The Big Game

So, then, the weekend. As I mentioned, it was tough and the other guys, gotta give ‘em credit, really put up a good fight, but in the end we were able to do what we had to do. We made some mistakes, but we also played hard, and were able to overcome that and execute our game plan. Oh, and hi, Mom!

Anyway, good weekend, even if I only got twelve hours of shuteye. In case you missed it, I even managed to work in a late update Friday evening with pictures of Chet the E-Mail Boy and the story of the thrilling trip with Middle Girl to the glasses place—scroll down to Friday. (No, I don’t trust BlogSpot links, either.)

Saturday was running around day—got up early and loaded a bunch of stuff into the back of Franklin to take over to the charitable donation place. For some reason, Rebecca got up early and dug out some of our old videotaped home movies and was watching them as we loaded stuff—wow, twelve years sure goes by fast—oh, and there’s the old house, and there’s the swing set when it was new, and there’s Oldest when she was tiny, stomping an ant on the octopus-shaped plastic merry-go-round.

The same octopus-shaped plastic merry-go-round that had just gotten loaded onto the back of the truck.

I am such a big squishy. They are way too big to ride the thing now, and it just takes up space in the backyard, and the underside of it serves as a convenient breeding pond for the mosquitoes—it was way past time to get rid of it, but doggone it, it sure hurt to put in the truck. I thought about it all weekend, and obviously am still thinking about it. All those little feet and hands and bumps and bites. All that “Push me, Daddy—FASTER!”

It’s just a nasty piece of silly blue plastic, you know. And the little center pivot rusted away a long time ago—I picked it up and the top came off, just like that.

Got it and the other bags of no-longer-coveted toys over to the collection place and the guy took it and the rest of the old toys and slung them inside of a big trailer. WHAMBump! He probably didn’t know any better—they try to hire folks who are handicapped, so it probably didn’t register with him when he slung another sack back there and it crashed with that sound that toys make when they break. Just a donation pickup. It was hot already, and he didn’t want to be there, and it’s just old junk to him. Christmases and birthdays and Easters and trips to the store and silly stuff from burger joints. At least we can still watch the tapes.

Finished unloading and breaking stuff and came on back toward home—next chore on the list was to get the oil changed in the truck. 3,000 miles comes around slowly since I don’t drive it that much—in this case it took almost two years. Drove in to the little place down at the foot of the hill (it seems like every time I write about a place I go, it’s just down at the foot of the hill, but they all are) and pulled over the pit. Couple of young guys up top—ball caps pulled down hard, one with a tattoo on his arm that in his old age will cause him to question his sanity at having it done. He was, however, suitably impressed—“What’s y’mileage on there, sir?”

“Two hundred fifty six, six seventy eight, and eight-tenths.”

“This’n sure paid for itself.”

“Yep, more or less.”

See, told you he was impressed. He and his pit man finished up, I cranked it and proceeded to fill the establishment with the rich, blue bouquet of burning oil as the stuff I just bought squeezed past the big gaps in the rings. Top it off a bit, close the hood, and I was back up the hill.

Came inside and the rest of the kids were watching the old home movies—Catherine was fascinated that these brutes who boss her around were once the same size as her. I was fascinated by the gigantic, swirly-framed glasses Reba had on. Eww. Not that I would ever tell her that. But those were some unflattering glasses. Girls used to wear these things—loopy legs that attached at the bottom side of the frame, bits of wire going all which way, giant upside-down rhomboid shaped lenses. And me? Aside from having more gray hair, I looked just like I look now, which is just how I looked when I was in college, which is just how I looked in high-school. I was, however, a very cute baby.

Went outside to see what all had to be done. First order of business was to fill up the bird feeders—I am very close to declaring victory over the squirrels and nasty wet seeds. The new feeders we got had just a tiny bit of icky seed in the bottom and have proved themselves much more irritating to the furry-tailed rats than anything else we’ve had. They seem to have decided to take the bait on the ground, although there is now the addition of Kelly the Bunny to the mix.

We’ve been seeing pretty regularly a rabbit hopping across the street when we come in at night, and as with all woodland creatures beside the road, Catherine decided it was her friend and needed a name. For some sort of lingual reason, every name is a variation on the cute-sounding hard-K-with-long E-suffix school of naming: Kristy, Keekee, Kandy, Kimmy. She has about five or six of these, and every animal has one of them. “Look, Cat—there’s a Canada goose by the pond!” “Thas my friend Kasey.” Never once is there a Bob.

So, our mystery bunny is Kelly. I walked out and Kelly had made itself at home beside the stump under the maple tree and quickly bounded off into the thin line of undergrowth at the back property line when I started making the rounds. “Don’t worry, little bunny rabbit—I’m not going to hurt you!” (Unless there’s a complete breakdown of the monetary system and I have to start putting some wild meat in the pot, and then all bets are off. Tell your little squirrel buddies, too.) All the feeders were in good shape, and even better, the little mousey-sorts had not been able to get into the plastic bucket of seed! Why I didn’t think about using a plastic bucket earlier is beyond me.

Got done with that, then trimmed up the rose bushes, which have needed to be pruned for about a year now. That in order, I figured I might better check the trees for bugs. The last two years have been really bad for Japanese beetles, and they nearly ate up Catherine’s cherry tree and Rebecca’s sycamore tree last year. This year I hadn’t seen any, but when I walked over, sure enough, the danged things were back again. I thought that maybe I was going to escape the plague since we bought a Honda, and there are like six or seven Japanese families in the neighborhood, but none of this seemed to matter.

