Memorial Day 2018

Well, a lot got done over here in Hopperville. Frankly, I’m exhausted. But satisfied.

I spent four hours over two days in manual labor fighting a tactical retreat against nature here at the Homestead. This involved mowing the crabgrass, clipping the hedges, sawing off splintered tree limbs, cleaning that gross yellow tree pollen off everything, and a whole host of other activities. I managed to fill four trash cans and eight leaf bags with vegetation debris to be carted off. Stuffed the entire back of our Honda Pilot with branches and dropped them off at the local recycling center. Assembled a deck table (a gift to my family from my tax earnings) where we ate dinner one night after bug bombing the yard. And this all had to be done strategically, as storm clouds intermittently messed with my agenda.

Saturday morning the wife took the little ones down the shore to visit with their grandpa. Me, I stayed local, ran some errands, entertained the dog. Studied some tax stuff. Watched the ball game. Ate some Chinese (the only time I eat Chinese is when the family’s away). They got back around 8, beat, sweaty, and sunburnt, and took showers, one after the other, and then – left me to go to bed! So I watched some random TV, surfed the web a bit, read some of my books, and finally hit the hay around midnight.

The little ones served at Mass Sunday morning, then spent the afternoon cleaning their rooms. My wife, for reasons I’ll explain shortly, went to the basement office and worked until dinner at her job. I have a 50-page booklet on depreciation I’m working my way through and will be tested on for my work, so I did that for an hour or two. Then Little One and I watched a bad 70s SF movie, Futureworld starring Peter Fonda. A semi-sequel to the infinitely better Westworld, it held her attention and she was fooled by the couple of twists at the end. But we both agreed it was a tad too long and meandering. We group-graded it a C. Patch was fighting a cold, but, being Patch and unable to sit still, was up and down the stairs a dozen times, practiced her saxophone, cleaned out some sea shells, and read her Rick Riordan books.

Yesterday we drove in to the Bronx and watched the Yanks ineffectively lose to the Astros, 5-1. Though the game overall wasn’t exciting, there were a couple of exciting moments (Torres’s two leaping line-drive catches and Greg Bird’s homer). We had decent seats if a bit too high, and I got one heckuva sunburn from the overcast, 60-degree windy day. Had a highly satisfying Stella Artois at the top of the seventh – of which a third ended up on Little One after some mindless lady swung her purse right into my hand. Oh well.

The wife will be flying down to Hilton Head tomorrow morning, staying down there for five days to help her mom in the aftermath of her stepfather’s passing. Dale didn’t want a funeral, so they’re not sure what they’re going to do, with either the ashes or some sort of memorial service. My mother-in-law is doing well from what I hear; her siblings have reached out to her and she has friends down in South Carolina who have been supportive. During the week Patch has a couple of soccer practices and a game on the weekend, Little One has a field trip with the French club and a bridging ceremony, and I got to give the dog some heartworm medication. Domestic bliss.

To honor those who gave their lives so we can have ours, I did DVR 1965’s Battle of the Bulge to watch and discuss with the Mrs., but life interfered. I may watch it piecemeal during the week. I heard that it contains many historical inaccuracies, of which I’m interested to see if I can detect, and that it does not focus on historical leaders, instead choosing to tell the story through fictional men. I may do a post on it in the near future.

Back to regularly-scheduled programming tomorrow …