Possumblog

Uhgh.

That would be the sound of me when the clock went off this morning.

But, you will all be glad to know that I am no longer in danger of being the neighborhood pariah. Yet, anyway.

Got the kids and went home, and decided I simply had to get the grass cut. It, or rather, the gigantic patches of clover, had just gotten to the point of being ridiculous, even for me.

But there's still other stuff I needed to get done. Which means, I had to organize. Oldest upstairs to study, others outside to play in the backyard, chicken gotten out of the freezer for supper, me upstairs to change into my grass-cutting clothes, back downstairs, swing wide the doors of the Giant Plastic Shed Badly Disguised as a Playhouse and get out the birdseed, fill the feeders, drag out the ol' Murray, check the oil, briefly think about sending Middle Girl to the garage for a quart of oil, think better of it, go get it myself, add some to the nearly dry crankcase, fill up the gas tank, prime the carb, yank the cord and...

IT STARTED! First pull, too. Amazing. SO, off to the front yard to knock down the weeds and zone out and cogitate for about an hour as I'm dragged around by the mower.

Long-time readers will know that lawn-mowing for me is a time to meditate and rage and think and come up with all the solutions to the problems of mankind. Carbon monoxide is very helpful to this task. Anyway, I was just getting back into practice, so there wasn't much to rage about.

The thought did strike me as I was pondering the life and times of John Paul II how much longer it would be that we would have Margaret Thatcher with us. She's not been in good health lately, and since it seems that we have begun an increasingly rapid loss of people who were instrumental in winnning the Cold War, you just have to wonder how much longer she'll be with us. The Left hated her with the same vim and passion as they did Reagan, so I figure she's alright. She and Churchill defined the UK during the 20th Century, much as Roosevelt and Reagan did, and she certainly earned her place in the history books.

Anyway, more mowing. Got finished and noticed the girls had gone inside the house. They'd been all over the swingset, so I figured they'd gotten tired and went in to watch television. Sure enough, when I breezed through they were sitting there with the SpongeBob DVD playing. "Has Mom called?"

Nope.

It would be a long time before she did.

I got Rebecca to put the chicken in the oven for me while I ran back outside to put down some more weedkiller. The last dose worked pretty good on the dandelions, but they keep growing in other places. AND, it's still supposed to rain today, so I really wanted to get it out so it could get watered into the lawn.

Threw out the rest of the bag, took off my shoes, came inside, asked about the telephone again, got my clothes off in the laundry room and grossed the kids out when I came back out with ONLY MY UNDERWEAR ON! AAGGHHHHH! "EWWWW! DAAAAdeeeeee!"

Hey, my clothes were covered in chemicals and grass clippings, what was I going to do, drag it all over the house?! No. Just walk around in my lumpy hairy glory.

I got Cat to leave the television alone to go take her bath while I jumped in the shower and washed the yard off of me, got out, dressed, and walked in to see her still in the tub. "I have a scratch."

"Well, whatever--just hurry and bathe so Jonathan can."

"It's big, 'cause I fell on that thing, the swings, the thing that goes back and forth, the see-saw, because I fell, and it scratched me and I came inside and Rebecca put ice on it because it hurt."

"Well, JUST BA--"

Then she turned a bit and WHOA! Dang if she DIDN'T have a big angry red welt on the side of her tummy/back/waistline area--must have been 6 inches of scraped hide, about an inch wide.

"CATHERINE! Didn't that hurt!?" Duh.

"Uh-huh, yes sir, that's why I came in. But I didn't cry."

I would have. I went downstairs and turned the chicken in the pan and came back upstairs and got her out and dried off and set Boy to bathing while I looked for the Neosporin. Three drawers of stuff in our bathroom, arranged by someone who Is Not Neat. No luck. So, peroxide. Even after bathing, it still bubbled up smartly on her scrub mark. Ouch. Poor critter.

But, she was fine after that. As they say, though, that'll leave a mark.

On downstairs to finish supper. Salad, green beans, set table, serve food, watch The Office (despite the official ban on watching TV while eating), clean table, send Cat and Boy to bed, unload dishwasher, send Bec to take her bath, reload dishwasher, clean stove and sink and table, finally head upstairs. Turn on computer, start working on Reba's paper. What a mess. Fix what she started, tell Rebecca for the fiftieth time to get out of the tub, type, help Oldest with a math problem, type, Bec to bed, Oldest in tub, type, FINALLY got the call from Reba. At 9:45 p.m., they were just about to wrap up for the night. She said she just had a few more things to do and would be on the way home. Oldest in bed, type, get about eight pages done, quit, get homecoming call at 10:40.

Greet Reba at around 11, hear about the wonders of the nursing home inspection, especially interesting being a happening during the afternoon. It seems one of the residents has a bad habit of grabbing Reba's shirt and tugging on it when she's around, and in this instance, the little old lady grabbed the hem of Reba's top, and PULLED IT UP OVER HER CHEST. "HEY! I WANT THAT SHIRT!" Of course, this happened in a corridor, with the nursing staff, the inspectors, and a clutch of administrators milling around. Reba kindly told her she might want the shirt, but she didn't need to try to take it off of her.

Of course, my question was, "Which bra did you have on?"

Luckily, it was one of the nice newer ones with flowers and that was opaque and provided full coverage of her breastal regions. (Since I got so much done on her paper, she let me look.)

We finally got in bed around midnight, and were back up again this morning at 5:00. She had to be there this morning at 6:00, which meant I had to get all the young'uns to school, so THEY had to all get up early, too.

And now, I'm here!

Posted by Terry Oglesby at April 6, 2005 09:07 AM