The Circle Of Life...For Today, Anyway

My back patio is a disgrace--covered in dust and chicken poop it will have to be cleaned very soon. I mentally add it to the list.

Life...and I mean everyday, run-of-the-mill life...is such a fleeting, tiny slice of adventure.

My daughter home sick with a fever and cold symptoms and the accompanying grumpy 'tude, a visit from a very nice city official regarding the dirt on and the weeds under my '69 Plymouth--she said she felt stupid bugging people about it but it was a new thing she had to do. I promised to clean things up and everyone was happy. Later I listened to the guy on the next block rev his Top Fuel dragster at heart-stopping decibel levels for two solid hours while he worked on it, and wondered where the city's priorities were currently being housed. I had a few unladylike ideas. One of my sisters calls this kind of typical City thing a "Cranial-Rectal Inversion".

After that I went out to the back yard a few times to hang out some laundry. Each time I appeared the entire flock of chickens would come running up joyfully, hopefully...but no goodies. Did you know that chickens can look dissapointed? Then the siren call of Patio Cleaning was heard, so I took daughter out armed with sidewalk chalk and plastic dinosaurs plus the boombox and an ELO CD for me. She was no problem but the chickens and the tortoise kept getting entangled in my feet or would go spelunking in the Mysteries of the Open Garage and then would have to be rescued and/or hauled out. The tortoise felt a deep inner need to carefully....slowwwwlllyyy...investigate every tool I was using. She also came back later to play in the hose water when I hosed off the patio,resulting in my shoes getting soaked.

The patio needs revamping, right now it is an ugly and uninviting holding pen for things like the trash cans and the barbeque. I just have to figure out how to use what I have to improve it, and step one was cleaning. On to step two!

After cajoling Miss Grump into ingesting a tuna fish sandwich I accidentally stomp a HARD plastic Disney 'Stitch' toy which cheerfully tries to imbed itself in my bare foot. As I yowl with pain I try not to use any words I'd rather not have a parent-teacher meeting about later on. Where are my shoes? Out back on the porch drying, of course...

After this I load the kid into the car, preparing to descend on the cable company office and fling money at them. Bless my stars, just as I get into the car my husband arrives home and volunteers to go drop it off, the darling. He also mentions that he has a sore back and neck from tossing several hundred pounds of machinery on his back and running it up some stairs. *sigh*

Take confused 4 year old back into the house and spend the next 20 minutes explaining to her what just happened. Four year olds must have Union rules which state that each occurence, question or statement must be repeated 20 times. After that I give up.

Tonight I skip the 5 o'clock news in favor or sitting in the back yard savoring the cleanness of it, blowing bubbles for the kid and playing with the chickens.

One of whom has pooped, right in the middle of my nice, clean patio.