White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Ain't that title just soooo damn creative? My well of artistic capabilities is bone dry today, the weekend soaked it all up. Mostly doing manual labor. Throw in a little physics here and there, but mostly thuggish, muscle-head type stuff. Friday Night, the Mrs and I were looking over different venues for the kids future martial arts education. Something in the area would be nice. Seems that we are dead-center in a 'no kung-fu' zone. There is one place up the pike that looks promising except that they have classes on the two nights that the swimming lessons are scheduled. Argh. Looks like we will have to see if the club is thinking about Tuesday or Thursday lessons yet. We are letting the kids stay up extra late since the Grandparents are scheduled to arrive at any time. And when they did, it was a shock to everyone. Almost. I had shut off the door chime/intruder alert/anti-personnel disintegrator cannon so they could possibly sneak in and surprise the kids. Nope, the damned dogs knew the minute they pulled in the driveway and started a stampede towards the car-port air lock. All the sudden movement put a little fear into the kids for a second or two. They bolted towards the couches where the Mrs and I were sitting till they realized what was going on and followed the Cybernetic Mammoth Hounds out to the car port where they proceeded to assault the Grandparents. It did not even dawn on them that it could be cold out there and going out in your PJs might be a less than optimal course of action. No matter, the holy grail of family was found and infinite play time commenced.

Saturday, I got to go out and get my Sampson/Cousin It hair lopped off. I was starting to look a bit like the wolfman, to be honest. No more. Quarter inch on the sides, half inch on top, high-n-tight flat top. No muss, no fuss. The fella's down at the base barber shop fixed me up good and sent me on my way. Of course, this was after we spent an hour making breakfast, and hour being subjected to medical tests for insurance and a bit of time cleaning up after all that. I did not get back home till 1100 hours. By that time, Amish Gramps had broken out his Chainsaw of Sharp-Nasty-Biteyness +7 and started to hack apart my log shipment. I jumped right in after switching into my work coat and boots. Good times ahead. Some people call this bonding, we call it 'a little work to do'. The duel dual saws going full tilt till the sun sputtered out on the horizon was a barometer of our own infernal internal energy levels. Pooped, were we.

Next day, church and then more of the same. Mass was actually more involved than cutting/lobbing wood. Nothing grinds the old muscular-skeletal structure to a pulpy mess like chucking 500kg log segments about. That, and having them peel the skin off your shins as the gracefully tumble across your prone body. We did not last quite as long as we did the previous day, but the logs that I had no chance of cutting were diced up nicely by a determined Amish Dad's anti-tree vendetta. Back into the manor to rinse off and sit into a nearly permanent setting as the bones quickly started to lace together and the muscles tried desperately to flush out the toxins.

Speaking of toxins, it became apparent that Jake had picked up a new virus and promptly got an ear infection. He spent the rest of the evening cuddled up in Gramp's lap under some covers. He nodded in and out a few times and was quite distraught when his 60yr old binkey had to leave. I was an adequate substitute, but not quite up to spec. He ended up resorting to the Mrs's much more comfortable lap in the end. Flash forward a few hours. Jake has evacuated his bed and is now between myself and the Mrs. He is still complaining about his ear and we have an appointment for the next day at 0900. The phone rings ... it is the GrandParents telling us that they made it home. But it is nearly 2 hours too early. Turns out that NorthEast Pennsylvania has been blanketed in snow and the PennDOT folks had decided to skip the salting/plowing of major routes. There has been an accident. Fortunately, no body is worse for wear outside of a few frayed nerves. Apparently, since spring is set to occur within hours, nobody remembers how to drive in the snow. At 25mph, the Grandparents had struck a car that spun out in front of them. Very little damage but the worst was yet to come. After the State Police arrived, the cruiser was struck by a way-ward vehicle that pushed it into the 'spin-out' car and the Grandparents transport. Law dictates that the Supervisor must now come out to collect accident information. Two and a half hours were consumed by that fiasco. Someone (not the grandparents) will end up taking a chunk of flesh from PennDOT since they told the police to call if there are any accidents so that they know that they need to plow and salt. Yep, my tax dollars at work. I can only hope that nobody among the dozen accidents on that short strip of US 81 was seriously injured.

# posted by mdmhvonpa @ 4:22 AM