Oliphant Parts

Nothing witty to say here, folks, so move along! I got the wife a new rototiller, which was great fun. She hasn’t lost a foot or anything yet, but I’m placing odds on this weekend . . . It’s finally the end of the work day, and I need to go mow. Oh yay. Or maybe I can go see what all the banging was upstairs with the boy-child. This morning he filled the air in my office with whiteboard cleaning fluid while keeping up a running commentary on something or other (number of blinks? Whether his heart was beating or resting? What it sounds like to say whatever particular word he was saying at that moment? Makes me long for the good old days when we were afraid he had a speech disorder and might never talk . . .). This was followed up by a count past infinity “infinity and one . . . “.

I dream of a quiet weekend.

I’m still alive, just busy trying to keep up with the destructive forces of children. Today they knocked out all the screens on our windows with their football and randomly seeded the back yard with very large rocks (to kill the mower again, I assume). Oh yeah, they also made newspaper rafts to float, and sink, in the pool. Add that to yesterday’s cocoa powder fiasco and a few items best left unreported at this time, and it’s been just peachy around here.

I’ve discovered my son’s secret rap star title: FlushMaster 2000. His title was earned about an hour ago when he wandered down to interrupt my breakfast.
“Dad. Daa-aad.”
“Yes?”
“The toilet’s overflowing. My poop was too big.”
Yes, from upstairs I can definitely hear the sound of water (and hopefully nothing else) hitting the tiles. A quick race up the stairs and into the bathroom confirms it: We have full blockage and overflow. As I shut off the water and yell for the plunger, he continues.
“It wouldn’t go down, so I flushed three more times, and it still wouldn’t go down.”
Great. That explains why we’re almost up to our ankles in water here. Now that’s a great way to start the day.

So, we had another exciting birthday celebration this Saturday. In honour of turning 38, I went to the dump, cut my finger open on a nice big rusty pile of crap (well, metal, but I’m pretty sure there was crap on it), did some basic plumbing repairs (unclogged a drain in the upstairs bathroom, put in a new spigot in the back yard) and failed miserably in getting the pool pump system working again. Somehow the whole birthday thing has lost that magical feeling. I did however read an entire dictionary in one sitting. The Uxbridge English Dictionary, so I don’t know if that really counts as an accomplishment.

I also managed to avoid cleaning my desk yet again. I have a new theory on household chores and miscellaneous “man-jobs”. At present, I let them build up so that I have such a backlog that I cannot possibly get any of them done. If asked to fix the sink, I can point out that I still have to fix the pool, put up the fence, take care of the mysterious sinking front porch, replace the facsia, etc., then go back to doing nothing. By pointing out the overwhelming number of tasks, I have so far successfully been able to avoid doing anything. Simply brilliant.

Something I should have avoided was apheresis. I was a good human being on Friday and gave up my platelets, but here it is, nearing the end of the work day on Monday, and I still break out in a cold sweat thinking of all that blood being pumped out of me, shaken around, then pumped back into me, loaded with additives (okay, anticoagulants, but how do I know that they haven’t slipped in a tracking device or two pints of nutra-sweet?). Ugh. My blood pressure shot up just waiting to be hooked up, then I spent two hours trying not to think of the needle in my arm, the creeping coldness spreading up my arm, the tingling in my face and all of the various things that could possibly go wrong. I’m certainly not doing that again for a few more days.