If It's Not One Thing, It's The Weather

I don't know about you, but I am tired of fighting this heat wave. Seems like it's been going on since February. Ruined my snow day optimism last school year. Fried me in the classroom, even WITH the air conditioner. "Oh, don't worry," said my lunchmates. "I hear that the summer will be unseasonable cool." Heard from whom? A local chief meteorologist, perhaps? The one who said we would have four major snowstorms between Thanksgiving and Christmas?

The Mansion thermostat is set at 75. In years past, it has been on 72. Tonight, making sandwiches for supper, I could no longer stand the heat. I got out of the kitchen. And saw that the ambient temperature inside my home was 80 degrees. I asked Farmer H why that would be. He said maybe because the air conditioner can't keep up. What is it, some uncoordinated nerd trying to play basketball with the varsity? Keep up, indeed! That's what we paid for. An air conditioner that keeps up. Funny how from the get-go, Farmer H snagged a unit from a company with which he does a high volume of work business. A bargain, he declared. A floor model. It had to be replaced.

Of course he bought the new one from the same company. Seems like every winter, it needs service. And every summer, it needs service. Coolant one year. A coil the next. Farmer H is not the best at maintaining his bargains. The repairman last year specifically said to change the filter once a month. And clean the coil. Farmer H declares that he has done so. I know that he has not.

So tonight, he decided to do it again. Change that filter. Funny how he couldn't find it. After just having changed it last month, according to him. THEN he decided to clean the coil. Which meant he had to shut off the whole unit. Which then takes thirty minutes to come back on. All between 6:00 and 7:00. When the setting sun blazes across the front of the Mansion, frying us like an ant under a magnifying glass.

The temperature upstairs is now 82 degrees. It was 88 down at the creek-side cabin. Which has NO air conditioning, and does not draw any amps of electricity. Farmer H says he is calling the cooling people tomorrow. I think they might be too busy rolling around on their piles of money to make a house call.

I Scratch My Back, You Scratch Yours

I've got a lot of nerve.

At least that's how it feels. Something has gone awry in my neck-shoulder area. For a few weeks I've had pain between my shoulder blades. Now, it is in my upper right neck-shoulder border. I'm thinking I irritated something while lifting a case of soda out of the back of T-Hoe and carrying it from the garage to the porch. I'm hoping it is simply muscular and nothing nervy. Nothing pinched.

This pain is in a hard spot to reach without irritating the spot I'm reaching. I need one of those stick-on hot pad thingies. Like I could have purchased today on my trip to The Devil's Playground, had I only known that upon arriving home, I would have this pain. I think we're all out of that Thermo-Gesic tube of stuff that I used to use on my back. And I wouldn't be able to rub it on there myself anyway. Farmer H was called back to work. I don't want to impose on The Pony or #1. I'm sure I've given them enough nightmare material already to last a lifetime.

I think I'm going to try to massage my neck-shoulder with the knuckle side of a red wooden backscratcher. Don't cost nothin'.

My New Job Description

Just when I had resigned myself to the title of Chief Food Warmer-Upper and Sandwich Maker...Farmer H gave me a new task. Tire Inflater.

Funny how he has begun to delegate duties once performed by himself, then the #1 son, to ME. The Pony has no idea how fortunate he is to have been skipped as a link in this chain. No more will Farmer H drive my T-Hoe over to the BARn to his magical air compressor. Nor take it to the shop for repair. It has become MY responsibility. Of course, knowing Farmer H, it is highly possible that he expects me to wrap my lips around the tire valve and fill it with my own hot air.

Since early June, I have nagged Farmer H to see about T-Hoe's tire. It has a slow leak. Loses about four pounds of air per week. That is not normal. The Pony and I have been stopping at a convenience store to use their free air. Since The Pony has never been apprenticed in the proper mechanics of tire inflation, he hops out to tell me if the valve is in a convenient area, which is anywhere NOT on the bottom of the tire. He pushes the compressor button. I get out to unscrew the valve top and put in air. The Pony climbs into the driver's seat to tell me when the automatic inflation thingamajigger says the tire is at 34 pounds. Proper inflation is 32. But, what with the leak, and the other tires hovering at 30, I shoot for 34. You see, when there is a difference of four pounds between the next closest tire, a warning light comes on. So this buys me two weeks.

