White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Well, work on Friday afternoon pretty much sucked major time. Our outside partner finally managed to upload a file that was correct sometime around 1545. Yeah, I'll be leaving in 30 minutes so don't hole your breath on me pushing the code to production. Not that I don't trust my own code, I just don't trust what they may push out. Last time I ended up spotting a product identifier being mis-assigned and several products got shipped out that were not what the customer ordered. No, I'm going to be running this by hand for a week before I open the spigot. That, and I think that they are still generating/encrypting the file by hand so I'll wager that they will be trying to put out a machine-handled file while not saying anything. Yeah, I don't trust people. It keeps me out of trouble, ya know? Jaded, I am.

After fetching the child-packets on the S&R, I let them sit and eat with the Mrs while I head up to Jake's new room in progress. There is one last piece of carpeting I need to remove from the closet. It has nearly as many staples in it as the rest of the floor totaled. It takes a persistent effort to remove and is just the job for a obstinate fellow like myself. There is one last destructive act to finish before I start sanding the acres of hard-wood floor: Remove the molding. A tricky task in that trying to get a prybar between the aged sheetrock and the 100 layers of globbed on paint can cause immeasurable damage if you apply the wrong level of force at the wrong location. I manage to get it all off including the casing around the door without causing any massive damage. I toss the lengths of extra leaded paint coated pine out the window and watch as they stick into the ground like some ancient Greek javelin hurled off Mt. Olympus. Except these have razor sharp nails sticking out the side, each one coated with tetanus and some sort of acidic substance to make each abrasion extra-painful. The Mrs Helped me toss the carpet roll out the back window so the room is now prepped for the sand-n-pain routine. I'm a little too sweaty and tired now to get on with that so I shower up (heh, nothing like an evening shower to cool down) and join the family for some quality time.

I slept pretty good since I was not compelled to watch SciFi. All repeats, don't-cha-know. So I got a good nights sleep in. We did not wake till 0745 and actually felt refreshed. What an odd feeling. Since we are rolling at such a nice clip, we get our Saturday Morning Pond-Cakes at Perkins nice and early. Immediate seating, good food, nice price. We are in at 0845 and out by 0945. I have the Heart-stopper 12; 4 eggs, 4 bacon, 4 pancakes with hashbrowns and a side of oatmeal ... and a ham steak ... and a pot of coffee. Yeah, I was full. The kids got my pancakes and Alexis ate a healthy chunk of the ham. Jake was interested in the coffee, but I was not interested in letting him find out just what caffeine can do to a 2 year old. That would be ... bad. Like Hiroshima bad, with directing tossed in for good measure.

After a bit of shopping, we headed off to the Local Home Depot Temple and did a bit of Daddy Shopping. I have not made a pilgrimage in a while so this was a treat for me, a nightmare for the Mrs. I needed 2 orange warning poles for the end of the driveway since the plows had destroyed them this winter. Also needed a new flapper for the kids bathroom. The other one had warped and was leaking water at a budget defying rate. Then we got to the gardening section and I freaked out. Ohhhh, look! Tomatoes ... and Peppers. Oh, lettuce and spinach! And begonias.... and, and, and. In the end, I had the cart so loaded up that we barely had space for the kids! On top of that, I picked up 6 granite Belgian blocks and a couple bags of dirt. Well, potting soil and top soil. Need that to fix the holes in the lawn created by Katie. I have now purchased enough goods to keep me preoccupied for the next day and a half. Hauling all of this from the store to the FamilyTank and then from the cargo compartment to the carport was a good warm-up for the rest of the day. Instead of diving back into the labor, I took a nap after lunch instead. What can I say, I like my naps. Watch out Dagwood.

Not too long after I fell asleep, the Hounds were raising Cain and barking their fool heads off. Them durned dunder-headed dunces got each-other worked up and they needed to get out and blow off some steam. I crawled downstairs and sent them out so they could maul each other without disturbing the kids. The Wonderful Wife had left to do some shopping so I was on my own for a while. Better be on my best behavior and get some work done. First things first, get the lettuce, spinach, peppers and tomatoes planted. This pretty much consisted of digging a 9 inch hole in the ground and replacing the clay with some real soil for the peppers and tomatoes. Throwing in a touch of fertilizer at the bottom of the hole helps them a bit. I have 12 cages for the lot so I have just enough for the two rows of 6. The remaining greenery just needs to be dropped in some small 3 inch holes. I had a line of lettuce seeds planted so I just overlayed the potted starters over them. If they die off, the sprouts will take over. Looks like I should be eating a lot of salad this summer.

A couple of hours later, the Mrs arrives home and the kids wake up from their nap. Perfect time to go roll in the sand box and shove tons of wet sand into every pocket, crevice and opening in their diapers. Nice. I'll have to bring out the shop-vac next time to suck all the debris off them before we let them inside. The Mrs and I are smart about bringing them in and don't let them know that play-time is over. I just let Jake jump off the tower into my arms and then carry him in before he figures it out. A lot less wailing and thrashing that way. We'll work on the whole 'play time is over' bit later on in life when Daddy is not so exhausted and they are.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 8:34 AM