White Lightning Axiom: Redux

It was a very full weekend for the Haupertonian Combine's ruling class. Late last week we had company. By late, I mean a bit after dinnertime. Some of our family friends had come over to make about 10000 wontons with Mrs MDMHVONwonton. Patti and her mother came over, escorting the Young Brittany and her unbounded little brother. His name is Nick, as in the devil. He and Jovial Jake are a pair to be recogned with. Alexis and Britt were on one side, Nick and Jake on the other. Monumental battle of wills and shrills. They kept each other occupied well past the 8pm deadline for a bath. While the Gaggle of Gals and other assorted rogues kept each other busy inside, I went out to do a bit of tending to the Agricultural Sector. Such efforts were long overdue. In my absence, I found that a ground-hog had found it within it's interests to chow down on the greenery. He had made quite short work of 1/2 a row of the green beans and had pretty much decimated the peas. I went back inside to get the live-trap out. I do not tolerate vermin tearing down what I have worked so hard to build. I set the trap out in hopes that it will be big enough to contain this beastie. Its good for squirrels, but it may not suffice for this monster. I came to the conclusion that it was a ground-hog and not a rabbit by the area under the chain-link fence that surrounds the Haupertionian City-State Central Palace and Manor. The breach in the security perimeter was much to big for what a rabbit would have done. I collected as many boulders and various large concrete blocks to form an enscarpment in the area of the breach. If I play my cards right, he will just move on to easier pickings and I will not have to deal with finding a suitable relocation site for the little bugger. I picked the remainder of the peas and some of the larger green tomatoes. I am hoping that the tomatoes will ripen off the vine so I don't have to deal with trying to guess which acre needs harvesting each day. As it gets darker, the blood sucking insects begin to descend. Realizing this, I make my way into the manor. Inside, I share the bounty of the peas and horn in on the running dialog. As it turns out, we are invited to a pig-roast next weekend. This will be interesting to say the least. It will be at Patti's mother's house. She, being the mother, has a pool which will be an irresistible magnet to the Troublesome Twins. This shall be an interesting event, I imagined that I will not remain dry for very long.

Our morning on Saturday went from relaxed and sleepy to a furious panic as we realized that we needed to be at the Pediatric Clinic for the 2 year checkup for the twins. We managed to get our discombobulated act together and arrived at the office with minutes to spare. We were shuttled into one of the numerous quarantine cells where we were informed that we should remove the clothing from the 'subjects' and a doctor will be with us shortly. Shortly. Hmmm, what do you mean by shortly? Do you mean, shortly before the next pass by Halley's comet? The next evolutionary leap of mankind? The next coming of Christ? Oh, you mean the next hour. Bastards! Do they have even the slightest compassion for 2 parents feebly trying to restrain 2 children (the math there means that the kids outnumber the parents, really) in a room full of pointy objects, poisons and other assorted dangers. A room where the door latch has been taped open because it is broken, thus enabling the toddlers to escape at their leisure? If you wanted to see us at 9:45am, then why did you relegate us to detention cell 102 at 9am! Argh! Needless to say, Mrs MDMHVON (Pissed as hell) was not pleased and created a temperature drop to near 0 Kelvin when the professional finally arrived and asked naively 'How is everything today?' I thought my ears were going to drop off! The Icy response made me think that perhaps Algore and MoveOn.org were correct and that 'The day after tomorrow' was coming to fruition! After the lengthy 5 minute exposure to the doctor, we quickly evacuated the Totally Torqued Twins and made our way home. We discussed the debacle on the way home, reinforcing the cognitive dissonance of each-other's complete disdain for modern medicine and it's chattel-like treatment of us, their clients. Breath deep ... count down from 10 ... ahhh, that's better. Set down the baseball bat, it is not a fight you need to engage ... sigh. Once we got back home, we let the kids run wild in the wing of the Manor that we had made child-proof while we attempted to nap on the sofa's in said wing. We were pretty beat so it took quite a bit of effort for the kids to muster enough abuse to get us to budge. In the end, we got our collective posteriors in motion and sucked it up.

My Big Little brother had come down late Friday and we headed out to various home improvements stores to pick up lumber and hardware for the forward observation towers/play set that we are building for the kids. We went to Ace, Lowes and Home Depot and found that some of the stores had some of the stuff, but no-one had all of the stuff in either the inventory, quantity or quality that we needed. Very disappointing expedition, extremely costly and tediously long. We pretty much blew half of our remaining life span waiting for assistance from various store clerks only to hear that a) we don't carry that dimension of lumber, b) it didn't arrive in the last shipment, c) we only have 2 of the 300 you need in stock, d) why would you need a 3/4" wood bit? just use 1/2"! Arghhh. This 4 hour cruise ended up with us returning to HQ with 50% of what we needed and 100% more migrane than I wanted. I spent the remainder of the waning day nursing my migrane with various pharmaceuticals and beverages as well as nursing the twins with various ice-cubes and bottles. I believe, in one of my semi-lucid moments, my parents called and I mumbled something about Paul Harvey in cahoots with the Illuminati.

Sunday morning came upon us faster than you can say that the weekend is almost over. We had nearly depleted our energy reserves but we still had much more to do. While the Mrs and Alexis (Queen of Shriek and much-much more) went shopping, the men went to church. Men are evil so we need to go to church, or so Gloria Steinum tells us. You would think that 400+ lb of men could handle a 27 lb toddler, we were wrong. In the hour or so we spent there, Jacob pretty much spent the whole time squirming, seething, attempting to crawl under the pews, over the seats, giving half eaten food to fellow church-goers and just being an energetic and amazingly entertaining to everyone around us. He is very interested in the sign of peace part of the mass and exercises great enthusiasm in shaking everyone's hand and persisting in trying to get some extra 'peace' long after the brief moment is over. We decided that we needed to let Jacob stretch his legs a bit on the way back from communion procession ... bad idea. He took off like someone had list his tail on fire. Looks like we will be leaving early! Not quite. Once we got to the car in the front lot, we found that we were pretty solidly parked in. We were going no-where till everyone else got out. Joy. We battle our way out of the worlds most awkward parking lot and stop off at Ace Hardware to see if we can find any more bolts. We did not find the bolts, but Jacob did find that it was very easy to get away from daddy in the overstocked aisles that dominated the store. After chasing him down for the umpteenth time, he had latched onto a driveway reflector and we ended up buying it to keep the peace on the way home.
My brother and I did not have to wait long at home before the Mrs and Alexis showed up. It was getting close to lunch and nap time when we all got settled in, so we took care of that and away we went. Off to another Home Depot to scrounge up some more lumber and parts before we engage in the real fun. The leveling of the territory where the observation posts/play-set will be erected. This area is sloped in such a way that all 4 corners are at various heights which will require dirt being dug up from 2 corners at different depths being deposited at the other 2 corners at different heights. From about 2pm till 6:30pm, we dug and raked and dug and hauled and dug and flung and dug. I kept digging till I could dig no more. I was a mess, covered in sweat, mud and bug repellent. I had managed to get a good chunk of the downward digging polished off. Fortunately, Paul had spotted the flexible sprinkler system pipe before we put a shovel through it, so we narrowly avoided that disaster! There is so much clay and muck in the soil, that raking this flat is going to be a Herculean task at best. I'm fairly impressed ... nay, amazed, that I did not put a shovel or pick-axe through any of my limbs during this part of the excavation. I am certain that there is much more digging to come and many more opportunities for me to do substantial damage to various extremities. We shall see.