According to Farmer H, HE cannot take my tire to be checked out. I suppose because his weekends are filled with auctions and flea markets and goats and chickens and cabins and BARns. In addition, he says that there's really nothing anybody can do. That with such a slow leak, it will be next to impossible to find and fix. I cry POPPYCOCK! Surely that is a job that tire shops are used to performing. Just like a chef is well-versed in warming up food in a microwave, or heating it in an oven. Farmer H acts like driving around on a tire that loses four pounds of air per week is perfectly normal. All the rage. Everybody's doing it! Who would ever expect a paid tire professional to find out the root of the problem and fix it?

I need to tell Farmer H about all the people who are taking a long walk on a short pier. It's all the rage, you know.

The Armchair Lawyer

Quick, somebody give me the number for Mystery, Inc. I thought I had them on speed dial, what with all the unsolved mysteries that abound here at the Mansion. Sadly, I do not. I hope Scooby and the gang have lights and siren on the Mystery Machine. I grow antsy awaiting logical explanations.

Today I discovered a new pyramid. Okay, it wasn't quite that startling or important a discovery. But it was big. And quite a mystery.

On the end of the big couch is a stack of The Pony's shorts. The pocketed, cargo kind of shorts with zippers. He mainly wears them for school, preferring athletic style shorts for lounging on the basement couch and herding goats. This stack is awaiting the removal of outgrown clothing from The Pony's dresser drawers. They are clean and folded, but out of place. We're not a hoarder house. Yet.

Today I spied Farmer H sitting on the other end of the couch with his head jutting forward. The reason being a stack of The Pony's shorts behind his displaced noggin. The #1 son had moved them there a couple days ago, stating that they obstructed his view of the television from his sandwich-eating seat at the kitchen cutting block. I'm sure I moved them back to the original location. Yet here they were. Not.

I picked up the stack of shorts and returned them to their rightful end, closer to The Pony's room. Like that would light a fire under him to complete the drawer task. There was something dark under the stack. Not of the shorts persuasion. It was a set of three black T-shirts. I had never seen them before.

The black T-shirts bore a bowling logo. All three were stacked together, never washed, never separated. Like they came right out of a box of shipped T-shirts. Somebody had folded them over twice, still all together, so they were not hanging down the couch. I asked Farmer H where they came from.

He didn't know. Surprise, huh? He had no idea. He asked me where I got them. Right there from under the back of his head, of course. They were not there the last time I relocated The Pony's shorts stack. They just appeared! Out of thin air! Funny how back when the boys and Farmer H were making their State Youth Bowling Tournament trip, Farmer H was looking for black T-shirts. That they were supposed to bowl in. I tore the house apart looking for them. All through The Pony's drawers. On all the laundry room racks. In the dirty cloths basket. No black bowling T-shirts. Now here they were.

Farmer H still denied. Denied carrying them in the house. Denied putting them on the back of the couch. Even though he lays other things there. Like a hoodie. Or a shirt.

We asked the #1 son where they came from. He did not know! Farmer H quizzed him on whether they had been sent home with him from bowling during league play. For the tournament. Nope. Farmer H denied ever having them in his car. #1 denied ever having them in his truck. They looked at me. ME! Who has not set foot in the bowling alley for nigh on three years, because I don't like the new building.

I asked if they believed, perhaps, that those shirts simply slithered from the bowling alley out the county road, turned onto our gravel road, and drug themselves up the driveway and under the crack of the front door, to jump up on the back of the couch and mystify me.

Well, of course not, professed Farmer H. Maybe The Pony had something to do with it. I need to ask The Pony. Who has neither a truck in which to haul them, nor transportation to town to pick up and deliver them. Who conveniently happened to be absent from the Mansion at the time of The Grand Inquisition.

I'm not a betting woman. But my money is on #1, from his room, where he had stacked them under something and just discovered them. Because he cleaned out his room last week. And he has stacked other clothes on top of The Pony's shorts.

I'm going to invest in a polygraph machine when I win the lottery.

Gall Of Nature

I may have been disappointed yesterday, when the clever fox in my front yard turned out to be my orange-striped cat. But Even Steven remedied his furry faux pas today.

