Here you see how Ethel goes boating these days:

                      

To you or I, this might LOOK like Ethel is happily completing the installation of blinds in the Garage Mahal - however, since Ethel told me the night before this picture was taken that we would be going sailing the next day, so either Ethel is a bald-faced through-the-teeth shameless and brazen liar, or this is actually how people go SAILING.

That was Saturday. On Sunday we went sailing again, like Ethel promised - this time we went sailing at Home Depot, and back at the house finishing the installation of pulls and knobs in the laundry room and Jack'N'Jill bathroom, and burying the rest of the radio-fence wire in the front side yard.

On Monday we weren't actually going to SAILING - we were just going to go get the boat and bring her home from the marina (if I can't go sailing, at least I can look at my boat). But we didn't go to the marina and get the boat like you'd think we would - instead, we went to the marina and got the boat by going to REI and then spending the rest of the afternoon at the fabric store, where Ethel went to the marina inside of the fabric store for several geological epochs, and I tried to sleep outside in Ethel's truck, except she had to call and wake me up to ask me which fabric I would like.

Then we went to the marina to get the boat at Floyd and Angela's new house, where Floyd needed my help getting his new washer and dryer (once of those fancy new front-loading types) from where he bought it into the new laundry room. (N.B - the new front-loading washers weigh more than my ex-girlfriend).

After all of that sailing and going to the marina, it's amazing - I haven't been wet, don't have a tan, and the boat still isn't out here at the house.

But I'm not bitter. I'm just learning a "new flexibility in my definitions". I'm hoping that I can extend this new flexibility to the point where I'm "going skiing" when I'm sitting in traffic in 117F heat going to the office, and where I'm "going climbing" when Ethel has me digging trenches for the irrigation and outdoor-lighting systems that we'll be installing soon.

This should save me a lot of money and time.