furthered my stupidity by saying “I would just throw them in the basket if I were you.” She said “Then I would throw the crap away just like I did with my first husbands stuff when he didn’t do what I told him.” She didn’t have a smile on her face either. So I backed away slowly and didn’t make any sudden moves.

Don’t mess with Char’ is my advice.

Something else we did was pick SuperPizzaBoy up after school and take him to see Santa Claus. That was fun. SPB has to be prompted to look at Santa and has to repeat his list a couple of times.

It was cramped in there with Santa and couldn’t get a good angle but I got a shot I like coming out. SPB looks like he got away with something. Sweetie looks relieved and Santa is like, who is that kid? He was a cool Santa. SPB was actually supposed to be the last kid but somebody else slipped past the rope, and the way Santa handled it was say, “Come on in here young lady!” That made me feel good.