Vacation Countdown: 11 Days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And after these past few weeks, I need a vacation.
Desperately.
The painting is finished.
Trims, too.
All the heavy machinery has been removed, as has the cardboard floor mats that have decorated our front entry way for the past month.
I won't miss tripping over it.
Getting caught up in it when the dogs decide first thing in the morning that it's cool to be unco-operative.
Which is just about every morning.
Today, we await the arrival of the "cleaning woman" who will come in and clean up the remainder of the mess, in preparation for the return of our furniture Thursday.
We will be able to move our computers, our work, ourselves back into our home office, meaning the kitchen table will no longer look like as if it's suffering from multiple personality disorder.
Imagine eating at the table without having to shove everything to one side, or pile crap on top of Frankie's crate.
I can't wait to walk into the kitchen and NOT be greeted by the jungle of plants, the piles of boxes, the laminate floor pieces stacked up against the cupboards.
Thursday evening, we will be sitting in our living room, watching television, and celebrating our return to "normal."
A highly subjective and open to a vast array of interpretations word in this house, but it's my normal, and I have really, really missed it.
Having said that, there will be a weekend in September where we will experience a brief revisit of the upheaval associated with painting.
Our bedroom, the only room upstairs to have never been painted since we moved in here in 2001, the room scheduled to be painted the week the leak was discovered, will be painted.
By someone else.
We have made the arrangements.
A reasonable price has been agreed upon.
It will be done.
Oh yes.
It will.
One of the things I've learned from this experience is that there are times in your life when you the only choice you have in the face of the experiences before you is to just let them happen.
Toss aside the controlling part of your personality, and let what has to happen, happen.
Not to say that I did this.
I did try.
Really.
But with the absolute absence of any grace or decorum.
There are other things, too, I have come to realize I can't control.
Primarily, other people.
My children to be exact.
In this instance, I have come to some realizations about my son.
I had a lot of time to think about him last evening when I was outside cutting the grass.
The grass he was supposed to cut.
He did cut part of the lawn Sunday before he went to work.
But, if he was honest and really thought about it, he hasn't exactly been as willing as I would have liked him to be about cutting the lawn this summer.
In fact, there have been times when it has felt like pulling teeth trying to get him outside, cutting the lawn, properly.
Ah.
There's the rub.
What does properly mean?
And how come he always manages to cut the entire lawn, and we have a big yard with a lot of lawn, in an hour and a half?
I was outside this evening for almost two hours, with only about two thirds of the grass to cut, and when Stephen finally dragged me in because it was getting to dark to cut safely. . . .
. . .I would have continued, but there was some concern over falling in one of the many dips and valleys in our yard, perhaps severing a limb or something like that. . . .
and I still haven't finished.
In fairness to Keith, I am not a 20 year old slender male with strong arms and legs.
I am a 43 year old woman who is overweight, soft and the heaviest thing I have to lift is a knife.
Plus, I don't own grass cutting sneakers.
Last time I cut the grass, remember, I wore my winter boots.
It was that or sandals.
I like my toes.
All of them.
This time, however, I did find a pair of sneakers.
Under Em's bed.
A pair of black sneakers with Velcro instead of laces that she was forced to buy for work one evening because she left her work shoes at home.
$14.99 Walmart special.
I didn't care what they looked like or how much they didn't cost, just so long as I was spared wearing my old winter boots.
There was one, small problem, however.
Em's feet are a bit bigger than mine.
So there were some instances of my feet slipping and sliding inside my too big grass cutting shoes.
Which partially explains why it would take me longer than Keith to cut the grass.
But age, strength, too big shoes and softness doesn't fully explain how come it takes me longer than Keith.
And then, while cutting, I realized what the difference was.
How much grass was cut.
My son knows that I love to weedwack.
Therefore, any part of the lawn he deems to much trouble to cut he leaves alone, justifying it with the assumption that I'll get it with the weedwacker.
All those parts of the lawn he routinely ignores were cut this evening.
By me.
With the lawn mower.
Not the weedwacker.
And that, my dear readers, is the reason why it takes me longer than Keith to cut the grass.
The question is, with my new found knowledge of the super stupendous powers of our LawnBoy lawn mover, how long will it take Keith to "properly" cut the lawn?
Only Saturday will tell.
A crisis of catastrophic proportions was narrowly averted last evening by the anal retentiveness of my dear husband.
As he was going through the newly painted living room, engaging in his end of the day inspection of the state of things in Denmark, me in the kitchen typing away at my blog and wondering just how long it will take to get the wet grass from underneath my fingernails, Stephen YELLS, panic stricken,
DAWNE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HAVE YOU SEEN GOBLET????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is never a good question for Stephen to ask.
At any time.
But it is even less palpable in the evenings, after the sun goes down.
I responded, calmly and carefully,
Yes. I saw her when we came in from cutting the grass and you shoooed her upstairs. Why?
BECAUSE ONE OF THE PAINTERS LEFT THE LIVINGROOM WINDOW WITH NO SCREEN ON IT OPEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can not only hear the panic in his voice, but feel it vibrating from every fiber of his being.
Getting up from the kitchen table, contemplating the oh-so-glorious night we were going to have if she wasn't in the house, and questioning whether we could get a search party together, along with some military assistance, I headed to the basement to see if she was chowing down, again, as Stephen pounded upstairs to the bedrooms to see if she was lazing on anyone's bed, or sitting on the "Goblet Box" in our room.
As I was looking through the basement for her furry little self, I wondered how long it would take us to find her in the dark.
One evening I pulled into the driveway after collecting Keith from work, to see Stephen caught in the light from the headlights, in his jammies, holding onto a flashlight and a bag of cat treat.
Keith, in the backseat, tired and worn out from a grueling shift at the theaters simply said,
Shit.
Goblet got out.
Another night, actually it was when Stephen's parents and Aunt Irene arrived in Fredericton for our wedding, his father decided there was something he needed in his car and walked outside leaving the front door wide open.
And that was all the temptation Goblet needed.
Out she walked calm as can be, and seconds after his father had walked out the door he left open, Stephen comes by, and hears the little bell on her collar jingling.
From the front yard.
Stephen went outside, tentatively approaching her as she watched him get closer and closer and just as she was about to make her break for freedom, he tackled her as if he was a quarterback and she was football.
And then returned in the house, clutching Goblet to his chest, and referring to his parents as "You people" made it very clear to them how he felt about the front door being left open.
I'm surprised they stayed for the wedding.
So when I came up from the basement to hear him say that she was safe and sound upstairs, I felt a relief so deep my knees almost gave out.
Because every time she gets out, which has thankfully only been three times that I recall, it has cut Stephen so deep he literally can't function.
Except to think about all the horrible things that could happen to her.
And he has a VERY active imagination.
Too active if you ask me.
Title Lyric: The Cat Came Back by Raffi
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