My Caretaker Needs To Do More Caring And Less Taking

Farmer H shot up the driveway this morning like a cat with its tail on fire. Contrary to popular opinion, he was headed TOWARD the Mansion, not away.

He took a day off to go to the doctor for a regular 8:30 appointment. The rains had been sluicing down since 2:00 a.m., so when he'd been gone for two hours, I sent him a text to ask about the roads. That's when he came barreling up the driveway like teacher on lisinopril headed for the faculty women's restroom at the end of first hour.

"The roads are fine. Oh, the one down here at the bottom of the hill, by the neighbor's barn, will eat you up if it rains any more. But I got through it just now. Our gravel road beside the creek is all right. The creek is a couple of inches from being out of its banks again. But that road don't worry me. It's flat. And the water don't get more'n a couple inches deep on it."

Oh, dear. He truly does want to kill me and make it look like an accident. That gravel road under a couple of inches of water cannot be seen. That's because the couple of inches of water are swirling mud and rock and tree bark and trees. Besides, the pipe under the road was only half under the road yesterday. That's how much gravel had washed out. So for all I know, I could be tooling along that submerged road in T-Hoe, car-singing to my heart's delight, something like "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," or "Fat Bottomed Girls," and then BOOM I'm down in a hole with water rising up around me, and not able to finish my song.

Let the record show that as soon as I went down to my dark basement lair to get him a copy of two maps that I printed to tell him where to go (!) today and tomorrow to pick up The Pony...he made a beeline for Frig II and was sitting on the short couch chowing down on the leftover pizza I was saving for my lunch.

"Huh. I hope you're enjoying my lunch."

"I ain't eatin' your lunch!"

"I left it from last night so I could have it today."

"I ain't eat no more than my half."

"Last night your half had only one piece left."

"And I only have two here on this plate."

"EXACTLY!"

"Well, how many pieces of pizza do you want, anyway?"

"Oh, I don't know. I was thinking maybe the remainder of my half."

"You have it. There's still two pieces in there. These here are little pieces. They're both big."

Yeah. Tomorrow he'll be trying to sell me swampland, and the London Bridge to span it.