You know, you get to a certain age, and I certainly have gotten to it, and you have little patience for foolishness and for not having things placed in the correct spot around the house.
Like, for example, dish clothes to wipe the dishes that I have just washed. I’ve done two loads of laundry and they have yet to appear. They just magically disappeared. I think that Penn Jillete has taken leave from Donald Rumps’ Celebrity Apprentice and has gone to our house. I’m going to start searching for him right now and ask him to wave his hands and make them reappear.
I guess this is my way of saying I need to visit the Boneyard today and unleash all those unfettered and unnecessary thoughts.
On top of the disappearing towels, I suddenly have been informed my a grown son who doesn’t live here anymore, although he did a few years ago, that the watermelon, the corn on the cob, the two six-packs of weird, and I assume expensive beer, plus the steaks are for the barbeque that will soon commence once the son-in-law, who does live here, arrives in the first truck he had when he arrived here some months ago (he just purchased a second that blocks our long driveway; business must be good in the pest business).
I can’t wait.
I call my wife who left a day ago with the son-in-law’s wife for Vancouver. She just informed me that she is holed up in a nice hotel room near the mall and has no intention of getting out of the bed. Not even to give me a hint where the dish towels might have disappeared, just in case it wasn’t Penn who made them disappear.
My teen-age daughter just informed me that it’s hot in the house, so I go to the garage to break out the fans only to discover they too have disappeared behind the tons of equipment that our son-in-law has brought in from Vancouver that I know he will never use in his fledging pest control business, but says he needs just in case he needs some of it.
I want to tell him if he does need something, good luck in finding it. While he’s searching he can be on the lookout for those fans.
Isn’t it wonderful, I say to myself, to be semi-retired and only working 60 hours or more a week? Good thing I’m not fully retired. Then I might be working 80 plus hours a week.
I think I need to volunteer somewhere. Maybe Penn and Teller need an assistant.
Called my oldest brother today and he picks up his cell in White, GA. at the home of his third or fourth or fifth oldest son (my brother and his wife have 14 kids; I say kids, but the youngest is approaching 40 and the rest are approaching where I used to be 15 years ago). Their Georgia son has retired once and has another job of equal pay out in Oklahoma somewhere. So he’s got plenty of money, and probably plenty of dish towels that I don’t have at the present time.
My brother starts talking Kentucky Derby, which was run this year in the mud and gave us Orb as the winner. I tell him about my experience with horses named summer. Twice I have been – by telepathy means – given the winner before the race, the last one was Summer Bird who won the 2009 Belmont Stakes.
I think much of my life has been divinely inspired, or led, and he knows that I believe that. But the first thing out of his mouth when I tell him I have been told the winner of two horses races before the horses ran, is that it is the work of the Devil who is trying to make me become a gambler.
That about floors me. Because I have always thought the things that have happened to me that can’t be explained in Earthly terms has been positive. So to have him suggest it’s just the opposite not only stunned me, but also made me more than a little mad.
And he absolutely was no help in telling me where the dish towels might be.
Although I just thought maybe I might ask whoever is on the other “side’ and cluing me in on things where they are. Certainly that good soul would know. And I’m sure you see where I wrote “good soul” and not the evil one my brother suggests.
My brother will be 83 in October and he drives all over the country visiting his kids. He is getting a little wary, however, because during rain storms while driving on freeways those big semi-trucks can splash a lot of water and blind drivers. So he has to drive faster than he wants to stay away from them.
He has made a concession to his chopping wood for his furnace. He now has the assistance of my second-oldest brother, who is 79. I have a third brother who is 75 going on 76 and when he joins in and becomes the third logger, I will be quick to tell them when they ask that the fourth brother is too busy looking for dish towels to chop wood.
Our teen daughter has her driver’s license and with it she has quickly figured out, as well as we did at that age, that having a car at disposal can sure expand horizons. So she constantly makes up reasons why she needs to use the car to go over those horizons. The best way to do it, she has figured, is to say mom says I can, and besides my friend is going to meet me there, and if you don’t let me go it’s the reason why I don’t have friends.
It’s draining to be looking for dish towels and fending off the many reasons why she should take the car. I’m getting tired just writing it.
And it’s not like she’s not getting a bang out of the car. She already has had an accident (on the first day she got her license), smashed in the passenger side doors, and scrapped up the back panel on the driver’s side. I tell her that in another couple weeks and a few more incidents with innocent objects the car might disappear with the dish towels.
She could have invoked the name of Penn, but she didn’t.
Our teen son took his allowance the other day and spent it all on a marathon movie – four back-to-back movies – popcorn, pop and God only knows what else. Little did I know that he owed our grown son, the one who just announced the impromptu barbeque, $30. And when that grown son got wind that he spend his $30 plus all the rest, he went berserk. I was hoping Penn was around so he could make my grown son disappear with the towels, but no such luck.
Meanwhile, down in Vancouver, my wife was resting comfortably in a nice bed in a nice and quiet hotel room. I was thinking of taking off for Las Vegas, but I couldn’t get out of the driveway because of all the cars and one of my son-in-law’s now two trucks were blocking my escape.
My wife just informed me that our son-in-law and his wife (our daughter, if you haven’t figured that out yet) said they would buy us an air-condition unit (the pest control business must be good) if we want. I don’t want to go there, I just want the fans, and the dish towels.
And also just give me a clear escape route.
The good thing is that with the move-in of son-in-law and his wife while they build their pest control business (you think I have advertised that enough?), I have come to discover that my wife and me are control freaks. Well, maybe not freaks. But certainly we like at our age to have some control over our environment so we know where the dish towels are at all times, just in case one of us might like to wipe down dishes.
What’s good about that?
Well, I like to self-discover and find out as much as I can what I’m like so I can discard the bad and improve on the good. And it’s nice, it really is, to have a comfortable spot where you can be assured that everything is where you expect them to be.
The bad upside to the move-in is that my wife and I have lost control almost of everything. Our two teenagers love having my son-in-law and his wife around because the age difference isn’t so large that they can actually talk some of the same language. And my grown daughter is a positive person who likes to laugh a lot, so that is nice.
But I have no idea where things are anymore.
Especially that is so for the dish towels.
One of these days I fear that my wife and I will come back from the store – assuming that we can get one of our cars out of the driveway to get to the store – and discover that there is no longer a place for us.
We will be told, however, that the dish towels have been found, and that we can take them with us.
Assuming, that is, we can get our cars out of the driveway.
Be well pal.
Have a great week.
You are loved.
