thisendoftheswamp

When my sister was about four years old, she looked at the wall-to-wall chaos that was our play room, put her hands on her hips and uttered the above sentence, which has gone down in family history.

And this past week was one of those times.

I worked all last week, and have decided, once and for all, that I am too bloody old for this nonsense. Getting up at 6AM and staying up all day without a nap gets really old, really fast.  It’s not just the physical exhaustion, it’s the mental strain of trying to keep all of the pieces together. Within the space of five days, I managed to miss the turn into Loveton Circle twice, once turning too early (No big deal; it IS a circle, after all.), and once going past the light and having to drive a half mile to the next place to turn. I also forgot my teeth one morning. Mind you, I’ve had dentures since I was twenty-two, so there was no excuse for this particular trick. Thank Heaven, The Squire was home and willing to bring them to me. Willing, and more than a little concerned.

The Squire has been wanting to see the meteor shower for decades, but every August, it has been rainy or cloudy. Thursday night promised to be clear and cloudless, if a tad on the warm side. Friday morning, he came staggering downstairs just as I was getting ready to leave the house. “How was the ‘show’ last night?” “Dunno”, he grumped. He’d been reading a “really good book” and had finished it up at 2AM. Rather than disturb my rest, he’d slept in the guest room, but now he had to get pulled together to run to Panera and collect the “Dough-nation” for the food pantry at St. George’s. Normally, this is done around 9:30 on Thursday night, but he’d been in outer space and hadn’t gotten back in time to make the pickup.

Yesterday morning, The Squire  crawled out of bed at 7AM and went over to the shopping center to sell raffle tickets with Mac for a church fund raiser, beginning at 8AM. He called here at 8:30 to ask if I’d heard from Mac – I had not – as he had called both the cell and the landline, and couldn’t get hold of him. “I’m going to run by his house to see if the place burned down overnight or something, and then I’ll swing by the church.”

I don’t know where they finally got together, but Mac had been looking for the vendor’s license, without which they could not legally sell the tickets. At that point, “it was to hell with it, and either go home or to the movies.” They both went home. (The license, BTW, was in the treasurer’s top desk drawer.)

In the afternoon, I went to a baby shower for our grandson and his wife, and had a marvelous time. Matthew is a clown and loves being the center of attraction. He struck “model” poses with the diaper bag, swinging this way and that. Somebody gave the baby a tiny camo suit, with the last name on the hat. (It’s a long one, and I doubt it would have fit on the shirt pocket.) M sat the hat on top of his head and insisted upon “wearing” it for quite a while, in spite of his wife’s playful attempts to remove it.

One of the games they played was to try to guess, on smell and taste, five different types of baby food. The string beans were easy, but carrots, squash, and peaches all seem to taste exactly the same. Of course, M had to be the final taste-tester, and really did “gag it up”. “We are not feeding our son this slop!” was how he put it.

And then the fun started. I was not – still am not – recovered from my week at work, and it was almost 100F, with a heat index even higher. When I went out to my car, I couldn’t find my keys. I don’t normally put my keys in my purse, but the dress I was wearing didn’t have any pockets, so they had to be in my purse, but I just couldn’t locate the fool things. I went back inside to see if they had fallen into the chair, but no luck. By this time, I was so tired and hot I was ready to sit on the floor and cry. Eldest Daughter went out to check my purse again (yes, I’d left it in the car!) and not only found the keys, but started the car and the a/c.

And locked the car behind her.

Fortunately, there is a “secret” way to get into the car, because I think being rescued by The Squire twice in one week would not have gone well.

I came home and went to bed.

Next week, I gots to get organzized.

Tags: baby showers, Eldest Daughter, lost keys, Mac, meteor showers, outer space, raffle tickets, The Squire, working all week