Now Is The Time Of Day...

 ... we talk about the most recent thing you've done wrong. 

Yes. I need to start this daily dialogue with Farmer H. Otherwise, how will he ever learn from his mistakes? Oh, I don't expect THAT much learning from him. Let's remember the pupil. 

The most recent lesson he needs to pass is: ADMIT WHAT YOU'VE DONE!

I suppose Farmer H is playing the odds, thinking I MIGHT never notice what he's done. So he's saving himself a lecture. Or at least delaying it. He's not all that clever. This tactic never works. Like Monday. I noticed right away, even though ancillary events would have distracted a lesser harpy.

First of all, Farmer H told me that morning at 6:00 that he'd be bringing HOS (Farmer H's Oldest Son) out to help carry stuff at 1:00. I'm not crazy about somebody traipsing through the house and disrupting my routine. I'm used to being alone all day. At times I am not dressed for company. But at least I knew when I needed to be presentable.

At 11:50, I heard a lot of thumping and scraping on the side porch. At least I was fully clothed, sitting at the kitchen table with my breakfast of instant oatmeal and a banana. Farmer H burst through the kitchen door.

"Oh, is it 1:00?"

"I can't always be here the time you expect me, HM." Said (crankily) the man who had told me to expect him at 1:00. "I'm not bringing HOS in. I can move the stuff myself, now that it's out of the truck and on the porch. I just came in because he needs a snack." Farmer H foraged in a bin at the bottom of FRIG II, and came up with a Little Debbie Jelly Roll Cake.

When I left for town, I saw a nightstand and a chest of drawers on the side porch, just begging Jack to pee on them. When I got home an hour later, the nightstand was gone. An empty dolly sat on the back porch. The kitchen door was barely pushed to.

Inside, I immediately noticed my kitchen counter in disarray. Here is what it looked like when I left:

You may argue that this, itself, is disarray. But it's MY mess. Just stuff I'm too lazy to put away. I'm used to it. So the following arrangement slapped me in the face:

Close, but not the same. It was jarring to my senses. Of course an interrogation was required.

"Did you knock my stuff off the counter? Because it's not how I left it. And the peanut butter crackers are cracked. You weren't even going to tell me, were you?"

"I hit it with my elbow."

"And wiped off the whole counter??? Why did you move that nightstand in this door? And try to round the curve at the counter. Wouldn't it have been easier to come in the front door? If you didn't have so much crap blocking the way around the porch."

"I AM bringing the dresser in through the front. But that's not how I knocked the stuff off. I stumbled, and reached out, and my elbow hit it."

Aha! Trying to play the sympathy card! 

"If you say so. But it's funny that it's never happened before, and now while I'm gone and you move in a nightstand on a dolly, the counter gets cleared by your elbow."

"I can't help it HM. I lose my balance. I stumble."

I don't doubt that happens on occasion. I just don't think it was THIS occasion. Such a coincidence that it was out of my sight, during the one hour I was gone, and that furniture got moved inside.