The Tale In Which I Nearly Sever a Limb

Yesterday turned out to be a fairly busy day, although it didn't start off that way. I slept until just before 10 a.m. when E's babysitter called looking for K and a check. K and my mom had gone off to take my mom's car into the shop, get in a little workout, and go to a coffee shop in a neighboring town that reportedly had awesome muffins, so I got to sleep unmolested. K tends to get jealous of my sleeping and will go out of her way to ask me unnecessary questions or to bring E in to see me after he gets up even though she denies doing any of this on purpose. The only twist to this morning was that K left E at home. He's usually up by 7 a.m. and when they left he was still asleep. It was my job to take care of him while they were gone. It turns out that wasn't a difficult job since he was still asleep when I finally rolled out of bed. I got on the computer and checked my usual sites and hadn't heard a peep out of him until K got home and was curious why I didn't walk into his room and stomp around loudly to make sure he was really asleep and not just kind-of asleep. The poor kid is going to have to live through his mom's passive aggressive hatred of sleep just like I have. My only guess is that E actually woke up this morning while I was asleep, but was in a good mood and played in his crib for a while before going back down for a nap. It was a little odd for him to not even call for a bottle that long, but I did stick my head in his door when I woke up to make sure he was OK. When he took his afternoon nap, he was up and silently waiting for us to come get him when I finally decided to open the door and check to make sure he wasn't dead because he'd been in there so long.

After K came home and woke up E, he and I ate breakfast (he had it shoveled in by K while I shoveled in my own cereal. Then we headed out for a walk around the woods behind the house. I carried E in the baby backpack and K and my mom walked behind because I was walking at a slightly faster clip than either of them. It was about 95F, but still enjoyable because we stayed mostly in the shade of the woods. Later, we headed over to my parents' house for bacon and egg sandwiches (actually BaconLettuceTomatoEggs for everyone but me who exchanged cheese for tomato) and we helped my parents saw up and haul off the giant limb that had fallen out of one of their 90-year-old pecan trees. My dad's got a bad back, so I did all the chainsaw work and he kept E at a safe distance so they could both watch, but not being able to do the work was killing him and he took every excuse to take the chainsaw and fiddle with it to improve its functioning or demonstrate better technique. At least we kept him from doing any heavy lifting. Let's just say that the limb was too big for my dad's truck to drag it off with a chain, so it took a good bit of cutting up and hauling off the pieces.

After that we were all hot and sweaty so we hooked up this crazy flailing sprinkler that our neighbor dropped off for E during our pecan limb hacking and let him play in the water. Then we decided to go jump in the pond and caught minnows for E and the cat to eat. The cat actually ate his minnows, but I managed to keep E from eating the one he kept trying to stick into his mouth. After that it was back home where I wrote this and looked forward to kicking back and watching game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals while drinking my bottle of 5 Seasons Crouching Tiger Hidden Poulet Saison. My right arm is already sore from the lifting and I think I may have flared up my bad neck, but I actually enjoyed all the work in an odd way.