Went to the market this morning. Had to, even though no one felt like it. We were down to one round steak in the freezer. I like round steak, but I don’t want to eat it every day for a week. We got a bunch of meat and corn from the Richardson’s and a few veggies from our Costa Rican buddies. It didn’t seem like we bought enough veggies, but I’ve got some stuff that will be ready to eat this week from my own garden. My tomatoes looked way better than any of the ones at the market anyway. I can wait another couple of days for them to ripen to a nice red.

Then we went to the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store and bought a door. As luck would have it, donated doors are on sale this month for 50% off, so we got an OK (but not perfect) pre-hung door with windows to replace the outer back door (which isn’t much of a door at all — never kept the damn possums out) for $30. It even came with a mini-blind. Yeah, it’s not in great shape, but it’s about a thousand times better than what we have now … and it was a bargain.

Unfortunately, Lin has gotten sucked into watching an Iron Maiden concert on TV (too loudly, I might add), and I doubt we’ll be getting the door put up this weekend, since we are going to see Mom tomorrow. We have to find our shims and doorknobs and locks anyway. I think I know where they are. Still, we at least have the door, and that’s closer than we have been to having a proper functioning back portal since we’ve lived here. Let’s see any of the bratty cats break out of the house after we get that installed (or any possums breaking in).

I’d have loved to look around the Re-Store more, but Lin is always a man on a mission when he goes to buy anything. He goes for that one thing, he picks it out quickly, and then he wants to pay and leave. I did get to check out the paint a little, and at $6 a gallon, suffice to say I will be going back soon. I don’t even care too much what color I manage to find, but the bathroom is finally making me insane enough to just want to cover the pink with anything. I don’t want to spend a lot of time, money, or energy on it though, because eventually –hopefully soon– the whole bathroom is undergoing some serious renovation. It’ll only take a gallon of paint for do that tiny room, so $6 and a few hours, and it will be better than it is now.

If they happen to have some kind of white or beige when I go back, I might get that too for the kitchen. Same situation there, in that we need to do something more than paint the walls, but for a couple gallons of paint and an afternoon, it would at least look a little better. I might even get some of those awful stick-down flooring tiles and just cover the ugly floor too. I’m tired of waiting for the day we finally get around to doing it all right. It’s so ugly in the meantime. For about $30 or so dollars, I could at least put some make-up on it and cover the awfulness until the day it gets done right.

I think I’ll go check on my tomatoes. They are all different shades of white, green, orange, and pink, and one looks like it’s going to turn red by tonight. And as we all know, hovering over them makes them turn red more quickly … right?