Why we have kids....

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….