...need more hours...

This morning, I got through making 48 pancakes, a dozen scrambled eggs and four pounds of bacon, pouring half a gallon of milk and two quarts of apple juice, refilling and heating almost a pint (!!) of maple syrup, and the general hysteria that follows a sleepover.

Our littlest camper had to go home just before midnight. The strangeness got to be too much, the darkness and the noises and the no-mommy and the no-daddy and eventually even though she was sleeping with Boo Bug with her sister just on the other side of the wall (with the big kids)…it was a no-go.

So the husband pulled on his gardening shoes and bundled her next door to sleep in her own bed.

Bright and early, there came an enthusiastic knocking on the door and she threw herself right back into the party like she’d never been gone. Oh hai, I can haz bacon?!

Then I went outside and discovered one of the potato plants had graciously decided to throw me a bone – or rather, a beautiful little purple flower. (Please envision a picture of said flower here. Cute little purple flower with a brilliant yellow center.) And I went, “Eeeeeeeee!” like it was a winning lottery ticket and made everybody come outside and look at it.

Pre-teens are so jaded these days. Although one of them had managed to play here all day yesterday without ever glancing in the backyard, and she was rather…let’s call it “impressed” even though I think it was actually more like “unaware that her friend’s parents were quite that crazy”…most of them just kind of went, “…yawn!...” and went back inside to watch Happy Feet.

Humph.

So I planted some carrots, and some onions and some lettuce. Weeded the corn patch a bit and then suspended all weeding because some of the corn is sprouting and looks too similar to the nasty thick-bladed grass that was the reason we killed off the original lawn lo these many moons ago.

Checked the spinach along the shady side fence (doing fine) and the green beans (ditto), the cilantro (perhaps a little too well) and the horseradish (boy, am I ever glad I put that into its own little cement-enclosed area – it really does try to take over the world, that stuff). The blueberries, the raspberries, the strawberries in their hangers, the peaches and the cherry trees, and my brave little apple tree.

Then I came back inside and started some new cups with new jalapeno, Serrano and bell peppers. Then I had a fit of silliness and started eight more cups of beefsteak tomatoes. I have no idea where I think I’m going to put them. Just a vague plan involving every spare container we own plus maybe some repurposed plastic totes with big holes in them; they aren’t any good as totes anymore, but I was thinking they could make perfectly good herb containers or something and a couple of them are deep enough that tomatoes might be fine in there. I don’t know, and with the investment being maybe ten cents for seeds, heck.

I’m willing to take a chance and see what happens.

Which is kind of the nifty thing about starting things from seed using whatever is lying around: The Great Tomato Disaster, with over 150 plants lost, set me back…seven bucks. And some time. Plus I think I owe a fair chunk of change to the Cuss Jar.

Then I pondered the other stuff I’d still like to get into the ground somewhere. More golden beets (but we need to get water out to that part of the Back Forty(yards)). Bok choy (nah, I want to use the front boxes for that because they don’t mind partial shade conditions and are so darned adorable while growing). More spinach (not in the mood). Re-planting the cucumbers that also got eaten (stupid earwigs) (and snails) (and cutworms).

And then I found myself groaning softly to myself because gah, earwigs and snails and cutworms, OH MY. And the impending aphid invasion.

It was around this point that I stood up and realized that I am old was done. The hip, the back, the attitude…all clearly said, “ARGH!!! YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!!”

With a follow up of, “I wanna take mah pills, sit in mah chair, and not budge unless the house catches on fire.”

Except that we were out of milk, and needed watermelon seeds.

So I went out to get those two little things and it turned into this two hour odyssey of do you have anything other than this fiddly seedless / heirloom / personal-sized melon? that got downright silly by the end.

The problem, of course, is that our Home Depot has diddly for seeds really, and the other reliable source of seeds is WalMart, and I would have to be suffering from a severe concussion that brought on complete short and long-term memory loss before I would voluntarily go to WalMart just for one package of seeds.

I need a far more compelling reason. My WalMart irks me. It’s just…I don’t know. The staff is surly, the aisles are weird (and got worse after their big recent remodel), the other customers are either brain-dead or intentionally trying to piss me off, the parking lot is like…Toddler 50 Meter Dash meets Indianapolis 500.

Anybody who isn’t just sort of weaving slowly and drunkenly in random circles is speeding, yo.

So I need to have an actual list of things I can’t get anywhere else before I’ll go to WalMart.

Which meant I went to Orchard Supply Hardware instead, because they have seeds. Only they only had these “specialty” watermelon seeds. I’m kind of looking for the hardy old-fashioned kind of watermelons, watermelons that aren’t going to require that I sing to them in Welsh or tuck their tender little fruits into individual mesh wrappers, or whose vines are going to faint dead away when (not if) the aphids get into town and attach themselves by the millions to their vines every day.

Also, I need them to be the standard green rind pink interior sort. You know, the kind children recognize as being watermelon? Yeah. I kind of don’t want to have to wrestle the Denizens to the ground and force-feed them any blue or orange or white “watermelon” flesh to prove it tastes like watermelon even though it isn’t pink.

Then I stopped at a defunct feed and seed store.

Then I stopped at one that is closed on Sundays. Awesome.

Then I gave up and headed toward home and almost forgot to stop for milk and had to make the Biggest U-Turn Ever (like, a two-mile long one) to get back to the store, passing another store on my way but did I have a $3-off coupon at that store? No I did not.

And then I got milk and the same kid ran over my foot twice and hi, not to criticize your parenting skills or anything but could we please not let the three year old push the cart any more times because I am two seconds from killing him and if he runs over my foot again I may just bellow “YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!!!” in his face and that might confuse him and stuff?

And then I came home and looked at my party-demolished Den and my kitchen that needed cleaning and my fridge that needed clearing out and I thought…well, let’s gloss over what I thought precisely and go with, uh, “Gee gosh golly, I think I’m going to take a little resty-pooh before I think about that any more, where a ‘little’ can be translated to mean ‘for the rest of my life, maybe.’”

This turned into quite a weekend, and as usual I’m a little kerflumped to realize that in seven hours the blasted alarm will be shattering what feels like the middle of the night to tell us that it’s time to get up and do it all again.

This working thing, man, it’s seriously cutting into my work day.

But it’s also seriously cutting into our cash flow issues, so even though I complain pretty steadily about it – I’ve got no actual complaints.

Except that it would be awesome if someone could arrange for the human body to need just half an hour sleep a night to be all refreshed and stuff, and then maybe slow the earth down a bit so we get 38 hour days.

Yeah.

That would be awesome.

So if someone could get on that, that would be...you know...awesome.

Thanks in advance.