I’m determined to finish the last day long project of the summer. It one I’ve been planning to do for three years. Until its done I can’t start campaigning with a free mind. Its the darned picket fence at my daughter’s house.
I spent about 11 hours earlier this summer priming it. It has a garden leaning up against much of it that has to be awkwardly moved out of the way of the paint. It was so neglected its 40 foot length soaked up two full gallons of primer. It will probably take almost as much paint.
So, I set out this morning to read the Trib and go to pick up a second gallon of paint and start early today. I opened up a small container of yogurt and pulled out an older box of cereal that had been ignored for a couple of weeks after it was first opened. I poured in some cereal and mixed the yogurt with the cereal. I poured a little more in and out of the cereal floated the husk of a cereal eating larva. I gamely poured a little more cereal out and one of the fuzzy little live critters scurried to crawl back into the cereal box.
I thought about eating the yogurt which quite possibly had some live bugs in it but decided that I didn’t need the protein that badly. I just laughed at myself and the box of cereal that hadn’t been sealed carefully as I poured it all down the disposer. I’m not sure the laugh was an entirely happy laugh.
That’s not a good sign because yesterday ended badly too. As I was painting the shed next to the fence my cell phone which was tuned to National Public Radio fell off a ledge and into the can of latex paint. There’s more, of course, the phone after a washing is currently sitting in a bag of rice to pull out any of the excess moisture from its latex adventure and subsequent washing.
I’ve got a dozen stories from the last three days of the Tribune to comment on and a couple weeks research on changes in school finance law. I’m just not up to it. That picket fence is calling me and I’m so very annoyed. The only thing that could take my mind off the image of my black phone being swallowed in a sea of white paint was the new Netflix series “Orange is the New Black.” Its a great series I can’t recommend to folks of my age or the least bit puritanical. For crying out loud one female prison inmate urinated on the floor near another inmate she was mad at. There! If you watch it on my recommendation consider yourself warned.
As I told my daughter’s friend I could never watch this program with her. Its got waaaay too much lesbian stuff in it (Its set in a woman’s prison) for me to watch it in the same room as my daughter. The same thing happened with my son a few years ago when my wife and I took him too see Team America. That was a hilarious film made with puppets on strings. It was the very long scene of naked American warriors puppets having energetic sex that was just too much with my son in the same theater.
My daughter’s friend understood. “Parents never have sex,” he commented.
Which reminded me of one of my favorite SNL skis from the series first Era. Lorraine Newman, Jane Curtain and Gilda Rattner were all dressed in nightgowns being teenage girls at a slumber party. When the subject of S E X came up one of the girls whispered into the other’s ear to explain how it works. “My parents did that twice?” said the listener.
Mine did it three times.
