And You Wonder Why Mrs. Hillbilly Mom Is Flinchy, And Asks For Safety Goggles

Farmer H's regression continues. A regular Benjamin Button is he. Without the Brad Pitt looks.

You know how toddlers find something on the floor, and bring it over to hand it to you, all solemn, poking out their dimpled arm, waiting for you to take that discovery off their fingers? And how you say, "THANK you!" like they've just chaired a workshop on the space-time continuum for MENSA's upper echelon, and made you a shoe-in for Mother of the Year?

Farmer H is like that. Without the cuteness, and the brains of a toddler.

Every time I turn around, he's there, proffering some jetsam from his wallet, or off the floor of his Pacifica, or returning some vital correspondence that has been signed and notarized. Why can he not lay that object on a table or counter and tell me what it is? Is that so hard? Three times in the last 24 hours, Farmer H as poked some errant bit of paper into my face.

Sunday morning, I commandeered his La-Z-Boy while he laid abed. I had the phone in one hand, the checkbook register and a pen in another hand, the checkbook itself across my lap, and a hospital lab bill and a dentist bill on the armrest. All I did was ask, when he strolled in from his morning shower, "Did you take out five dollars on the debit card?" It was like a quick-draw on the streets of Laredo. I think I heard that doody-doody-doooooo, doo doo doo theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. He foisted two receipts in my face faster than I could say, "I'm Jack Sprat's wife, gimme some fat!"

"What do you think I'm going to do with those now? I'm on the phone. Balancing the checkbook. Just lay them on the table."

"Well, you asked..."

"SHH! I'm on the phone."

Later in the afternoon, Farmer H returned from a Goodwill tour and a rendezvous with the feed store. I was standing behind the long couch, pulling my (formerly ill-fated baby blue) sweatshirt over my head while stepping into my red Crocs. As my head crowned through the shirt-neck, the end of my nose was greeted by a receipt.

"What are you doing?"

"Here. I bought feed."

"Put it down! I'm not going to grab that and stand here with it!"

"Well, you always want it, so I'm giving it to you now."

Let the record show that these receipts usually stay in Farmer H's wallet for two weeks or more, until I ask for them.

This evening, I was standing at the kitchen sink, elbow deep in suds, when Farmer H waltzed in like a blue hippo in a pink tutu, and stuck an envelope in my face. If I didn't know better, I would swear he mistook my mouth for a time clock, and thought he was punching his card.

"Uh, I don't know what you expect me to do with that now. Can't you see my hands are in the dishwater?"

"It's that letter you wanted notarized for Genius. You said you'd mail it. What am I supposed to do with it?"

"How about put it in my purse right there beside the sink, where it always is? I can't get it now."

Grunt. Grunt. Generally displeased grunt. Sigh. Arm flap. Head shake. Grunt.

When I'm ready to give Farmer H his weekly allowance on Thursday night, I think I will wait until he goes to bed, then walk in with a stack of currency and poke it at his breather. Maybe even slide it under the edge, like some kind of ritual with an oxygen-deprived, snoring, unattractive, unsvelte stripper.

Of course, first I would have to remove three feet of quilt and flannel sheet from his head.