White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Last night was one of those unpleasant experiences that you know will haunt you later the next day. The kind of awful that won't cause you to throw yourself from a bridge, but will make you a fairly surly for the next 24 hours. Like a trucker on his last sip of tepid, weak coffee, knowing that the rest of the haul is going to require a measure of will that just may not be there. The night started out pretty nicely. The Mrs got home early enough to come along and help pick up the Toddlers. That gave me the opportunity to move the retaining wall blocks to the Twin Tower construction site. These things are about 30lb each and I had a good 40-50 of them to take care of. I let the Haupertonian Hounds out so they could run around while I was working. Half way through my transportation effort, I noticed that Thor had become agitated by something out in the garden. So I had the uncompensated workers stop their work while I went to investigate. I had set out a live trap among the carrots to catch the rabbits that have been making short work of the greenery and it looks like something was in the cage. I could see the scratch marks about the base of the cage and hear the frantic rattling as I approached. I was disappointed at first, thinking that there were more rabbits and I had only now caught the second. Upon lifting the cage, I find that it was a squirrel and not a voracious carrot-eating rodent. I'm not a big fan of squirrels either, but they only dig up my bulbs so I don't bother them much anymore. The bulbs left in the flower gardens are down deep enough now that they don't usually get molested. In any even, the Hounds are intensely interested in the cage and I let them sniff and prance about the cage for a while. Eventually, Katie ends up knocking over the cage and releasing the poor terrorized rodent. The two spent the rest of the evening racing back and forth along the fence where they last saw their fuzzy little victim dart off and rechecking the trap to make sure that it was still not there. Now that the Hounds were distracted, I could get on with the task at hand. Without having to worry about tripping over an inquisitive spectator, I managed to finish while there was still light outside.

This is where the disagreeable part of my evening starts. Our oldest son has been a picky eater for quite some time now and it has only been getting worse. We had a little show down and he seems to have won this round. He would not eat his fruit unless you mixed it in the sugar laden yogurt. His eating habits are a complete converse of Alexis' omnivorous behavior. She will pretty much eat anything you put in front of her. Beans, broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, rice, tofu. She is eating stuff that I would NEVER touch as a kid. She even tries stuff on her own accord like tomatoes and peppers. It baffles me how contrary the two are.

The rest of the evening went a bit sour as well. The Mrs was desperately trying to get the merchants at the carpet shop to call her back so she could schedule someone to come in and get OFFICIAL measurements for the runners. To no avail, I guess we will have to wait till after the vacation to get the measurements and order the rugs ... which will probably take a few weeks to get here. Procrastination aside, this kind of poor service really ticks her off and the last thing I need is her in a sore spot when we go on vacation.

For my efforts in trying to get my Eldest Son of Dooooom to eat his fruit, he took a belated revenge upon me by waking up at 1am and LOUDLY voicing his discontent. I went in there a couple times to console him but to no avail. The third time, he woke Alexis and I had to sooth her consternation as well. Then there was a period of calm ... until about 0500 hours. He started up again and this time, I let the Mrs try to sooth him. She gave it her best maternal shot, but to no avail. She ended up bringing him into our mile-wide water bed, but that too did not satisfy him. After an hour of him thrashing about, we gave up and let him have his morning shot of milk. I had an agreement that I would be minimally involved this morning with the kids so that I could get off to work as early as possible. This would allow me to leave earlier and get the final layer of sealant on the floor done before it gets too late. There is nothing less enjoyable than trying to navigate the local roads in Philadelphia during rush hour on a Friday of a long weekend. Everyone is off to the Jersey shore for one last shot at skin cancer. Good news it that I did manage to get to work by 0700 and have put in time earlier in the week so that I can leave at 1400. I can only hope that this all works out. Hershey is only 100 miles away and it is a straight shot down the Turnpike. This should not be too bad.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 6:13 AM