You know…

The worst thing about your kids waking up at the crack of dawn Saturday and running around the house creating so much general mayhem that you get up out of your nice warm snug bed and traipse around the house telling them to hush, is when it’s not really happening except in your dream, and you wake yourself up out of an unsound sleep to find that it is just barely dawn, and you are still firmly snugged next to your wife, and the children are still blessedly asleep. But, you’re awake.

Luckily for you, however, you are able to go back to sleep and go all the way to 7:30 before the phone rings and your mother-in-law asks if you’re awake so she can tell you the reason why they didn’t come to Vacation Bible School the night before was because of a big wreck on the Interstate, and you find yourself not really caring that much, but rather wishing you had remembered to unplug the telephone, while simultaneously suppressing the need to tell your wife’s mother that the kids were not all broken up and crying about not seeing her and your wife’s father, because the children were deep in the throes of a sugar overload from the special Vacation Bible School ice cream they ate. Ice cream that caused them to flitter around the ceiling of the van all the way home, jabbering at exactly 8,000 words per minute. So, you bide your time and wish mom-in-law a good day and hang up the phone and you turn over to mess with your wife but in the intervening minute or two of telephony, she has gotten up and gone to the bathroom, annnnnd, yep…she’s brushing her hair, which means that she’s not going to get back under the sheet with you to demonstrate a superfluity of naughtiness. ::sigh::

So you wake up and you realize that you must still be dreaming, because the hale, vigorous, manly, robust, muscular young fellow who occupied your body only hours before seems to have deserted you, leaving you muttering and stumbling around like a crazy man. Then you shave and brush your teeth and it’s allllllllll better.

So you go downstairs and start doing what needs to be done.

First up, feeding the livestock. Had just gotten out the porch door when I heard it creak back open behind me. Standing there in all of her glory, wearing pink beach sandals, Barbie panties, a too small tee shirt and a smile was the Tiny Terror—“I wanna feed the birds with you, Daddy!!”

“CAT!!—Get back in there and put on clothes—no one out here wants to see your nekkiditity!” Wicked grin, disappeared into the house, but only after, “Don’t sla-” SLAMMM!! “m…the door.” ::sigh:: Got my bucket and started going around to the feeders and she was back out there in just moments, dressed properly for outdoor viewing and she helped me clean out the old seeds and pour in the new. She REALLY likes that cool scooper with the hole in it.

We talked about Kelly the Bunny, Kelly the Crow, Kelly the Woodpecker, going into first grade, and KeeKee the Cat, and got everything filled up and the bucket put away and then it was time to clean the birdbath. Which involved water. Which was also necessary in order to give all the plants a bath, too. And to wash all of the (non-existent) dirt off the bench. And clean the ants. “We gonna water Jonathan’s tomatoes?” Oh yeah. And give ‘em some of that good Miracle-Gro 18-18-21.

Lots of arm waving and running about later we had successfully drowned both the ‘mater plants in chemicals and were done for the day outside. No grass cutting for me. We had a ton of laundry to do, and I still had my side of the bedroom to finish cleaning up. Which task was mostly an exercise in moving stuff around some more, and doing a bit of vacuuming. Which managed to take up the entire stinking day.

In amongst the clothes folding and dustbunny storms, I also managed to watch Sling Blade all the way through for the first time. I’ve seen bits and pieces of it enough to nearly be able to recite the whole movie, but it was good to get it all in the proper order. Of course, now that I put it in the proper order, I began compulsively repeating bits of dialogue around the house. For some reason, the kids didn’t seem to find anything different about me. Go figure.

Also did a bit of job searching for Reba and put her resume out on Monster. At some point during the past few months, work for her has become something akin to being held hostage in a Dilbert cartoon. Odd how working your butt off and trying to do your best will alienate people. It seems she is “too sullen”. That she “doesn’t socialize enough”. That complaining about working in a Kafkaesque hellhole is…well, you get the picture. Time to move on. She’ll do fine. And when she is gone, she will have me to open unto her former place of employ the fiery portals full of all the bitter invective I still know how to stoke. Heh. But no names, just to be nice.

Had lunch and supper in there along the way, then it was time to scrub the kids and get them to bed, and then it was very late, and then it was very early again Sunday morning and time to get them all up and in their clothes (“…no, you can’t wear your beach sandals and tee shirt to church”). Got through with class and sat down in the auditorium and Boy crashed onto my lap in about five seconds, then Catherine dropped on Mom about half a second later. All those sleepy waves gave me incredible fits as I tried to stay propped up. I would sit there and one second be patting Boy and the next nearly hitting my head on the pew. I have found that it helps to disguise my napping to occasionally start flipping pages when I hear everyone else do it. Now, if I can just get everyone else around me to loudly snore, flatulate, and mumble, I might be able to escape entirely unnoticed!

Time to go, then it was off to Ashley’s other grandparents’ house, which, as usual, is all I’ll say about that, then back for evening worship which I managed to stay awake for in its entirety. Hung around for a bit afterward drawing a sailboat picture for Reba to use as namecards for the kids in her class, then waited for another HOUR as Reba and one of the other girls from church exchanged vital information which I will not call gossip, because I know quite well what’s good for me.

Finally dragged Miss Reba into the van, then home for a quick bite, then to bed, then into the breech again when I got here this morning. Nothing but good old-fashioned fuster-cluckery, but enough to be a distraction.

Maybe tomorrow will be somewhat more interesting…
posted by Terry at 4:22:00 PM