looking forward to monday
Posted on April 6, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting, suburban joys, homeownership |
Thursday was just ONE of those days. First there was the 6 a.m. revelry from My Better Half’s downstairs office. I don’t know what inspired him to be up so early (he’s usually not seen outside of the bedroom before 8 a.m.) but he was down there chipping away at a mountain of e-mail and grooving to the Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars with their optimistic reggae beat because nothing says steel drums like 4 inches of snow in April. I was groggy and pissed to be alive on the morning after Sanjaya cheats another long overdue death on American Idol. I’m going to digress here and say that this Idol/Sanjaya thing is beginning to feel a lot like hazing. He’s become a national joke, something akin to electing the kid with Tourette’s Syndrome and a limp president of the high school graduating class. If I was any of the other Idol contestants that have been cut so far, I would be waiting for that guy somewhere just beyond the stage lights to beat the crap out of him. Really, Sanjaya, show some self respect and resign from the show already. Or are you too keyed up about next week’s performance when you will serenade Paula with your own version of The Rainbow Connection while dressed in a Kermit the Frog suit?
So there I am contemplating the politics of reality television and peeling back the curtains to admire the view - a winter wonderland that would be just glorious if it were January and not the third week of Spring, when I hear O moaning and writhing in his bedroom. It appeared that O was auditioning for Days of Our Lives - The Stay Home From School Episode. I brought him juice in bed to see if that would get things moving and then there was an attempt to come down for breakfast followed by a tortured episode of feigned nausea on the kitchen floor and a retreat to the bedroom to recover. 
Meanwhile, a red pick-up, eighties vintage, with Vietnam vet bumper stickers, pulled into the driveway and I said out loud and with great animation, “Oh shit, I forgot to fire Bob.” Bob calls himself the ‘Terminator Exterminator’ and Bob came with the house. Two weeks after we moved in, Bob showed up for our quarterly bug treatment. He informed us that he’d been the former owner’s pest control guy for 25 years. We let Bob in. Bob did his thing, spraying lethal toxins on the baseboards and filling attic traps with rat poison. We paid Bob $85 and made our next appointment because what did we know? We lived in Florida where there are roaches the size of house cats. We thought we needed Bob, until it became obvious that bugs are not quite the nuisance in Massachusetts that they were in Florida and mice aren’t interested in our attic patrolled by cats or our seasonal wetland of a basement. But it’s been almost two years and I still haven’t been able to fire Bob because Bob has issues. Bob’s a Vietnam vet after all. Bob loves cats and gives the dog a biscuit even though she knocks him off his feet and sniffs his crotch when he arrives (come to think of it Bob might actually dole out treats BECAUSE she knocks him off his feet and sniffs his crotch) . Bob sends out typewriter generated letters full of embarrassing typos telling his clients about the tragic death of his daughter from breast cancer and how he lost his niece to leukemia and we all send him money for his fund raising walkathons. Bob has had a tough Winter with emergency open heart surgery and a tortured recovery all of which he explained in news letter format with an envelope for contributions.
I can’t muster enough courage and cold heartedness to fire Bob even though I’ve never seen an ant or a roach or a mouse or a squirrel in my house. Instead, this morning, I taught Bob all about Tivo. He was amazed that I was able to pause Discovery’s Planet Earth (O’s chosen entertainment for convalescing) in order for him to lace the room with carcinogens. I can’t fire Bob because he still uses a typewriter and doesn’t know about Tivo. Bob is ours forever.
You’ll be happy to know that after Bob regaled me with tales of his Maine Coon cat’s hairball problem and gave me the blow by blow account of his trip to Florida to visit his sister, I still had time to throw on a coat and drive to elementary school to deliver the snack I forgot to put in G’s packback due to the excitement that is Bob and an inkling of pesticide induced vertigo. I figured I could just glide in there with my pajama bottoms and my morning mouth and the unconcealed pustule that is like the North Star of my forehead and slip the bag into her classroom unnoticed. But low and behold, today is the day of the third grade musical and I timed my snack run to coincide with the end of it. Now every parent of third grader knows that I wear Hello Kitty pajamas and don’t brush my teeth much before noon.
If this was Thursday, I’m looking forward to Monday.
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4 Responses to “looking forward to monday”
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this was great. so vivid. i am often still in my pjs when i take the kids to school, but i don’t have to get out of the car.
and i’m with you on sanjaya. it ruined MY evening too. hell, it’s ruining my week.
it snowed here as well. it doesn’t snow all winter, but now it snows, in spring?
Now you’ve gone and pissed-off the Association of Gimpy Legged Tourrette’s Suffererers.
Fortunately I don’t think the GLTS Association frequents this blog.
Oh, man, that post is the reason I read blogs!!!!!!!!!!!!!