White Lightning Axiom: Redux

The trip home could have gone better, but a great deal of the responsibility for that lays upon my 'Shoulders of Atlas'. If I had gotten my but into work earlier, I could have left before 1615. My drop-dead time. If I don't leave by then, there is a good chance that I will not make it to the Manor or the Child ReEducation and Retention Center by 1800. After that time, the Organizational hierarchy starts charging me a buck a minute, per child. It adds up pretty quickly. If you don't have the cash, they are more than happy to accept blood or organs. Fresh ones. In any event, there were a few hiccups in my commute. Right at the launch-gates for the KOP interchange, a semi had collided with a car. The local police were all over it since it was not in the turnpike itself. This caused a HUGE rubber-neck backup. It's not a good place to have congestion since it is pretty much a 100meter x 100meter paved free-for-all zone. No painted lines, no real curtailments, just the rule that might makes right. Cars and trucks were weaving all over the place in order to avoid the backup and there was bound to be ... issues. I got out my Meson Accelerator and started blasting a path to the right most lane. After dodging several MOABs and a couple DaisyCutters, I managed to break free and shake loose some of the burning debris from the hood of the SuperSaturn. Zipping through the EZPass lane, I grinned evilly as my protagonists shook their fists and launched batteries of ineffectual LAW rockets at my quickly vanishing profile. Ok, that probably isn't quite the way it happened, but that is how I saw it. I had similar experiences once I got down the TPK a ways. Somewhere between the Mid-County Interchange and Ft. Washington, a construction vehicle that was towing a cement mixer had lost it's payload. This was not one of those piddly little ones either, it was about 5 meters long and probably weighed at least 5 tons. A tow truck was feebly trying to pull it up onto the waiting flat-bed but the damn thing was laying on its side. On of the wheels pointing in a very peculiar way. The axle was obviously in a bad way. I felt a twinge of pity as I pass by. It lasts only a moment because of my overwhelming background fury of having to wait so long to get through the gawker-delay caused by an event that was 3 meters off to the side of the road.

I get to the Manor at 1700 and proceed to initiate the evening routine. I am late so some things will have to be done later. The high yield tasks get done first ... Let the Hounds Outside, hunt for poop. If I don't let them out within minutes of getting home, they begin a litany of howling and whining that has not been surpassed by any other in my lifetime. Of course, if you had to hold your bodily functions for ten hours straight, you'd be a bit contentious too. Got dinner ready for the little ones and had a few minutes to spare. Used that time to chop one of Jacob's Hyper-Bumble-Bars of Infinte Perepetual Motion +3 into bite sized chunks. I would imagine that if he managed to get his hand on a whole one, his explosion of activity would flatten any structure within 500 meters. As soon as the Wife arrives, we take off on our S&R mission.

After a successful pickup, we find that Alexis is feeling under the weather and is apparently not very interested in eating. She is more than happy to ask for candy though. A word that she learned fairly quickly and uses as often as possible. She is in a fairly bad mood because of her congestion so the task of giving her an expectorant or decongestant is daunting endeavor. It takes at least two people to do this ... unless you give a dropper of water to Jacob first. If Jacob gets something, she had damn well better get some too! Ahhh, I can see the schism in the troops forming already. Once we get the kids to bed, I hit the sack too and find that my exhaustion from the lack of sleep over the past few day is overwhelming. I fall asleep and don't wake up till 0500. I turn off the alarm before it goes off and roll over for another hour of sleep. Sweet, blissful slumber. I shake it off at 0600 and get ready for the day. The Mrs lets the Hounds out to wreak havoc upon the back yard while I shower up. In this hubris, I forget to give Thor his Ear Drops. I think he can go without the water torture for one morning. In retrieving the kids, I find that Alexis is still in a foul mood and just as congested. It takes the Wife's assistance to get the little spitting wild-cat changed and dressed. Once calmed, she refuses to be set down. The implications are unmentionable. The pharma application is the last straw for her. I spend the next half hour soothing, comforting and getting her to a place where she will not make a big production when Mommy takes her to daycare. The mess that awaited me in the Turnpike was barely noticeable given what I had just went through. The only thing that got me cranked today was the semi-truck hauling a extra-ordinarily large military plow in the fast lane ... not a good thing in rush hour. People are tweaked to start with and then having a truck in congested traffic in a lane where there are signs every half mile say "DON'T DO THAT!" is a good way to set them right off. Baghdad would be Shangrila in comparison. In spite of this vehicular ignorance, I still got to work by 0800. Fine. My tasks today still revolve around diddling with sql queries and testing the extraordinarily overdue B2B processing host. This involves a bit of data-entry and working on an AS/400 system. Ick.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 2:48 PM