White Lightning Axiom: Redux

My unannounced absence ... well, I took yesterday off to spend a bit of time with the Mrs. It was our 9th anniversary and all. We did the most fantastic thing ... virtually nothing. Virtual, because we actually did a lot of work. The previous day was spent without her company entirely. She went to the semi-bi-monthly Mothers of Multiples rubbish sale and meeting in the evening so I did not see her till 2300 hours. Long after I had put the kids to bed. Our day off together was fairly fruitful though. Not THAT kind of 'fruitful', shesh!

We started off by sleeping in for an hour or so. The kids enjoyed it more so than ourselves of course. When we wake them on the average day, Alexis is really quite unpleasant. Given the extra sleep time, the morning routine was a snap. I suppose it helps that I fed them breakfast at home and helped the Mrs transport and deposit our greatest treasures to day-care. With that over, the Lovely Mrs MDMHVONPA began her four hours of 'working from home' which consists of her being on the phone the whole time along with being logged into the corporate network via an encrypted VPN. I'll not be getting the tiniest slice of her time for the duration. I do what I can to let her be and head off for a long overdue haircut. I get there at 0900 and am out in 15 minutes. I guess nobody else gets their hair cut at 9am since Sal and his buddy was there with no-one else waiting. Good for me, they are fresh and primed to give me my standard 2 week flat-top that I'll primp for the next 4 months. From there, I head off to the local Home Depot Temple to do a bit of 'Man Shopping' 24 fluorescent miser light bulbs at 10$ a pop and 27 ten-ton retaining wall blocks for the sand-pit. Yes, 27 MORE blocks for that never-ending project. Pulling the blocks off the shelf, putting them back into the Family Tank and then hauling them off to the back-50 was exhausting enough. Add in the shoveling, pounding, leveling, demolition, releveling ... oof-tah! I was pooped. The Mrs hung out on the back patio with the dogs, her laptop and the phone complete with head-set while I labored away. Yep, this is how we spend that special day together. The bad news was that with the additional 27 blocks, I was still way sort of the sufficient quantity for completing the project. After the Patiently Graceful Mrs was done with her conference calls, we both ran off to a different Home Depot Temple and picked up 30 MORE blocks. Even with these, I'm still short 6. And it's getting hot outside. The fun has begun. I need to start cutting some of the blocks to do the angle corners and things are not going well. I'm hot, sweaty and tired. Not a good combination. Even worse, I stop sweating entirely which tells me that I've inadvertently become dehydrated. Hello migraine! Since I'm tired and hot ... my vision start to get blurry and my corner-cuts get a bit ... sloppy. At this point I just want to finish what I've started. It would not be so bad but the blocks are several inches thick so I need to cut from both sides. The top is easy but the bottoms are uneven and I invariably end up cutting at a slight angle ... lots of trim-cuts end up with a block that is not quite perfect. Something that will be a nagging reminder to myself but no-body else will notice unless I point out the flaws in the wall. I finish up the remainder of the blocks and cuts by 18000 just as the Mrs arrives home after completing a solo S&R mission. The kids are happy to see me in so much that I've finished the wall so they can walk all the way around the sand-pit without having to jump off. Daddy is such a good work-horse. I still need to order 5 tons of sand to fill in the pit up to the correct level though. Yes ... actually 5 TONS of sand. No exaggeration. This is the easy part though. Just a shovel, rake and wheel-barrow. Easy stuff. No skill required. Oh, did I mention that I started to move the compost heap to the agricultural sector using the said shovel, wheel-barrow and a tined pitchfork? Did I mention that in my exhaustion I nearly put one of the tines through my foot? Yeah, about then I decided it was time to call it quits.

After the migraine had kicked in, I was nearly useless for the rest of the night. I helped get the kids fed, bathed and to bed ... but that was about it. I was saturated with pain-killers and Maxalt so my interactions with the Mrs were not entirely coherent. This also resulted in some rather peculiar dreams. For some reason, I was dreaming about a meeting I had where I was staying at Buckingham Palace and having dinner with the Queen of England. Later on, she was so endeared with myself and the family that she insisted that she come over to the Manor for a short stay. Weird.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 7:14 AM