White Lightning Axiom: Redux

It's been a rather ... busy weekend. Friday night started out pretty good. But it was just a ruse by the fates. Since pizza night had been missed, I picked one up with the Mrs before we completed the Search and Retrieval mission. The twins could smell it's cheesy aroma permeated the interior of the Family Tank and immediately began agitating for a bite. I was planning on filling up the gasoline tank before we finished the trip back to the Manor so it could have gone worse. The Mrs kept them occupied while I pumped a few thousand dollars worth of dollars into the pockets of the Saudi Empire ... &^%(%^%@#!!! The gas station I like to frequent is actually a car wash but sells gasoline at 5 cents below the posted price of most other stations in the area. Don't know how they manage it but until the BJ's gasateria is finished, we continue to patronized this establishment. That, and it is very convenient so that matters more so than the price.

Back at the Manor, dinner went well. Jake ate a bit better. If I cut the pizza into bite sized chunks, he will eat a lot more than if he has to gnaw off bits by himself. I hope I'm not turning him into a Momma's boy. I'm sure he'll start to get his appetite back once he is feeling better. Later on in the evening, we sent the kids to bed and this time we did not have to muck about with reading multiple books or trying to wrestle them into submission. A little strange actually. After the kids drifted off into their happy little dream-worlds, I shuffled off to the Master suite and watched 3 hours of marginal SciFi. Officially, in my book, Star Gate 1 has jumped the shark. Any time that the cast goes back in time and their actions change the present, it is over. As for Cattle Car Galactica ... it's a soap opera in space. Ugh. I miss the good old days. After the shows ended, I just turned off the tube and rolled over. Haven't done that in a while, guess I'm still exhausted from my 'on-time' week. It's nice to be on the road before everyone else, but getting in extra hours at work does not really give me any greater satisfaction. I would consider leaving early, but it seems my clients do not get in till 1030 and don't get down to business till after noon. I get more email after 1700 than I get all day. Feh, I need to work with others who have a sense of urgency to make this work. Dollars to donuts I won't manage getting up on time the whole week again for a bit.

The night went well, I slept soundly till some time around 0700 when the hounds started to get desperate. Their internal alarm clocks cannot be denied. When they want to go, they let everyone in the house know by an incessant whining at a frequency that makes my body involuntarily spasm. It jerks me out of bed and pulls me down the stairs so I can MAKE IT STOP! Only when they have had their needs tended to will they stop. I'm sure if I let them sleep in the Master Suite they would grant me a few more minutes of sleep, but the cost it too high. They shed like yaks and I hate waking up in the morning with dog-hair lodged in my nose. After I got up, it was no use trying to go back to bed. I released the children and we played for a bit. It was going to be a nice day so it was within my power to make it as unpleasant as possible. It's been nearly three months since I have last cleaned up after the dogs and today was going to be the last chance for a month for me to do so. It was a prolonged task that I endeavored to complete. There was a lot of turf to cover and I think I should have rented a back-hoe to work with. I must have scooped, scraped or flicked five grocery bags full of recycled dog-chow. That should teach me to let this kind of thing slide. After I was finished with the genuinely dirty work, I swept off the patio and raked all the remaining detritus up. Several wheel barrow's full of twigs, dead organic matter and clumps of dislodged turf. Cleaning the white pine needles that had blanketed the play ground around the twin towers was equally difficult. Hundreds of thousands of little needles mixed in with a wet sand. You tend to rake up as much clumpy sand as you do conifer needles and it gets heavy really fast. I was thinking of filtering it out on a screen, but the task would take more time than I had scheduled. The Mrs came out and finished up instead so I could get down to the tasks that involved 'heavy lifting'. It'll be nice for the Twin Tyrants to be able to play on the towers again. I just need to finish up the retaining walls so I can put this behind me.

Other things that needed tending was the garden-bed fence to keep the dogs out. Removing the black tarp I use to 'roast' the soil over the winter while the garden lies fallow. The tarps then need to be folded as well and, as a matter of course, it was windy out so assistance from the Mrs was invaluable. Her tending to the leaf-removal from the massive rear deck was equally inestimable. Leaves tend to drift in from the neighbor's trees and get trapped on the deck. I leave them since they will only be replaced by more until late into December. Then the freezing rain starts and it just becomes a tedious mess. The final 'heavy lifting' task of the day was getting out the tiller and turning over the soil for the Haupertonian Agricultural and Horticulture Sector. Usually, I throw the entire compost pile on top before I do this, but I did not have the energy or time and the compost has not broken down completely as of yet. I think I'll turn the pile and let it go till the fall before I till it into the garden. You can't rush these things. I hear that one of the best compost accelerators is beer, I'll have to give that a go when I have the time to turn it. The pile is not as large as it has been in previous years. This past summer, I have been taking the grass clippings and laying them down between the rows of veggies to keep the weed growth in check. Super Mom recommended this to me and it works great. You have to keep up with it though, the grass gets pulverized into the soil as you walk on it and it provides a very receptive plane for invasive growth such as clover. Removing the tarp was easy enough, though I used these 15lb Belgian blocks to keep it down. There were an innumerable collection of these blocks placed strategically about the area, but mostly along the edges. They are about a foot long and 6 inches wide with a depth of about 2-3 inches. I went about retrieving them and lining them up around the edges. Bend, lift, walk, drop ... repeat till all blocks are done. I think I got my work-out but the hardest part was to come. I had to drag out the 5hp tiller and run it up and down the length of the garden. It is about 25-30 feet long and 12-15 feet wide. I never really measured it, I just used all the space I could easily tend to. The tilling went much better this years than in the past. I guess getting all that compost and grass into the soil has help loosen things up. That, and getting all the construction debris and roots (and phone wires) out of the ground in previous assaults has helped. The soil is no longer the iron bar reinforced baked-clay brick surface it has been in previous years. Starting the tiller took some time and muscle tearing effort, but once I got going it was all or nothing. Imagine trying to hold back a pair of really hungry Rottweilers from a pile of steak on the ground while standing ankle deep in jello. This pretty much describes the physical exertion and dexterity required to properly till the garden. I did not do it properly, but I did manage to do about as good as it is going get. I'm going be planting a wider variety of things this year and less of the pepper/tomato variety. I was completely overwhelmed with hot peppers and the wonderful red fruit last year. No, this year I'm thinking no more than 6 tomato pants and only 6 peppers. Let's see if I can restrain myself.

We had been planning to go over to Alex's place for a week or two now and the time for the dinner had finally come. He was a wonderful host along with his lovely Mrs and his charming daughter. Additionally, his other invited guests were superlative conversationalists. Downside, Jacob went into a tailspin about an hour and a half into the visit. We had a wonderful time between crying bouts with Jacob, but we had to cut the visit short. Poor Jacob was apparently in some sort of pain and his repeated motioning to his ear made us think that it was an ear infection. This is bad since we cannot do anything about it on a Saturday night. The Pediatrician's office will not be open and getting an antibiotic prescription will require us to present the 'broken' child. Now Alex lives a good 45-60 minutes away in the western suburbs. The trip is actually a fairly easy one since most of the trip is on 422 and the turnpike. The times when we were traveling provided for nearly zero volume on the roads. It made me wish over and over again for this sort of reprieve on my daily commute. On the trip back, the Mrs tried her luck and made a call to the office to see if we could get a call-back from the on call physician. An hour after we called, we were back home and starting to get the kids ready for bed. Then the call came. As it turns out, we could bring in our debilitated little broken on in for a visit on Sunday morning, all we would have to do is call after 0900 and schedule an emergency visit. Great! All we have to do is make it through the night.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 3:35 PM