White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Yeah, it was a fun packed 48 hours of mayhem and mischief. I'm not going to dive deeply into the details since the regular visitor of this blog probably knows what the Saturday Ritual is by heart now. Swim lessons at 0830, Perkins Breakfast at 0930, shopping till noon(ish). The only diversion from this is that we had a pool party to attend this weekend ... again. It's an annual thing that the Mrs MDMHVONPA has going in her department. Co-workers that I'm not supposed to talk to, some that I'm allowed to, some that are 'confidantes' ... beh.

In any event, the kids and I were in the drink from 1400 till well into the night so the whole 'inner circle of secret members' mystery was lost on me. As for the pool thing, the Tiny Tyrants are actually getting quite confident. The let me throw them into the pool now and don't seem to mind that their heads go under the surface for a moment. Much splashing and thrashing was done. We even played with the other twins that were there. Seems that my 'speed-boat' routine is quite a hit to both sets. I had to be a bit more careful with the twins who did not share my genetics since they did not have flotation suits on. They seemed quite enthralled about the 'more aggressive' play though. Upon seeing the mid-air flips that I would do with my little dare-devils, they insisted to be treated to the same treatment. I obliged, of course, after permission from the other (exhausted) parents was obtained.

Towards the end of the night, I took off their swim vests so we could change them. It's been a long day and they took in a lot of water. Needless to say, they were not interested in leaving to pool for any reason and the contents of their diapers told a horrific story. Ack. Once they were changed and cleaned up, Jake insisted that he be allowed back into the water. Ok, but no swim vest? Well, he learned fairly quickly that much of his ability to stay above water came from the vest rather than his ferocious paddling power. After 15 minutes of serial submersion, he became quite disenchanted with the deal we had struck and let me know that he had enough. For all the time that we were in the water, It will probably take all night for us to dry out. Once everyone was back in their dry-land attire, I realized just how oppressively hot it was even with the sun dutifully set behind the horizon. If I was not so damn tired, I would have opted for the 'night-swim' so graciously offered by our guests. No, it's time we got on the road and tucked the team into bed. We barely got out of the development before they nodded off. Goooood night nurse!

Ahhh, Sunday. The day of rest, except in the Haupertonain Empire of course. Nooo ... the lawn needs to be mowed, there are crops in the field .. dogs need to be tended to. Oh, and as part of the shopping trip on Saturday, we stopped off at Lowes AND the local Home Depot Temple. I picked up a bunch of gutter guard attachments while looking for 'stuff'. Now, since the gutters are clear, it would be a good time to install them. It turned out to be a bigger task than I thought. The packs had 15 feet of these and I had picked up 8 sets. Ohhh yeah. There I was, dancing on the roof like a cat on a hot tin shack. It as 97 or so degrees out and the asphalt shingles were operating as GREAT collectors of searing heat. I guess I should have worn more than just shorts and boots. What a dope. I must have purged every last ounce of fluid and electrolytes. Having absorbed all the fluid from the pool party yesterday was only good for about 15 seconds of perspiration. It took a long time to finish, and I'm still short about 2-3 sets. That's fine since It's the gutter above the driveway that I chose not to do.

I had a couple ounces of energy and chuptza or moxy left so I spent it trying to get the roof fabric in the SuperSaturn to reapply to the roof. I had found a can of the spray-on adhesive that Big Little Brother had told me about and gave it a go. The interior of the cabin was somewhere around 150 degrees and I swear that the dash-board was a second away from melting when I crawled inside. It's tough to handle things like fabric when your hands are shooting out liquid at 100 gal/sec. I got it done, but found out the next morning that I should have left the windows open so that adhesive would have had a chance to dry out a bit ... the damn stuff just melted and let the fabric drop in many of the locations. Oh well, at least the part right above the driver's seat stayed in place. That's the stuff that has been the most annoying as it flutters and flaps against my head while I'm driving with the windows open. I'm tempted to just rip the fabric out, but then I'd have to contend with the crumbling foam cushion and that would not be acceptable. The poor SuperSaturn, it's just falling apart on me. It just has to last another 3-5 years.

Ok, so now that I've been seared, fried, boiled and exposed to an aerosol adhesive I drag myself back into the Manor to go wash the cruft and funk off ... only to realize that I have burned 105% of my energy reserves. That, and the storm front rolling in with it's sharp drop in barometric pressure set off a doozie of a migraine. I gobbled down a few pills to help abate the pain and promptly passed out on the couch. The kids would come over and check on me to see if I was available to play to no avail. I feel badly that I was not more interactive, but at least I got a few of those annoying jobs done while the rest of the clan was out shopping. I'll have to make it up to them next weekend ... at the NEXT pool party ... sigh. So be it. All that with a smile and a shrug.