White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Oh boy, where to start. You know, Saturday is usually the night were the Mrs and I catch up with our own personal endeavors. A little blogging, some email, snuffling about the internet for this and that. I was going to watch some brain-dead television and read a few pages from Atlas Shrugged when we heard him. Jake was letting the world know that he was 'Mad as Hell and he was not going to take it anymore!'. No, he was certainly not ready to go to bed. In fact, he was so un-ready that he was threatening to wake his sister if we did not do something, and quick. The Mrs deftly snatched him from his repository and dumped him into the mile-wide water bed with me. Well, It looks like I'll be watching the Disney channel for a bit instead of reading Atlas Shrugged to him. After an hour or so, he became agitated and wanted to snuggle with soft, supple mommy instead of stubbly, angular daddy. Yeah, me to kiddo. So he jumped out of the bed and started searching the room for her. It did not take him long to realize that she was not in the vicinity and started down the hall. I know he would check each room and wake his sister in the process so I short-circuited his quest and drug him down to the computer room in basement level 1a where she was busy trying to extract data from one of the XP machines that had caught a virus. Well, he hangs out with her for a bit while watching Disney on the Cable Card in her PC. Right up till 2315 when she takes him to his bed and lays next to him till he nods off. Night owl, just like mommy. That would not be so bad except he is a morning guy, just like daddy. Urg, deadly combination for parents.

Jake is up and wakes Alexis at around 0645. Much, much too early for the Mrs. She could barely keep a lucid conversation with me. I herd the ruffians down to the kitchen and prep them for church. Quickly, I distract them with Kix cereal and some early-morning TV so I can fade into the back-ground and get a nasty cold shower over with. No time to wait for the hot water. Since I managed to get my act together before the mid-morning, I grab both kids and run them off to the 0830 mass. I believe that I am doing the Mrs a favor by letting her sleep in without having to worry about tending to one of the kids. I was wrong and she panics when she cannot find us after she wakes up. So much for that well deserved rest. I get the call while we sit in church during the 1st reading. Well, I'm sitting but the kids are swinging from the rafters and raining fruit snacks on the cowering parishioners. It actually went a lot better than I had imagined until some late comers insisted that I scoot over in the pew. I guess they did not see the 25 metric tons of snacks, drinks, books and other distractions piled up around me. Or, for that matter, the two small nuclear warheads posing as children. They learned the hard way to show up on time. Jake made sure of that. I caught him investigating the woman's purse on numerous occasions and noted that the once shiny black leather had become speckled with fruit-snack/chocolate finger prints. I hope he left a semi-masticated fruit snack for her later. The most irritating part was that the pew 2 rows in front of me was completely empty. Heathen slackers.

Since I arrived fairly early and it was the "I've got things to do today" mass, we got a good parking spot. If, by some twisted logic, I make it to the 0700 "I was out drinking last night and have not gone home yet" mass, I'll be surprised. We exit the Parking Lot of Purgatory quickly and zip on home in record time. The Mrs and I discuss the day's potential and she goes off shopping at 0945 while I play referee between the kids. BTW; crayons, sugar and two plucky children do not mix well. Jacob found that the super-big crayons work just as well on the table-top as they do on the tiny 11x8 scraps of paper we give him. That topic was thoroughly discussed when the transgression was discovered. Alexis, of course, interjected every other sentence with 'Jacob Bad, crayon on table!'. Yes dear, but no-one likes a tattle tail.

When the Mrs returns from her shopping, we give the kids a little more to eat and we return to the play room for a bit. The Exhausted Better Half lays on the sofa while the Energetic Double Shots tromp and pounce on her for a change. That gets old pretty quickly and we haul the two off for their afternoon nap. Not a minute too soon if you ask the Mrs. Of course, the tots still spend a good hour babbling to each other instead of sleeping, but at least the Wife can spend some time sunning herself while I toil over the landscaping.

While the Mrs is busy sucking up the sun, I'm trying to clear out and re-seed the holes that Katie burned in the front lawn. I swear the dog is peeing liquid fire or some sort of high molarity acid. There are about 20 spots where there is nothing left but a wad of tortured brown grass surrounded by emerald blades like a reverse of the towers around central park. I visit each spot, raked it out, put down potting soil, mix in seed and give it a healthy dose of fertilizer to get it going. From now on, Katie can only pee on the barren tundra in the back 50 behind the Manor. After finishing this, the lawn looked like a green and black checker board. Since I was in the planting mood, I also put down about 25 metric tons of flower seeds the Mrs had selected. Of course, the seeds were individually packaged in 2 oz packets and wrapped in 'stay-fresh' baggies within the packets. This took pretty much the rest of the afternoon. I made a snap decision to take my shirt off so I can get a bit of color while I was out and about. Of course, I should have considered that my nearly transparent skin would not fare well under the seemingly gentle shower of rays from Sol. No, they turned into little piercing needles that tattooed my skin a glowing red from shoulder to shoulder. Like some sort of battle-field insignia painted in the crimson blood of the fallen. The Mrs insisted that I return to the properly clothed mode of enjoying the outdoors so I would not attract the attention of the Warthog jets overhead and cause them to attempt a landing in our territory. Yeah, I'm a little toasty now.

The kids wake up later and the Mrs leads them out, first Jacob and then Alexis, to play in the sand again. While they squeal and shriek in delight, I plant herbs in the flower boxes at the edge of the deck. That's a lot of herb seeds to plant. We should have it all this year, but no anise this time. That was a waste and killed of the French taragon. What a pain in the anise. The rest of the evening winds down as I take Alexis for a ride in the wagon around the block. She enjoys the trip and admonishes me each time I try to turn around. She is determined that I go to the end of the block before I make any attempt to return home. We compromise and I get to turn back after we reach the second cross road. There is no curb cut-away so I think I won by default, but she put up a fairly good fight buy just insisting that I go on without accepting my reasoning. Of course, since I was steering I go the last say in the matter. When I return, Alexis returns to her swinging and sliding while Jake learns of gravity. The first platform on the North tower is at about 5 feet. Jacob likes to jump off it and have me or the Mrs catch him in mid-air. Well, this time he told the Mrs he was jumping and then failed to wait before acting on the compulsion. The sand buffered his impact, but he was quite shocked that it could actually HURT when you hit the ground from a height that exceeds your own by twofold. He groused and complained for a bit while mommy rocked him in her arms. The comforting was enough to allow him to get back on the horse, but this time he waited for someone to acknowledge that he was going to jump. Hard knocks buddy. I have a lot of yard work to do yet so I did not encourage the leaping behavior. After the sun started to set, we all headed inside for dinner, play, bath and bed. We had a rather engaging day and everyone could use a bit of rest.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 9:13 AM