Almost Over

....... I put He Who is not at all good at manning the registration desk in charge at 6 last night and crawled away with my canine companions. Did not want to eat, did not want to face the mess in the kitchen. We went to bed. I turned on the TV and tried to convince the dogs that it was time to go night-night.

We are all creatures of habit and they did not buy it. Toni Louise kept looking out the window and growling at anything that moved. By 7:00, He Who is not an office person had discovered (invented) a reason to close early. I stayed in my bedroom and lolled in bed until I could no longer endure my wiggling canines. I wanted to go outside and troll through my gardens, but didn't dare, lest a child hungering for a snow cone should spot me.

He Who was hungry drove to the golden arches and obtained food. I had indigestion, in addition to coughing and wheezing. Smoke still lingers in the air from my pop-tart adventure.

So, here I sit in a semi dark store with 30 minutes before I have to open the door and sell last minute bags of ice and snow cones and candy. I will be watching the mass exodus from a long weekend of camping from the safety of my office lair. I slept, but am still tired. My throat is raw from the smoke and coughing and I have a slight headache.

The fire scene was still there when I awoke this fine morning. No little elves came in the night to make it all go away. I got most of the baking soda and chunks of burned up pop-tart into the garbage and strolled out to the dumpster. Six lids adorn the top of the giant receptacle. Yesterday I closed the two lids on the front and opened the two middle ones. There was plenty of room to put bags of garbage. But, someone decided to reopen the front lids and just keep piling trash until it overflowed onto the ground. I picked up all the overflow and did my thing with the lids again. I am always hopeful that they will see the front is full and use the open ones ........ In doing my due diligence to keep the garbage inside the receptacle I made an amazing discovery.

There is an artificial Christmas tree in my dumpster. Really. 'Hey, long as we're goin' campin', let's clean out the garage and take the big stuff with us and use that big dumpster...... that way, we ain't gotta pay extra to get rid of this crap.' Also lots of big boxes that have not been broken down. Fan boxes, grill boxes, patio furniture boxes and even a memory foam mattress box. I was dis-inclined to fish them out and break them down after the ant incident.

No strange bathroom tales this weekend, but two up-chuck incidents near the pool. Both were taken care of by the doers or the parents of the doers. The chairs are a different story.

When we bought this place, I wondered why there was no pool furniture. Figured the previous owners had taken it. I immediately put my patio set on the pool surround and started looking into some loungers. Patrons of the pool were amazed at this, telling me you had to bring your own in the past.

After 10 years you would think I had learned the ways of the world. I had given up on finding chairs inexpensive enough to fill the surround. I did have two loungers out there at one time, but, people in these parts are strange. It seemed to be a challenge to see just how fast the lounger could be destroyed. A few years back, a friend insisted on gifting me 24 Adirondack chairs for the pool. The heavy duty plastic ones. Bright red, easy to spot if someone decided to take one home. They stack and are easy to store in the winter.

Out of the 24, 15 remain in service. One very large woman broke two. She took one chair into the pool and was sitting in the shallow end when He Who is mostly easy going discovered the broken chair on the pool surround. He asked the woman to please bring the chair out of the water. She was stuck in it and told him that one chair had already broken when she sat in it and that we needed to buy better chairs. Mostly easy going, He Who lacks diplomacy told the woman she was too damn fat for the chair and that she had now broken two. He suggested that she not try to squeeze her abundance into another chair. His words were, shall we say, not tactful. But, if you have to purchase two airline seats, perhaps you should bring your own pool chair. The woman was very large, swimming in shorts and a t-shirt. Very large shorts and shirt.

So, imagine my annoyance yesterday when one of my spies informed me that some young teen boys were putting my chairs on their bodies and jumping in the pool with them. About a half dozen of them were out there, lolling in the water, my chairs attached to their butts. I approached the fence and asked them just what made them think it would be okay to try to break my chairs. One of them was very big boy (reminded me of Fat Albert ..... hey, hey , hey). "We weren't trying to break them." Of course not. I told them all to get out of the pool and go ask their parents if they wanted to pay for the chairs.

Two of the youngsters came in and apologized. They told me the ring leader had told them that he worked here and it was okay to do this. No name for this supposed employee, only a description. Being the only one manning the counter, I was prevented from a full investigation into the matter. I have no employees. If I did have employees that age, I can assure you, they would not think it okay to defy me.

And now I must open the door and attend to my business .......