Two Bits

He (or She or It, as the case may be) must be busy - really, really busy. After all, HSI has to keep track of everything HSI has done for the U.S., what HIS has done for all the other countries in the world, AND all of the presidential candidates’ world leaders’ very personal relationships with HSIhonor. Must make for a pretty complex spreadsheet: Shall we eavesdrop?

 

“Let’s see–

Monday. Give American gas and oil from sea to shining sea. They certainly deserve it.

 

Tuesday. Give the Saudi’s and Iraqi’s more oil than I gave the Americans. Oh, cripe–does that mean I love them more?? And what about the Tanzanians? Don’t I love them at all? Note to SELF: check into it.

 

Wednesday. Give George W. Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Barak Obama, Osama bin Ladin and Gordon Brown special relationships with ME. I guess that I’m getting absent minded. Don’t remember doing it, but they say that I did, and they are honorable men and women, all, so I must have done. Got to get it in the spreadsheet, even if it means leaving Somali and Bangladeshi kids on their own another day. I’m not too worried, though. Those babies are pretty good at scavenging, and I have to get at the mortgage crisis. It’s been at the top of my ‘To Do’ list for a couple of months now.

 

Thursday. What the…Why are Americans still driving those gas-guzzling SUVs???? They should be carpooling, taking public transportation, and turning the heat waaaay down. I keep sending messages. If I didn’t know better, I’d be tempted to think that they make up the messages they want to hear. Why do any of these people need a God, anyway? They decide what I’ll say and then let ME know. And the French and the North Africans, the Germans and the Turks, the…how can it be Friday already? I’m still working on Tuesday.

 

Friday. Mortgage crisis, stock market, and those starving kids in Ethiopia. What about the women forced into prostitution all over the world? I keep hearing about all these terrible things. Can’t people see that I have a lot on MY plate? They can’t reasonably expect ME to pay attention to every little thing, can they? I have feathers and lilies of the field to deal with, too. ‘All God’s creatures great and small’, you know. That reminds ME: got to get cockroaches into the spreadsheet.

 

Saturday. Why do people expect ME to do things? Can’t they see the solutions to their problems? Could it be that people are just lazy and selfish? Expecting SOMEONE ELSE to do these things for them?? I have a lot of smiting hip and thigh to do, not to mention helping various individuals bomb pipelines, hijack ships, and drop bombs. Answering all these competing prayers takes time. Oh No – now it’s a conflagration in Australia! Even with Excel, it’s hard to keep track of everything. Some things are bound to slip through the cracks.

 

Sunday. I’ve got to take some time off. Nobody can work 24/7. Surely they can manage to work out a few of these issues by themselves without blaming their problems on the devil or asking ME for help every time something goes wrong.. Why do they have to bring ME into it at all? I didn’t get them into this mess. They created every one of their own successes and their own problems. They pray instead of work, beg rather than negotiate, and give thanks rather than take credit for their own measly successes and crimes. There are just too many gosh darn versions of ‘right’ out there. When does what’s good for ‘A’ trump what’s good for ‘B’?

 

I may have eternity, but mankind doesn’t have all day.”

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I’m driving a dark-green, stick-shift three-quarter ton Ford pickup with a cracked windshield and 96,000 and change on the odometer. I’m not sure that I am up to the honor. In fact, I’m not sure I’m up to the running board (or where the running board would be, if there were a running board). The reason it’s parked in my space is that it seems that my real car ran off to Montana, and, like many runaways, nearly came to a bad end. My understanding is that it was covered by three feet of snow, and you know how those fairy tales end.

 

I drive carefully. For one thing, this pickup doesn’t have any pick up. When I stop at a light, the whole thing shakes. I pop it into first, and it growls and sputters into the intersection. Bikes pass us. Joggers pass us.

 

But I’m ambitious, and I have a  plan… I’m going hunting – moose and elk, I think–and DoFlo’s truck is the perfect vehicle. My understanding is that it will make me one of THE PEOPLE. Maybe I can run for vice president.

 

I haven’t figured out all the details, but I know that I’m not much good with a bow, so I hope I can borrow a friend’s 30-06. Think I’ll do my hunting from the truck. So what if it’s not sporting? I’m not interested in sporting, I’m interested in eating (and politics). Maybe I can rig up some kind of swivel-mount on the hood for the rifle, and I guess it would be a good idea to put a winch on the back to make retrieval easier. Probably better load the bed with a couple of sandbags or a grizzly for ballast, too. With any luck the bear will eat the moose–he’s just for show, anyway–and I won’t have to try to find a way to make moose steaks palatable. (I’ll keep any stray elk I happen to pick up, though).

 

This is an ambitious program, so I’d better get on it if I expect to get my moose AND get any campaigning done in the next two months. I hope that all of you will vote for me. I’ve got a truck! I know how to hunt! I’ve got what it takes!

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I can’t go folk dancing Friday because we are vetting Flora’s new boyfriend. If he survives, we are vetting him Saturday, too. (That will be after his first rock-climbing adventure.) This relationship is looking serious, and we are taking full advantage of his being here to check him out. My responsibility involves food. Waples eat - they eat a lot. So I am approaching this momentous task with all the gravitas it deserves. The first item on my agenda is establishing the menu, and to give you an idea of what I’m going through I’d like to provide an actual conversation–verbatim. As the curtain rises, the conversation between mother and daughter has been in progress for a couple of days. There they are, sitting in the morning room drinking tea, a fire buring merrily in the grate. Oh, no, wait-that has been over for 200 hundred years. They are each hunched over a laptop IMing each other:

Jeanne:

Does he eat sausage? White beans? Pumpkin soup?

Flora:

 Yes, no, and no

Jeanne:

Does he eat chili?

Flora:

We already have our meals planed: stroganoff and the one I can’t spell.

Jeanne:

Maybe, maybe not -  anyway, what’s this ‘we’, missy??? I might want to do something on Saturday.

Flora:

….and that “something” is going to be cooking dinner for your daughter and potential son-in-law!

Jeanne:

Yes. Maybe ’something else’, too. Aren’t you the proponent of multitasking???

Flora:

Not when it is the person in charge of my food!

Jeanne:

We’re getting off topic here. What about chili (and biscuits and gingerbread)?

Flora:

That sounds good, but what about stroganoff and the fried stuff?

Jeanne:

I’m speaking hypothetically here. ‘Chili might mean ‘beef stroganoff’, or it might mean ‘cheerios’.

Flora:

LOL! Pause Really? Longer pause Wow…Much longer pause.

Jeanne (caving):

Bagna caulda is on for Friday.

Flora:

Okay… Yes ma’am! Friday it is. Gotta go to hospital now - talk later?

Jeanne:

Great. I’ll be slaving away in preparation.

Flora:

I should hope so!

 

Why am I expending so much effort on this? Because it is my first midterm in pre-Mother-in-Law. I can tell that this one is important.  It isn’t because she cooks for him in spite of her hospital work-load. It isn’t because she lets him spend money on her. And it certainly isn’t because she is bringing him home this weekend. No, it’s because she is taking him rock climbing. You may well wonder when climbing became a test of true love. All I can say is that we have an unusually family.

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