Parental Guidance Suggested

This past week was the biennial visit from my parents. They alternate spending a week with me and an extra week of Cuban vacation. Honestly I'm surprised that it's not a three year rotation. I've never been to Cuba but I assume it's more entertaining than coming to visit me. I've learned from past experiences and discovered that for them to actually enjoy themselves they have to be kept very busy during the day and occupied in the evening as well. There has to be several big production, home cooked meals and some sight seeing. These were lessons learned slowly over the course of several visits. So I had to craft a good plan. Also, I had yet to purchase them their Mother and Father's Day gifts, which is a blessing of living hours away. In the past I have sometimes waiting all the way until Christmas, letting birthday's accumulate as well then spend a great deal to get them a very nice gift. One year was a new TV, thanks Boxing Day specials. So I could sew up those gifts during this trip. My father had requested a Blue Jays bobblehead for Father's Day. I'm not about to spend $80 on Kijiji to get it so I decided to do something in that vein. My mother rarely gets to Toronto because she won't drive there and my father is not exactly equipped to navigate the downtown core in a vehicle by himself. So I decided I would get them tickets to the Jays and then have a nice meal in the city at the same time, my treat. I paid about three times face value for the tickets from a third party ticket website. It was my first time using such a service and I am now very aware of the perils of their hospitality. So the tickets were costly but I did manage to get straight away center-field row one tickets. The meal was less expensive than I hoped so it balanced out. We visited Baton Rouge was literally the first restaurant with air conditioning that we saw when leaving the stadium. They enjoyed it. I sent them alone to the Farmer's Market and went to work for a few hours on one day. I got my mother hooked on Game of Thrones. We watched all of season one in the evenings, she forgot to bring season two with her. We went and looked at a sprayer for my father and then balanced that with a nice meal and shopping in London. My mom didn't seem to enjoy it as much as I expected. But the main task of the week, between all the travel and adventure was two build gates on either side of my house. We measured the gaps and started to brainstorm our options. One was narrow and we were able to get a metal gate that we just had to hang. That was easy. The other gate we had to build from scratch. We purchased the necessary hardware and wood and set about it. After a few hours he walked away yelling at me. Then later I walked out on him. In the end the gate looks great and I didn't lose my relationship with my father, just about $150 for the whole project. That paves the way for me to be a dog owner someday. But I'm not going to get into that here. So it was a busy week. Between Game of Thrones and rating roots on my living room floor, I didn't have much time to drop in. But you've gotten a taste of an update. More to come.