The "Flower Bed"

The day started pretty much the same as the previous 2 had with Mr Coffee brewing a slightly less than desired, but tolerable, pot of joe and mom and I sharing a light breakfast. This morning it was oatmeal and it really hit the spot.

After breakfast, mom expressed her desire to weed the "flower beds" in the front of the house. I used quotes around flower beds because there are few, if any flowers in them. Mom likes odd flowers and plants that at best are wild flowers, at worst are weeds. While I love my mother, she has no desire to work on her flower beds until the end of the year. All summer long they are full of weeds, wild grasses and other undesirable growths. I told her that she really needs to put down weed blocking cloth and mulch, and even showed her what a flower bed looked like when done properly. She just told me that it took too much work to keep up and most likely would not do it. I find this amusing because that is the same thing I said when my mom and dad tried to get me to pick up the apples that fell from our tree every day. The tables have finally turned.

After several hours of doing this, we stopped, cleaned up some, and ate lunch. Since there were very few leftovers, I decided to grab a couple of corn dogs out of the freezer (the only frozen food I ate the entire trip!), drink a grape soda (not diet...bummer), and eat a yogurt. I have a habit of taking my vitamins at lunch time and was very good about doing it every day but once. Today I augmented my vitamins with a couple of Aleve to help counteract the stress I put on my back weeding the beds.

After lunch I grabbed a shower and the steam from my "hotter than most people like it" shower set off the smoke detector in the hall, causing Rascal, my moms Shih Tzu, to howl in pain. She has had that smoke detector for years and it will go off if you fart near it. My mom thinks that being overly sensitive is a good thing. I personally do not, but "honor thy mother and father".

Since I had spent all of Sunday and Monday (and most of Tuesday) with mom, I decided to call Holmes and Heath to see what they were up to. Neither was home, so I left messages for both.

Soon it was time to pick up Sparky so mom and I walked down to the elementary school and waited on him to be released. Walking with mom was about the extent of my exercise the entire trip.

Holmes called me back and we agreed to meet Thursday for dinner. I told him he could make the arrangements and he could call me later to confirm. Heath called about an hour later and apologized for not calling me sooner. I told him not to worry about it that I was pretty busy the past few days. We agreed to do something on Wednesday.

Mom had not cooked anything so we just had hotdogs. WV hotdogs hit the spot with a soda (known as 'pop' in WV) and some chips. Too bad we did not have any chips!

After dinner I went over to Bobby and Linda's house. Normally when I come in, their home is a buzz of activity and I am there many nights (usually late) talking. I got the feeling they were not interested in staying up too late so I left by 10 PM. Both my mom and my wife were shocked. I watched a little TV with mom and then hit the sack.