Mon., June 7, 1999
FOR SALE: 1997 4.5 HP self-propelled push lawnmower. Works fine except for broken front axle and the engine that won't start. Would make a great emergency baby stroller, companion for shut-in, or gag gift. Was asking $15,000 at garage sale on Saturday, will now take $10 or best offer. SERIOUS inquiries only should be mailed to P.O. Box 8121, Lima, OH 45805-0121. DON'T LET THIS ONE PASS YOU BY!
A difficult time of transition.
My wife is out of school now for the summer. As happens every year, this is having an impact on my normal schedule. What used to take me five minutes a week ago now takes a couple hours.
For example, today is Monday. I try to put clean sheets on the bed every Monday, rain or shine. Last week I had those suckers in place and the bed made by 8 or 9 am. Today I was still trying to get this simple task done at 2 pm. Why? Because my wife was helping. Seems we have a slight difference of opinion on exactly how this task should be accomplished. She thinks that the old sheets ought to be taken off and washed. I say nope, you just put the clean sheets on over the old ones. Just like you slap a new coat of paint on top of the old without stripping down to bare wood every time. Just like you put new shingles on top of the old when you re-roof. Any painter or roofer will tell you that it's best to wait until things are 3 or 4 layers thick before bothering to take any off. Doing anything else simply makes more work for yourself.
Still, my wife disagrees....
Tomorrow is cleaning day and she'll probably spend it complaining about the fumes from my riding vacuum cleaner, just like she did all last August.
*Sigh*I should have known today was going to be a day to forget the moment I started my morning shaving ritual and promptly spilled pre-shave lotion on the cat, then had to use my Norelco rotary razor on him just so as not to make liars of the fine makers of that lotion. Not that I shaved all of him, mind you - that would have been silly. I just shaved the part that had been touched by the lotion.
The good news is that this only took a few minutes, including the application of after shave.
The bad news is that he now has an X on his forehead, same as Charles Manson. He just can't understand why none of his kitty friends stayed long enough today to play King of the Mountain on my head. Tomorrow, if I ever get the cleaning done, I'll try to draw him a better diagram....Admittedly, even this probably wasn't the start of my problems. No, the roots almost certainly go clear back to Saturday when I read about how President Clinton had taken the bold step of appointing the first openly gay ambassador to a foreign country.
Don't get me wrong - I think we should have appointed an openly gay ambassador long before now, if only because it's so much fun to hear Sen. Trent Lott say silly things about folks who allegedly consort with men known to wear nun attire in parades. (Apparently Sen. Lott thinks these would-be ambassadors are a far graver threat to the republic than those folks who consort with known pushers of tobacco, assault weapons, and vehicles with cardboard gas tanks.)
No, what bothers me to such an extent that even two days later I can barely think straight is the fact that we're talking about an ambassador to Luxembourg.
Now I'm sure Luxembourg is a wonderful country. But the whole place, including sheds and park benches, only holds about 400,000 residents. That makes it less populous than Toledo, and no one has ever suggested that Washington ought t have an ambassador there just to make sure everything is on the up and up.
Put another way: If we were to send an ambassador to every group of 400,000 people outside the U.S., we'd have some 15,000 ambassadors on the payroll.
And people like Sen. Lott would have to investigate and/or make snotty comments about every one of them before they could start work, leaving little time for Trent to remember if his last name has one "t" or two.
Do we really want our senators to start signing documents without their having the time they need to get their name right? Of course not. Therefore, we really have no business appointing an ambassador to Luxembourg at all.
Is our man in Liechtenstein really too busy to take care of Luxembourg, too? He only has to keep us posted on 31,000 people as it is!
Until this is settled once and for all, I'm afraid the insomnia I've been suffering from the last 48 hours will continue. After all, the way things are going, who knows when Washington might start appointing ambassadors to two-person-and-a-cat households like mine?
And I don't care if they're gay or straight, I just don't think it would be right for me to go to the door to greet them having obviously just been asleep in bed....
"The first time the giant lizard came into my home, it ate my little sister. The second time the giant lizard came into my home, it ate my favorite big brother. The third time the giant lizard came into my home, it ate my mother, my father, and their Chevy, then hid in the servant's quarters until the check from the car and life insurance companies came, and then the giant lizard ate those, too. The next time the giant lizard came into my home, it came for me. 'No, no, no!' I told it, and the giant lizard went away...."
Please.
If You're Going To Have Animals In Your Home,
Be Sure You Know How To Handle Them.(Another helpful reminder brought to you by The Coalition For Better Human-Animal Interactions, Inc.)
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(All Material Including This Copyright Notice ©1999 by Dan Birtcher exactly as if anyone else would ever claim it)