Luckily, my vigilance did pay off this season, because they had just started chomping on the sycamore and had not moved on to the cherry. So it was back into Franklin, and back down to, where else? That’s right, the foot of the hill, to the hardware store for a nice bottle of thick, creamy liquid death. Yummy Sevin Concentrate—MMmmm-MM!

Sprayed everything is sight, and the bugs started dropping like…well, the obvious metaphor is just too obvious. Umm, let’s see…they started dropping like pants at an orgy. There, that’s better. Anyway, bugs suitably terminated, then it was time to dig in the dirt some.

Mexican heather, then some other blue stuff and some white stuff. Thirty-some pots, and right in the middle, I ran out of potting soil.

Franklin—foot of hill—hardware store—dirtbag.

I sometimes wonder if the cashiers ever get weirded out by the amount of times I come in and buy one thing, then come back in an hour and buy one more thing. Nothing to worry about, girls. Honest. (Although I will confess that I would be more likely to combine trips if they looked like Abe Vigoda, but hey. OOH THAT WAS WEIRD...when I first posted this, the link led to a picture of Abe Vigoda--I just now checked it and it was a photo of Britney Spears!! How odd--and the fact that the girls look like this is the reason I make so many trips in the first place! Anyway--the link has now been fixed to display properly the glories of Abe.)

Get back, dig, mix, plant—repeat until the rain started. ::sigh:: Good for the plants, not so much so for the stuff I sprayed on the Japanese beetles. Sat there in the rocking chair and watched it rain, and nodded off for what turned out to be a rather long while, then woke back up and the sun had come back out and the skies had cleared up again.

Get out bug spray, pour, mix, spray—repeat until woozy. Clean up mess, then get back to planting the remainder of the greenery. By the time I was through, I was tired. Really! So what better way to relax than to go BACK down the hill (this time to the grocery store, where there is a completely different group of cashiers who get frightened by my stalker-like behavior) where I picked up some ground up cow—got back, sprinkled them with seasoning, threw them on the fire, stood around, watched the hummingbirds, turned them over (the hamburgers, not the hummingbirds) and stood around some more. Eat, then get the kids going on their baths, and then time for the final episode of back-breaking labor, in which I try to figure out what’s wrong with the refrigerator.

Silly thing’s been slowly getting warmer, although until Friday the freezer part had been working. Saturday even it stopped working right, with the backside frosted over, but no cold air coming out. Although this has all the hallmarks of one of our typical appliance disasters, we were fortunate to have a small refrigerator upstairs that held most of the perishable stuff, so it wasn’t so pressing to have to get it fixed or replaced RIGHT NOW!

Slid it out, took off the cardboard compressor/fan screen on the back (nothing says protection like cardboard) and was met with huge piles of sticky, fluffy dust bunnies large enough to have made six of Kelly the Real Bunny. An hour and two different attachment-enhanced vacuum cleaners later, I had managed to get most of the coils cleaned off—my speculation was that the coils were so well insulated they couldn’t shed enough heat to keep the refrigerator cool, and the compressor kept running the whole time in an effort to make it cold, which made the freezer coils ice over. At least, that’s my theory. The ice machine did start making ice again, and the compressor finally did cycle off, but the refrigerator is still tepid. ::sigh:: Something else to spend non-existent disposable income on.

Dragged myself upstairs, showered, and got ready to…do class schedules! I finally got in bed around 1:30. And back up at 6. It sure didn’t seem like a whole 4 1/2 hours, though.

Got up, took another shower because I had messed my hair up so bad in that short time, molested Reba some, made breakfast, and then got us all in the van for church. Gorgeous day again Sunday, and we did indeed see the flock of Canadian geese by the pond, and Cat proceeded to name them and sing them a song at top volume. Which is cute, I suppose, but when it’s right there in your right ear, and it lasts for twenty minutes, it can be a bit distracting.

Got to the building, had to sub for a teacher who was out, then refereed the wrestling competition on our bench during worship, which makes you sometimes wish less for worship than for a warship. I have come to the conclusion that I need a set of four radio collars. Not for them to listen to—the kind they use for bird dogs. TZZZZAAAAAP! Probably wouldn’t have to use it more than once or twice.

Hmm? Pardon? This would be illegal!? Well, what about a muzzle? THAT TOO!? Sheesh!

Maybe we should just sit in the back. Of the parking lot.

Oh well. As evidenced by a stack of home movies, they’re only young once, so I hope and pray they grow out of the necessity to have public displays of sibling animosity.

Went and ate some Chinese food for lunch, then went to both the Wal- and K-Marts for Stuff We Needed, then back home where the kids helped put together some little bags of mints as gifts for folks visiting church, then went back up to the building for someone’s baby shower, then the kids did some more little gift things. By this time the place was fully of hyped-up rug rats whose parents had dropped them off and gone back home, so the volume was getting unbearable. I got Cat and we went to the auditorium, where I promptly fell asleep and drooled on my tie.

Evening worship came and went—I had to lead singing, which sounded like someone who had ingested large doses of a 1-napthyl methylcarbamate-based pesticide and baby shower mints. That finished, we stayed around and had some ice cream with the kids, then it was back to home, then to bed, then to here, where I am once again, very, VERY busy.

But not too busy to bore you with what you just got through reading!
posted by Terry at 2:28:00 PM