Spring cleaning

Friday night I ran the third concession stand for that week, with only five more to go! It was for a league track meet and we stayed there until nine o'clock. I cook the dogs and burgers and let the freshman students run the inside, including making change for customers. I have another to run tomorrow night, and it's for a big league middle school track meet, so we're expecting quite a number in attendance. The first two I worked were for the spectators at the girls varsity and junior varsity soccer games, so there was not a lot of crowd. Friday, I just set my portable radio on the end of the grill and listened to the Royals win their home opener against the White Sox and turned and flipped and wrapped about five dozen or so burgers and probably twice that number of dogs. Good fun. We had a friend's son over to stay the night on Friday, as his parents were out of town. They were still awake when I arrived home.

Saturday we gathered ourselves and left a little before noon to take the son home and to go to Sweet Thing's parents' house for Sweet Thing's father's birthday. They had the little outdoor fireplace going and her mother had cooked up a big batch of good lasagna and salad and other stuff. It was good and the sun was out and I took a small nap in the afternoon out in their yard in the grass. It was enough for me to get a touch of sunburn on my face. the rest of me was covered. Saturday night, we got the kids in bed and I wasn't too terribly sleepy, so I stayed up to watch a production of A Midsummer Nights Dream, starring Kevin Cline and Michele Pfeifer, from the nineties or early two thousands. It was good and it gave me more of a perspective on the character I'll be playing in our community theater's rendition for early summer. I also watched Saturday Night Live, which these days I don't choose to watch fully often, due to its time. It had me laughing out loud with some of their skits. I used to think that was my ultimate dream, to be on SNL. Is that sad that I never pursued it? Is it too late?

Sunday, I slept in as best as I could, then fried bacon and scrambled eggs and made toast to go along with it. We all ate breakfast and gave the house a quick once over before we all headed outside. At first the plan was to dig up the garden dirt a bit, but before we did that we wanted to just rake away the windblown leaves from along the edge of the house and from along the fence.  Well, it turned out we couldn't very well stop there, but ended up raking the entire backyard and south half of the yard and burning most of the leaves in the ditch. While near the end of the burn, the Ottawa Fire Department visited me and reminded me to call and acquire a burn permit next time. They were friendly and didn't even tell me to stop. Sunday's temperature was cool; clouds covered the day and made things a bit moist, and the wind speed was quite low. I had filled our two watering cans to have on call for immediate use (which I didn't need) and we were on the south side of the house and within about fifty feet of a hundred feet of active garden hose, ready to go) I stayed right next to the fire as it burned and I felt I had used precaution.

 I also removed the good compost we'd made, and which had turned to near dirt, enough for five or six wheelbarrows full which we dumped on our garden plots. What leaves we had left which we did not burn for a couple of different reasons, we placed in the compost pile where we'd removed the good compost earlier. I made the compost location bigger. I had a partial sheet of cement board leftover from tiling the bathroom which I hung on the bottom of the side of my workshop where the compost pile was expanded. It's down low to protect the wood siding of the workshop from the rot that's encouraged in the compost pile. I also had a little two by six fence that I'd built earlier for a task I don't remember any longer, which I installed at the end of the sidewalk to make a little wall for the expanded compost pile. Lastly, I used the leaf blower to blow off the rest of the detritus from the sidewalk and patio. I hope it looks much better when I approach it today returning from home. We worked until after dark to get it done and the kids didn't get to bed until after nine, and it was a school night!

We have a birthday party to host this Saturday afternoon. Thing One is turning seven years old! It's hard to believe. He's decided he want to visit a place called Zonkers! It's an arcade type destination. It's been difficult for me to accept that my exceptionally bright and extraordinarily mature and intuitive child wants to do something as common as go to an arcade, like any lowly plebeian. I guess he's just completely normal and healthy after all. It's just me who wants my sons to be of the cut that would decide a museum or a theater performance would be more in store. They say time flies when you're having fun. Well, I must be having a blast, because time has already flown!

Blessings upon my house, all those I know and love, and my enemies, too!