On the way to town to pay some bills, The Pony and I saw two deer. Not so much saw, as had to grind T-Hoe to a stop and wait for them to finish crossing the road. It was a doe and her mostly-grown fawn. The kid-deer still had his baby spots, but he was a good size as fawns go. No tiny tot to be left sleeping in the hayfield and run over by the mower and stuffed and donated to Bass Pro Shop, Springfield location.

They were crossing the blacktop county road from the wooded side to the creek side, right where that tree had the gall to fall and disrupt our electric service last week. I hope it wasn't some anti-human plot, like those animals in commercials for tires and insurance.

The Pony and I picked up my mom and took her for a ride. Okay. So the ride was accompanying us to pay the bills. Mom doesn't care. A ride's a ride. Unfortunately, our favorite topic of Big Brother spoilers was off limits, because The Pony only wants to see what CBS shows on the regular programs. I took a short cut on the way back to Mom's house, through the state park. The area where you are supposed to expect deer in the road. We didn't see any. But we saw a large black bird standing there just inside the woods, according to Mom. Which I usually refer to as a turkey. Not Mom. The bird.

Mom and The Pony disembarked at her house. He's spending the night. So I'm Ponyless for twenty-four hours. I headed back home, taking the roads less traveled. Had to swerve to avoid a dinner-plate sized aquatic turtle. He didn't look like a snapper, but I didn't get a good look at his face to see if he had a mean beak. All I know is he was thin like a flying saucer, and did not have ridges along his shell spine like a snapper.

I was not wearing my glasses, but I am 99.9 percent sure that none of these critters was my own cat.

Hillmomban Safari

This morning, as I sat in Farmer H's La-Z-Boy, watching the upstairs TV, which is kind of like a lesser babka, compared to my big-screen in the basement...I sensed movement in the front yard.

Through the sprigs of lilac bush that have not been clandestinely consumed by Farmer H's goats, or choked by the heat and drought, I saw a flash of orange. It did not move in the manner of Yellow Leg, the strapping rooster. Nor was it as tall as he. No strutting. More of a slinking gait. I had my glasses on the table beside me. But donning them would have taken too much effort. And made too much sense.

My brain flipped on the lights for a virtual tour. Like a walk through Hannibal Lecter's Memory Palace. Outdoors. Animals. Orange. Slinking movement. Aha! I stopped at the exhibit that housed my mother's kitchen. I peered out her kitchen window, over the new two-lane concrete highway, to the edge of the woods just past the right-of-way. There he was. A fox. Orange. Slinking.

I squinted just a little. It sometimes makes my vision sharper. I waited. The questionable critter flowed a few more paces. Came out from behind the lilac shoots. I eagerly anticipated Mr. Quick Orange Fox jumping over my lazy dogs. But that canine insult would have to wait for another day. For what I saw emerge from the bone-dry branches was not a fox.

It was our orange-striped cat, Genius.

Join me here at the Mansion later this week, when I host a symposium on Which Goes First, Vision, or Mental Faculties?

But now, I must grab my glasses and head to the door. I think I hear a herd of zebras galloping down the road.

It Seems My Teeth Are Getting Long

Gosh! We're about to run out of July! Which means that school is imminent!

I hate beginnings and endings. Just plop me down in the middle, routine established, and I'm a good workhorse. It's the changes and additions and proposals and tentative stuff not nailed down that discourage me. I want my work life organized. If a process functioned before, there's no need to change it, simply for the sake of change. To say we did. To look good on paper. Let this sleeping dog lie. Or even lay, if you're particularly niggling in the grammar arena.

The only good thing about the first few weeks of school is that carrot-on-a-stick, Labor Day, on the horizon. I set my sights on that precious three-day weekend. That's about the time the new routine is established. And from there, I can always find a lifebuoy up ahead. Smooth sailing until Christmas. This year, I will not be dragging myself to work on days when I feel subpar, under-the-weather, out of sorts, feverish, nauseous, headachy, backachy, stiff-necked, lame, snot-nosed, pinkeyed, constipated, diarrheaed, or exhausted. Because I have accumulated so many sick days that I can accumulate no more. They will vaporize at the end of the year. POOF! No compensation. No donation to others in need. Gone! Gone with the wind. Like the spores in one of those puffball mushrooms when stomped upon.

All these years of conscientious perfect-or-near attendance, and now I can stay home sick instead of working wounded. I might as well round up a shawl and seek out the makings for a mustard plaster.

I'm hobbling down the path to the precipice overlooking the pasture.