My son stayed overnight
after his airport rescue mission and commuted to work from here. I had a hefty slate of tasks to perform over
the day including a visit to the dentist which was a perfect analogy as to my
post-tropical feelings for the prospects for the day.
My first and most important
task was to ensure the continued vitality of my wife’s virtual jungle of
tropical plants which had to survive without their weekly watering in my
absence. My wife was certain I would
return to a wasteland of dead or dying plants and that I would not be up to the
effort of revitalizing them. While I
completely understand (and endorse) her lack of faith in my horticultural
abilities somehow these plants and I survive (one depends on the other, don’t
you know) each year during her prolonged absences.
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| The Bougainvilleas (thank God for spellcheck) Survive! |
While I was carting the jugs
of special temperature appropriate water to her vast collection of plants I
noted they seemed to be doing just fine.
There are these things called droughts in nature that my wife’s plants
have never had to endure but apparently their genetic code was intact enough to
insure survival. I was however
responsible for sending her photographic proof that her favorite bougainvillea
plants were alive (maybe I shouldn’t have asked her where they sell bougainvilleas
around here when we were in Panama
With task number one
completed I headed outside with two large bags of road salt to administer a
coup de grace to the ice that attempted to thwart my return. I had done a fairly admirable job in the
limited light conditions of the night before with my snow blowing
operations. By the end of the day the
salt and about an hour of chopping with a shovel had the driveway clean and no
longer an embarrassment to my male pride.
Those balmy 36 degree temps also helped more than a little.
Since I fell a little too
much in love with blogging yesterday (see yesterday’s post for evidence of
that) I suddenly found myself running a much tighter schedule than
planned. I definitely had to recover the
wonder pooch down in Rhode Island
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| The Buddy Welcome |
There ensued a mad dash to Rhode Island
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| Landing His Devastating Right Cross |
My mission was more of a
snatch and grab since I was going to bend a few more traffic laws if I was going
to make my dentist appointment on time. I felt bad that I didn’t have more time
to spend with my brother in law and nephew especially after the key roles they
played in maintaining Buddy in the style he has become all too accustomed to. I threw the camera to my brother in law to
capture Buddy’s typical welcoming ceremony.
He did apply his customary castigatory face scratch to demonstrate that
he didn’t fully approve of not being included in whatever travels I had
undertaken.
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| Just a Flesh Wound |
I made it back to the house
in under an hour (please do not mention this to Rhode
Island and Massachusetts
I even had a leisurely ten
minutes to waste before dental responsibilities. My wife and I have gone to the same dentist
office since I retired from the military.
Last year the head dentist retired and the practice was bought out by an
Asian-American dentist with a great name, Dr Han Solo. He’s charged with trying to stem the tide of
destruction that too much diet coke imposes upon my teeth. He looks nothing like Harrison Ford.
I was in for a cleaning and
found I had a new hygienist. The elderly
lady I’d seen for the past few years left and a very nice younger version was
now my assigned savior. She was very
thorough and a lot more muscular than her gentle predecessor. She told me to raise my right hand if I needed
her to stop if it became too painful. As
if that same male pride would ever permit such a cowardly act. She did test that courage repeatedly and was very
thorough. Technology continues to amaze
as the dental x-rays now are computerized and they stick some sort of sensor in
your mouth and when they snap the x-ray it immediately appears on a screen; it
was kinda cool (who thought a dentist visit could ever be described as that).
The rest of the day was
absolutely consumed with grocery shopping, house cleaning (once again learning
how hard my wife works in keeping this monster up), washing Panama out of my
wardrobe (and then storing said wardrobe until summer), and gaining a bit of
revenge on my canine companion.
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| Buddy Coming up for Air and Assessing Escape Routes |
Buddy was long overdue for a
bath, something that was supposed to happen before I left. Since he added another scar to my face I
thought it would be appropriate to impose one of his least favorite events on
him. Getting a ninety pound resistant lab
into a bathtub wasn’t exactly a cake walk.
 |
| Clean But Definitely Unhappy About It |
Our aquatic wrestling match
eventually led to a cleaner dog but I then had to corral him long enough to dry
him off. It would have been comical
except he was so damned slippery and seemed to think it was some kind of cool
new game. My wife would have been
horrified by the wet dog careening around the house with me in toweled hot
pursuit. While Buddy continued the
drying process in his cage I tracked down all the different puddles which testified
to the epic chase.
The MEF granted my son an
additional day’s dispensation so he came home after work. We were shortly seated n Friday’s favorite
haunt – Zorba’s. The gorgeous waitress I
have worshipped chastely from afar immediately came over to check out my
son. She even introduced herself and I learned
her name for the first time. Apparently
my son is a lot more fascinating than I am, further evidence of my dotage thereby
confirmed.
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| Zorba's Typically Awesome Pizza |
After ensuring a photo was sent
to Panama Central
Asia isn’t as much fun as it sounds), and of course my absent
wife.
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| The Pizza was Almost as Good as the Conversation |
It was so good to have him
around to ease the transition from the full family time of Panama
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| Couch Potato Position #2 Ably Manned and Talking to His Mother In Panama |
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