“This Thing is So Sturdy, You Could Do Gymnastics From It” – Tom

My brother-in-law Tom is a handy guy. We constantly maintain a list of “Honey Do’s” for him for whenever he comes down to visit. We weren’t sure at the time why Holly married him, but he quickly showed his usefulness, especially after Dad got sick.

This past weekend, Holly and Tom came down to visit and, unfortunately for Tom, do a bunch of things around the ol’place. Tom fixed the downspout on the front porch that had fallen off during a wind storm a couple of weeks ago; he fixed and re-hung the bird feeder; he replaced light bulbs in the bathroom; he (sort of) fixed the grandfather clock in my bedroom – I say sort of because it’ll only run for 10 minutes… he’s going to mail me the instruction book; he shored up the front flower beds so the mulch doesn’t overflow onto the sidewalk. He’s just a handy dude. Now Holly, Mom and I weren’t just sitting on the veranda sipping mint juleps, though, we were mowing and weed-eating the lawn, shoveling tree crumbs, hauling top soil and planting grass seed. We ALL earned that dinner at the Feed Mill on Saturday night!

However, turns out that there is someone (something ?) that is handier than Tom. I’ll call him Rocky. Yesterday afternoon, mom calls me at work to tell me that Winifred had been acting really odd – sitting up on the top tier of her kitty tower staring out the window. So mom got up to investigate and saw Rocky, a big ol’raccoon, working his way into the birdfeeder. Let me interject here that this birdfeeder is one that Tom got us at Lowe’s last summer/fall, and it’s supposed to be non-bird-proof. That is, when a squirrel, or other non-bird, gets on it, the critter’s weight is supposed to make this metal thing drop and prevent it from getting any of the munchies. We’ve had issues with this birdfeeder – I don’t know if it is non-bird related, but it’s spent more time in our laundry room than it has spent hanging this past winter. So Winifred and the birds were pleased to see it back up this weekend. Tom was their hero.

But Rocky set his masked gaze on those munchies. Well, mom tried her best. She nabbed a broom and ran Rocky off yesterday afternoon. (Although she later said that she shouldn’t have bothered and just nabbed the camera for a picture!) But then she had a meeting to go to. So I came home. I watered the grass seed, checking and the bird feeder was hanging quite securely in Winifred’s window. Sunset came and my farm begged for my attention, so that was the last I thought about the bird feeder.

Until this morning... As I awoke and stumbled past the window to my bathroom to attempt to wash the funk out of my eyes in a half-hearted attempt to humanize myself, all seemed normal. I saw young Mr. Gizmo lolling orgasmicly in the sunshine on Winifred’s tower, but something was out of whack. I peered closer to the window, trying to see without letting too much of that eyeball-searing sunlight into my eyes. The bird feeder was down. I had to laugh. In my mind’s eye, I envision a future with Tom continuing to come down and working, Elmer Fudd-like, to raccoon-proof the bird-feeder. Or even better, like in one of my favorite Married with Children episodes “Wabbit Season” from 1990, when Al is ordered by the doctor to take up a relaxing hobby, so he plants a vegetable garden (singing to the theme from Bonanza as follows… “dum da da dum da da dum dum .. Vegetable Garden! Dum da da dum da da dum dum dum Corn!!”), but a bunny wabbit, er.. rabbit starts eating Al’s veggies, it becomes a war of wills: Bundy vs. Bunny, and the episode ends with Al blowing the garden, and himself, up with dynamite, and the bunny hopping around the wreckage.

Now, Where Was I?

It’s happened. I think I’ve officially hit that age where forgetfulness is setting in. When I turned the Big 4-0 last year, I thought it was just the warranty on the physical parts that had expired, but it turns out my hard drive is going, too. Either that or I have too much stress in my life at the moment. I’ve been having problems with the English language or at least remembering words. I’ll be talking to someone and my mind will completely reboot and I have no clue what I was talking about. Or I’ll be talking to someone and try to remember a person’s name and it’s totally blank.

Not that it’s ever easy for me – especially in times of high stress, people’s names have always been the first thing to go. I liken the phenomenon to an episode of one of my favorite TV shows, Married … With Children. In this particular episode, Bud was tutoring dullard Kelly so she could pass her finals, so she could graduate high school. Unlike one of my other favorite episodes, where Bud was tutoring her in history by teaching her TV show theme songs (Thomas Jefferson => theme to “The Jeffersons”), he was taking this task seriously and she was actually learning the stuff. But they were finding out that as she learned more advanced information, the other info in her brain was dribbling out to the point where when the doorbell rang she had no clue what it was.

Now, my VERY favorite episode (“Hot Off the Grill” Season 4, Episode 1) is the one where Peg accidentally knocks over Al’s grill and loses all the ashes from previous grillings (which is the secret to his famous –if only in his mind- Bundy Burgers) and she sends the kids around the neighborhood to steal ashes from the people’s homes. And the dippy kids come back with the ashes of Marcy’s dead aunt Toonie… Wait, what was my point? Oh, yeah, so in times of stress, people’s names tend to be the first tidbit of info to dribble out of my brain. And although things are super busy at work, and there is still probably some residual stress from Dad’s death and being there for Mom, I don’t feel overly stressed, so I wouldn’t think that’s what’s going on.

But, see..Sunday morning, I woke up about 7:30 (Sophie let me sleep in, I suppose) and watched Vh-1’s weekend Top 20 Countdown while working on my farm. I was playing hooky from Sunday School class, but church started at 10:45, so I had plenty of time. About 9:30, I left my place, went to Walgreens, bought some shampoo and a monster bag of Tootsie Rolls and a bat Halloweenie Beanie from Ty. Then I hit a McD’s for a couple of Sausage Burritos (a big thank you to Haley for THAT addiction) – BTW, they got my order wrong and gave me a Sausage Egg McMuffin, but I ate it anyway – and then I drove to church. I got to the parking lot about 10am, but having plenty of time, I sat in the parking lot in the car for about 15 minutes reading my book. But then nature called, so I decided I could easily go on in, go, and then stake out a prime pew and read until Sunday School was over. Let me repeat that I KNEW church starts at 10:45… I firmly believed this, but when I walked in, I noticed that my Sunday School classroom was empty. Then I realized that I heard Pastor Dave’s voice on the sound system. I saw one of the deacons in the entryway and I asked him, “exactly when does church start?” He told me that it started at 10am. Whoops!

The thing is, this is not the first time this has happened. A couple of months ago, I arrived for Sunday School, and I figured I’d be late (as is my usual modus operandi) but when I plopped down in my seat, I received a look from my mother and she whispered that I was 45 minutes late! Whoops!

But the problem is that for at least 35 of my 41 years, Sunday School started at 9:30 and church started at 10:45. And then they go and change things on me? I’m not a big fan of change, unless it has pictures of presidents on it, but I can usually deal. So is it age, stress, or something else?

Wait.. now what was I talking about? hmmm...