If He Was A Gunslinger, He'd Be In Trouble

Since the weather has been topping 100 degrees by afternoon, I've given up my evening driveway walk. But don't you worry about Mrs. Hillbilly Mom going to seed, turning from a lean mean fighting machine into a blob of suet. Silly worriers! Suet would MELT IN THIS HEAT!

I've taken to walking in the morning. It doesn't really suit my schedule, because most of the time I'm going to bed at 3:00 a.m., and who wants to get up before 7:00 to walk? Not Mrs. HM, that's for sure. But sometimes you gotta do things you don't wanna do. So I'm trying to get to bed by 1:00, so I can still get my six hours of sleep, and get up and walk while the driveway is about 75% shady. Not to be confused with Farmer H, who is 100% shady.

I don't ask Farmer H for much. Oh, sure, I ask him not to leave poop on the back of the toilet, and mud clods on the floor, and banana peels in the La-Z-Boy cushions, and toenails in the candle on the mantel, and to take me to the casino once or twice a month, and to tell me when he's going to have people roaming around the Mansion, and to wake me up when I have something to do. Okay. Maybe I DO ask him for a lot. But he needs to get over it.

Since Farmer H leaves for work at 6:00 a.m., I've asked him to call me at 6:45. That's about the time he pulls onto the workplace parking lot. How hard could it be? It's one thumb-push on his cell phone, and a five-second greeting. He did it for me ONCE this week.

Okay, now don't go asking Mrs. HM why she can't wake herself up. Her body clock does that. At 9:15 every morning when she goes to bed at 3:00. But when she goes to bed at 1:00, and wakes up at 7:15, it's already too hot and sweaty outside to walk. An alarm clock, you say? Why can't she use an alarm clock? HOOOO BUDDY! You don't know Mrs. HM very well at all. It would be easier for her to find an egg in the yard before Sweet, Sweet Juno eats it, and hatch that egg after 21 days, and raise that little chick without it being eaten by neighbor dogs or snakes or foxes, and train it to sit on her nightstand and crow at exactly 6:45 a.m... than learn how to set one o' them there ALARM CLOCK RADIO THINGIES!

Anyhoo...today was Friday. Farmer H doesn't work on Fridays. He set his alarm to get up at 5:30, though, so he had time to drive to town and eat breakfast, and then cut up a tree over in the BARn field before the sun got too hot. I asked him to call me at 6:45 to wake me for walking. Not forget like he did on Thursday, when I arose at 7:15 and said, "No way, no how, am I going out in that sun, and sweat up and down the driveway."

At 6:45, Farmer H woke me this morning. In person. Standing beside the bed.

"I would have called you, but I lost my phone."

"Great. There's another couple hundred dollars that I can't spend at the casino." [Just kidding. Let the record show that I don't use house money at the casino. I used my previous winnings from scratchers.]

"I've looked all over. I don't know where it could be."

"It was on the bathroom counter when I went to bed."

"I got it off there. The whole holster is gone. I've lost it somewhere."

"Maybe you laid it down. Call it with my phone and listen."

"No. I'll go retrace my steps."

"I've got to get dressed and get outside. Just go get my phone and call it. The worst that can happen is that you don't hear it. And maybe you WILL, and you'll find it."

"No. I'm fine. I'll go out and look."

"Why do I have to do EVERYTHING around here? I'll do it. Start listening."

"Well, your phone is different than mine. I don't know how to get into it."

DUH!!! Why didn't he just say so? You'd think my little android was some complicated ALARM CLOCK RADIO THINGY! I called, but there was no sound inside the Mansion. Farmer H went out the door. I could hear the dogs start their barking frenzy when he fired up the Gator. Right before I went out to walk, the house phone rang.

"I found it."

"Where?"

"In my car. It had fallen between the seat and the console."

I swear. I don't know how men walk around with those things.