White Lightning Axiom: Redux

One of these days, I'll figure out how to relax and do nothing. I've managed to work myself into a profound and inexcusable exhausted state. Just in time for Monday, of course. A long, long time ago ... Nearly Friday night if I recall, it all begin. We went to bed late as Friday night would dictate and had a restless, unsatisfying nights sleep. The next day was the morning swim lessons for the kids, but there was the smell of change in the air. Perhaps 'malodor' would be a better description. The twin tyrants had progressed enough in their swimming instruction so that they could be promoted to their next class level. The 'Parentless' instruction. No more would the Mrs and I be required to change into our full body swim gear and wade into the treacherous waters with our charges. No, we could sit back on the side of the pool and watch the bevy of buxom teenager girls wrestle with the troublesome tots. Yes, let some other poor soul deal with Alexis and her insistence on doing what she wanted (which, by the way, was in direct contrast to whatever you may have suggested). Let some other person attempt to fend off Jacobs irresistible amorous invitations as they tried to convince him that he should follow the instructions instead of trying to permanently latch on to their torso. Of course, none of these events would come to pass since that behavior was reserved for the parents exclusively. After a few minutes, the fretful parents were convinced that the kids were in good hands. Since it was a 1:1 instructor:pupil ratio, we could wander the health club to see what else was available for us. Surprisingly, the facility was much bigger than we had assumed. There's a raised track, a spinning room, tanning beds, massage/facial/nail parlor, juice bar, coffee stand, every weight lifting machine known to man, cineplex and ... my GOD! A child-care center! We may finally get our work-out time to enable us to shed these 10-20 (10 for the Mrs, 20 for me) ugly (ugly on me, feminine on the Mrs) pounds of fat (lard on me, padding on the Mrs). One down side is that if we intend on utilizing this new-found opportunity, we will certainly need to get up earlier so that I can get the kids fed before we retreat to the gym ... getting up earlier (read: on time). Urg.

After swim lessons, we decided that we would go to a new diner for the ritual Saturday morning pancakes. The Suburban Diner is just a mile up Street Road from the club so we won't have to drive 10 miles to get to Perkins. The service was a little shoddy, but the prices are comparable. Then there was the ultimate selling point for Jacob. It just so happened that the Trevose Fire Department was doing one of the annual fund drives where they would have their engines parked on all 4 corners of an intersection and the men (and woman) would stand out in the street with buckets for you to toss some change in. Well, let me tell you that Jacob nearly lost his eyesight from his eyeballs popping out and certainly could not speak for a few moments. He was delighted that I gave him a dollar to give to the towering men and even more enthused that he was allowed to crawl into the ladder truck AND the pump engine. It was a really good day for him. First, a bunch of teenage girls in wet swim-suits cooing over him, then fire trucks and finally bacon for breakfast. All before noon!

Since the diner was close to the intersection of the PA Turnpike and US Rt1, we decided to head up that way since gasoline prices in that area are abnormally low for the region. Not sure why, but there are about a dozen stations all with super-low prices. We stopped at Sunoco and put 9 gallons into the SuperSaturn at 2.89$/gal. Not too bad. We decided to drive my car this weekend since it gets 30mpg instead of 15. It would save us 3$ to drive my car. Ugh. The Mrs is dutifully combing the area for a VW 2 liter DTI. We'll probably end up buying a new one since it seems that the used ones are quite rare. Something about the good mileage and excellent service record. It still irks me that we have to resort to buying a foreign manufactured car, but until Daimler Chrysler comes up with something we have few alternatives within the price range we can afford.

After tanking up on gasoline that costs as much as milk, we headed off to the Local Home Depot Temple and Lowes that are just up the road from Gaseteria row. There was an old hospital/college/medical institution that was knocked down and a bunch of big-box stores were built. All the standard ones. It suits us, we just need a BJ's and perhaps Wegmans to be built and we would never need to go anywhere else. The Neshaminy Mall is in that area too where we go for the annual photo shoot with the 'Real Santa-Claus'. To top things off, one of the kids old 'day care professionals' works at the Lowes in the Big-Box-Farm so they had an opportunity to squeal with delight over meeting up with her. She actually lives near us so we are keen on having her sit the kids some day soon. The Mrs is comfortable with her and the kids don't recoil in horror ... it's a match made in heaven. A night off would be well worth the price. The rest of the day involved me taking care of a bit of lawn work and making dinner for the kids. I don't remember much other than making rice and 25 brats on the grill for dinner. The kids ate nearly all the rice and shared 2 brats between them. I ate one ... HONEST!

Then came Sunday. In spite of going to bed late, I got up in time to make the 0700 mass. I though about waiting a bit so I could take one of the kids with me to the usual 1000 mass, but I wanted to get the lawn mowed and it was cool enough this morning so that I would not broil in my own skin doing so. So off to mass, then back home. I did take a detour so I could drop off the used oil and dead battery at my Mechanic's shop. Oh, did I mention that I changed the oil in the SuperSaturn on Saturday? No? In any event, I got home shortly before 0900 and started rustling up some grub for the Mrs and the Soon-To-Be-Ravenous-Twins. Toast, bacon, sausage, cereal, OJ ... that should fill their cavernous tummies. Oddly enough, I was feeling exhausted after only four short hours. And yet, I have a lawn to mow that has not felt the blazing agony of the mower for nearly 3 weeks now. Oh, but the agony shall be mine, now wont it? The cool air of the morning evaporates into a steamy cauldron of fiendish proportions when I finally get my rear in gear. That, and chopping through the new growth jungle takes hours. Since I catch the clippings and the primeval jungle is so dense, I could only make one pass over the front expanse before having to stop and unload the hopper. At this rate, I swore that it would take until November to get it done. Fortunately, my estimation capabilities are rather poor and it took till mid-afternoon. Just in time to hunker down in the shade of the doomed white pine trees in the back 50 and work on the western retaining wall. It took little time for me and the hordes of uncompensated laborers to put 25 20 ton blocks in place and cut short the effort ... since I only had 25 blocks. It is looking like I'll need 25-60 more blocks to finish the whole shebang. Then a few more tons of sand it I'll finally be done. HONEST!

Final notes. We had soup for dinner on Sunday. Initially, both Jacob and Alexis were not impressed till they actually started eating it. Mmmm, nothing like chicken-noodle soup with extra noodles and not so much soup. This morning, I got up at 0615 and managed to get rolling, but the kids were not entirely interested in the idea of getting to school on time so we ended up about 15 minutes behind schedule. Oh, if I had only known that those 15 minutes were of no consequence. At the same time I was negotiating with Alexis that it would be in her best interest to put her underwear on ... a BMW was spinning out of control on the onramp of the rest stop near my exit ... oh, the humanity! There was a back-up from Valley Forge all the way to willow Grove, my onramp. Of course, it was on the onramp and not in the line of traffic. Gawker delay ... just add some flashing lights and people loose their minds. Friggen Turnpike

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 9:38 AM