No not me, Dirt. I don’t work therefore I don’t need a day off or a vacation. Dirt teaches aviation mechanics at the college so he gets vacations (aka end of quarter breaks) and national holidays off.
Last week, when I was completely absent the college ended spring quarter and began summer quarter, consequently Dirt was home from the afternoon of June eighteenth to the morning of June twenty-ninth. That my Dear Reader is a long time. A long time to have yet another body in and out of the house, using it as if there was a doting grandmother in residence, to pick up behind the hard workers.
Since I cannot in all good conscience talk Dirt into taking on another wife for the purpose of tidying up after everyone and cooking daily meals whether inspired or not, I have gone to praying for an elderly woman who would just like to adopt Dirt and I as her children and the girls as her granddaughters. A woman who lives for the delight of cooking and cleaning and picking up the dirty socks that were taken off with the boots right at the moment and left at the spot when and where the feet finally began to throb undeniably.
A woman willing to come into the household’s only bathroom after the four farmers have bathed, to pick up scattered shampoo bottles and razors, hang up towels, wipe down the tub ledges and scoop out the hay and weeds collected in the drain.
A woman who would need very little sleep as a big full breakfast (the main meal of the day) is now becoming the daily custom here, served at a quarter to six, but yet still awake, alert and ready to do the last tidying in the kitchen and living room from the snacks and beverages enjoyed from nine to ten by those who just must stay up and watch every dance and the results of the call in votes on SYTYCD.
Then, at a little after ten or some nights eleven for the foolish, follow them into the one bathroom to rinse the sink of the toothpaste residue, tidy up the towels take a peek at the incubator and brooder box on the bathroom counter as she grabs the broom to do one last final sweep up behind the person that remembered they needed to do something in the barn before brushing their teeth, resulting in yet another trail of hay seed and other barn crumbs to pick up.
And we would like said “Dear Grandmama” to be sweet and gentle, to refrain from muttering under her breath about ungrateful children and insensitive grown-ups, to always have a lovely verse on her lips to straighten our errant thinking when our world goes a wry.
Not to mention, because we don’t send our children to school, just our Dirt, we would appreciate it if she would write up wonderful lessons for us to learn while we are out hauling water hose, fixing broken pens, replanting the bean seed that the turkey ate, calculating the amount of fertilizer for a given area, hoicking hay bales above our heads… . So that when we came in for her beautifully prepared lunch and to get out of the worst of the day’s sun, she could delight and teach the girls some fascinating things and reinforce their academic skills whilst I bask in the beauty of it all and maybe close my eyes for just a wee bit.
Basically we would like one of those mothers that the Christian homeschooling magazines tell women that they are to be and can be and should be twenty-four seven. I’ve never met one personally, but certainly they must exist beyond some one’s imagination. And so if there is one out there who no longer has a family that needs her phenomenal skills and freakishly kind attitude, we would love to have her come and live with us.
We can’t offer much in accommodations, maybe we could find her a small trailer to sleep in, and there really isn’t any extra cash lying around to supplement her pension, but we would show our appreciation nearly daily. Well, at least weekly if she asked us how she was doing, and maybe we would honor her with one day a year by giving her cards, a couple of chocolates we would expect her to share back with us, and a day she wouldn’t have to cook one or two of the days three or four meals and snacks. Yes, we would all just like a mom to come live with us.
Well Dear Reader, those are the fresh thoughts from my brain this morning as the man with the day off slept in just before his shearing job on the other side of the big valley, and then bringing in more hay here at the farm this afternoon. But now he has caught me writing (read that “wasting some time”) and wants to know if I would like to be his assistant for today’s shearing job. Well folks, that means a ride on the motorsickle! Since I have yet to ride the motorsickly this summer I am going to give the girls the list of things I was going to do this morning and skip reading the seven-hundred forty-three items on my Google Reader (those are post of yours, unread by me) and ride off into the suns.. the … sun and be with Dirt for a few precious hours.
Hope you have enjoyed my wishful thinking and new header picture this morning. I also changed the weekly selection from the flag code over on the side board, you might take a few minutes to check it out. Hopefully I will have time later today or tomorrow during Independence Day festivities to tell you a few quick stories about flag code in my life. Although I refuse to make any promises, since all I do is break them once made. The day in my head holds way more hours that the one in real life, and I write way faster in my imagination than what appears to be reality.
Dear Reader, as I ride on the back of Dirt’s sickle today, I will be praying that all those I know intimately all the way to barely, are well aware that we all, every last one of us, ride through life in the palm of the hand of mercy of our Creator, the one true God, and that then we live our lives accordingly in acknowlegement and thanksgiving.
