White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Work-work-work. If only the work on the week days was as much fun and enjoyable as the work I do on the weekends. It does, however, pay very poorly in a monetary consideration. The spiritual and mental hygiene benefits are unfathomable though. It was an early morning on Saturday since we are now taking the kids in for 'swimming' lessons. It's more like 'hold a screaming daughter till she calms down' lessons. She was much better this time around and actually started to enjoy it once the floaty-toys and splashing started. Jake, being the mermaid that he is, went completely nuts and was a class A student the whole 30 minutes. He loves the water so much but since we had not yet done breakfast, we were not going to hang out there all morning. He would stay there the whole day if we let him. And no, we are not getting a pool installed in our back-50. I don't have the time to clean and maintain it nor do we have the resources necessary. I would probably want an olympic sized indoor pool anyways. Less cruft to clean out of the filters.

Perkins Saturday Morning Pancake Bonanza could have been better. The kids got a second wind while waiting and there was plenty of time spent waiting. We got seated immediately, but there was some sort of Girls Field-hockey and Gladiator contest going on so there were loads of people with big appetites in the place. No biggie, in by 0915, out within an hour. I had the usual patter of coronary disaster while the Mrs tried something new and 'customized'. I love to be able to order without even looking at the menu ... makes me feel self assured. I know, wired. But hey, it makes me happy so stuff it. Next stop, the barber shop for me. The Old Italian Treo gave me a hard time for not coming in more often. Saying that the haircut is only good for a week or two. Sheesh! Talk about an upsell for a maintenance plan.

Ran off to Lowes for some bulbs, gardening supplies and 25 lengths of nice green sod to cover up the mud-hole we call a back-yard. I'm going to be watching Katie and Thor closely to make sure they don't kill it before I have a chance to mow the stuff at least once. We bought a load of tulips and other bulbs that I'll have to plant soon so they can get a good start. Yeah, I know, you plant bulbs in the fall ... but hey, maybe I want tulips in July. I just need to find some more giant crocus and daffodils. WHAT! I like flowers, so what. Remember that song by Johnny Cash, 'A boy named Sue'? Yeah. Anyways, after the Lowes trip, we stopped off at a series of grocery stores that were having various sales on meat. We picked up 3 racks of baby-back pork ribs and 4 packs of regular beef ribs. The beef ribs are HUGE and extraordinarily meaty. I nearly put my back out trying to get the ribs and all the additional pork/beef products loaded into the Family Tank. It took a long time to get everything sliced up, sauced up, and wrapped up in tin-foil. I nearly used every available container of sauce in the house for the ribs. No, there will be some sincere carnivore action going on in the Haupertionian Manor this summer. The Mrs loves the way I make the ribs too: 4 hours at 285. You pick up the bone and the meat is barely hanging on like a day-trader gripping his quad-mocha-espresso as he is watching his Enron holdings fall through the floor.

The rest of the day was either me unloading sod or the Mrs running off to get her haircut. The kids were napping so it was a perfect time to do these things. Well, it was raining so it was good for the Mrs, not so good for me. It's good though, the sod needs the water. I was to meet a couple of friends at 1700. Since it was raining, the local roads were a commuters nightmare. I had to double back twice to circumvent congestion due to accidents. I arrived at Lai Lai about 15 minutes late ... just in time to see a wedding party stroll in. I was concerned that the whole place might have been reserved, but I quickly spotted my party at the bar ... of course. We have a very good time discussing the nature of things past, present and future. All at each-other's expense of course. We ate like kings and Pharaohs, we drank like an AA meeting gone bad. In the end, the waiters gave up and just loitered next to our table so that we would not make too much of a ruckus when demanding more wine or scotch ... or vodka ... or deep fried bananas. When the sushi chef broke down and started weeping, we called it quits and escorted our only female companion back to the waiting arms of her husband. Oh, and some beer from their fridge. After a brief visit and some cooing over their young pre-speech child, Satish and I zipped off to a local dive-bar and started drinking in earnest. We talked about jobs and work and politics in the way that men can when they have had a few more glasses of Glenfiddich than they should. He flirted with the Coors Girls and waitresses while I did the wing-man thing and complemented him on his taste, style, wealth and intellect. In the end, we agreed that we need to keep in touch and go out more often and we both went home alone (OF COURSE!), empty wallets but heads full of blurry concepts. I arrived home to see the Mrs waiting up for me, rolling pin in one hand, curlers in her hair. No, actually, she was clipping coupons and only stayed up so that the dogs would not go nuts and bark their fool heads off when some strange smelling man walked into the house. The smell of liquor, tobacco and fevered desperation permeated my clothing. It'll take several washes to get that out. It's 0200 Sunday morning and the next day will certainly need to be one of rest.

The rest was not forthcoming. The children mercifully let me sleep till 0730. The Mrs, however, needed at least another 5-6 hours to be one with the world. We napped on and off throughout the day, but her allergies and the cold I got from Alexis made the exhaustion only seem that much more impenetrable. The major accomplishment for the day was the shopping trip to BJ's wholesale where I got a metric ton of Raman noodles. The Mrs did some additional shopping after the kids started napping after 1400. I, spent that time planting the rest of the bulbs and wrapping up the remainder of the meat instead of napping. I am remorseful of the choices made, I really am.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 1:48 PM