Well, once again I sit here putting fingers to keyboard in
order to enlighten the world to the higher functions of my synapse. In other words, I’m gonna lead
y’all through the muck and mire that is my mind’s inner workings, and hope that
it is all somewhat lucid!
This past weekend was a busy one for us, considering we had
no children with us for most of it. The
weather was absolutely gorgeous Saturday and Sunday so we decided to plant our
garden, or at least part of it. My Beautiful Bride wanted to put the lettuce
and spinach in the ground so off to one of my favorite stores (Lowe’s) we went.
Now bear in mind, leading me into a home
improvement store is like taking a toddler to the Hershey’s Chocolate Factory…I
want it all! We walked around the garden center for a while where my Darlin
picked out several different types of lettuce (cause they were pretty), spinach
plants, and I selected some jumbo jalapeno plants. After placing the salad-to-be
in our cart my Best Half asked if we could look at some decorative plants. Now
I enjoy a well maintained yard as well as the next man, but my mind suddenly
clicked to the fact that (a). This was a three day weekend, (b). I was not on-call, or even in queue for
on-call, and (c). My wife had big plans
for me that apparently did not include sitting on the couch napping. Now I
realize that “nap time” loses its appeal sometime after kindergarten and remains
distasteful for many years thereafter, BUT, with the Monkey around, napping is
not even an option. When it appears to him that you are entering that ever-so-blissful
state of total nirvana he brings you back to reality in his own gentle way; he
screams. Now I’m not talking about an “I’m
across the room and want to wake the old fella on the couch up” scream, oh no, I’m
talking about a five year old creeping up like a Navy SEAL until he is two
inches from your face and unleashing a caterwaul directly into your eardrum that
makes your spine tingle and your brain shrink. It is an effective way to wake
one’s father, I’ll grant him that.
While planning this Eden-like paradise, we decided it might
be in our best interest to build a fence to protect the garden from harmful
creatures. Not because we were concerned about rabbits and other wild animals eating
the fruits of our labors, but because we have two canine companions living in
our back yard who apparently believes it is their mission from on High to cause
me a stroke. To this day I firmly
believe Clementine is not a thoroughbred Bloodhound, but a mixed breed of
bloodhound, chicken, and Case track hoe. That dog had managed to trench our
yard to such a degree that a light rain storm make the yard look like the
Amazon River immigrated to Texas and took up residence behind our house. She
sleeps in a hay nest in the garage and runs from everything. (I’m not real fond
of the eggs she lays though. They have a kinda crappy flavor). And as far as Jack goes, well, he’s supposedly
a black Lab but I don’t think I buy that either. I think he also was some geneticist’s
experiment gone wrong in which a Lab was crossed with a kangaroo and a goat.
This dog can jump a 6 foot fence and never even nick a belly hair, pretty much
coming and going as he pleases despite my best efforts to contain him. He chews
up everything in sight, whether it is edible or not. Not just the kids’ shoes
that are left in the garage or my wife’s softball glove from when she was much
younger, but he eats cardboard boxes and tin cans, and chairs. He even tried to
eat a table. Not a small coffee table but a whole dad-blamed kitchen table.
Anyway, back to Lowe’s, my Sweetheart was kind enough to let
me peruse the tool and lumber sections before hustling me out the door. I
admit, I had no intention of buying either tools or lumber at the time. It was
nothing more than a stall tactic similar to the kids suddenly having to go to
the bathroom when it’s time to do the dishes. (Shameful, I know). When we got
home, we marked out a 10x12 area where we wanted to till the ground and then
the fun began. I borrowed a tiller from my sister last week and finally got to
use it. There is nothing in the world like tearing up the ground with spinning
metal blades driven by a gas powered motor (except tearing up the ground with a
diesel powered tractor/backhoe, but she wouldn’t let me get one of those). I did enjoy the ten minutes of ground chewing
action, even if it felt like I was wrestling a greased midget for a bit. The ground
was actually pretty easy to turn since that area of the yard used to house the
chicken coop. Talk about fertile! After the tilling was done, we grabbed the
hoes (garden type, not ghetto slang) and made our rows, then planted our
seedlings and a few seeds. Once we finished putting these things in the ground
I started building the fence, which could have been an easy task except I ran
out of welded wire fencing about 10 feet from the finish line. As a wise man
once told me, you gauge a project not by square footage, but by how many trips
to the hardware store. This was apparently going to be a two-trip experiment in
patience. It was too late in the day to go back to Lowe’s, so we fashioned a
make-shift barricade out of two sawhorses, a wheel barrow, two plastic lawn chairs, some leftover chicken
wire, and a hope that the genetic mutant dogs were too stupid to figure it out.
There’s something to be said about redneck engineering; it ain’t purty, but it
works!
The following day we returned to Lowe’s and bought another
50 yards of welded wire fence (because they don’t sell it any smaller…) and
some more plants then finished the project. I’m pretty pleased with it and hope
that this time the plants grow, unlike last year’s attempt at gardening which
yielded nothing more than some cilantro and a zombie tomato plant that wouldn’t
die. I did get to use the tiller again, this time to grind up the Amazon River
banks back there and level out the ground some. We planted 20 pounds of grass
seed over this area, hoping that it will look more like the amber waves of
grain than the deserts of El Paso….
The best part of the long weekend came Monday morning when
we had the distinct privilege of being at the doctor’s office exactly one hour
before the sun woke up. This was the day we were to learn the gender of the new
ranch hand and although I was surrounded by people who assured me it was going
to be a girl, I kept the faith and hoped for a strapping young man to handle
the lawn mowing and trash removal. This is why we have kids in the first place,
isn’t it? (Be honest…). Once we got my Darlin checked in, they put a wrist band
on her. This concerned me because I wasn’t sure if they were planning to keep
her there for an extended period of time, or planning to introduce so much
radiation into her system that she would forget who she was. Neither prospect was acceptable in my book. We
have a garden now and I would never remember to water it without her. She is my
rock (and my memory).
Anyway, soon after the application of the tracking device (I
mean, wrist band), we were led back to a room where there was a bed, a large
device that looked like something out of an Orson Well’s book, and a small
radio playing Big Band music, which was a pleasant surprise since most doctor’s
offices play nothing but that despicable Muzak (or as I like to call it,
imitation music). After taking what seemed to be thousands of images of our
infant’s arms and legs (two of each, by the way), spine (only one), and face
(again, only one) the tech showed us what we were looking for. Right there on
the flat screen were our baby’s (to put
it in her words) “man parts”. Yes folks, we are having a boy. And if the
sonic induced images of the tech’s magical machine are any indication, a big
boy. Ah yes, I am a proud papa. We left the office with hearts full of joy,
pride, and a CD-Rom filled with evidence of my new son’s masculinity.
We were finally able
to lay down on the couch to nap for a couple of hours that afternoon before the
Monkey came home… but I couldn’t fall asleep until he got there to keep me up.
(By the way Honey, I really will get the saw horses out of the yard, or at
least send the boys to do it….)
Until next time….
