Curmudgeon takes stock at the end of a very long week

Luann comic, by Greg Evans, obtained from Yahoo! Comics.

If you saw last Saturday's post, you know why this comic struck home with me.

I'm still angry about what happened. How could I have let myself deteriorate to such an extent?

Mind you, I'm not sufficiently motivated yet to do anything about my evident physical decline -- I'm still in the hand-wringing stage -- and, besides, things are too hectic at home for me to take on some sort of conditioning venture. And what would I do anyway? The Chicago Marathon takes place this weekend and thousands of people, many of them older than me, are going to run 26.2 miles. I can't run 26.2 feet.

The good news is that I can bend my legs again without any pain. It only took several days.

Younger Daughter has already called this morning. Whatever is lurking in the fireplace chimney, just above the (thankfully) closed flue, is active again this morning -- not quite dead yet, apparently. Long Suffering Spouse heard it first. It's hard to describe my wife as she hears something alive and amiss: She gets entirely rigid, achingly alert, and waves of tension, maybe like sonar waves, emanate from the vicinity of her head and shoulders. But she was soon satisfied that, whatever it is, it isn't coming in the house anytime soon. Thus, we were able to leave the house and go to work today.

Younger Daughter was not mollified in the least when I related this to her. Long Suffering Spouse predicted how she'd be. "This is unacceptable," she told me. "Call someone to get that thing out of the chimney -- and be here when they get here," she demanded. I suggested she turn on the TV instead so she couldn't hear it. "I had the TV on," she said.

Of course, Younger Daughter's frayed nerves never had a chance to stop twanging: The Beast in the Chimney arrived Wednesday morning. Yesterday afternoon a giant wasp got into the house. (These things happen as we transition from Summer to Fall.) She used about 18 gallons of wasp spray in an effort to dispatch the creature -- she must have missed badly for some time -- and then couldn't find the wasp's carcass. "This is unacceptable," she told me yesterday afternoon. I suggested that, if the dead wasp had fallen to the floor, her baby would find it for her. Just keep an eye on the kid, I said.

Younger Daughter didn't like that one little bit.

Youngest Son is expected home sometime today. He has a week-long Fall break; he has graciously agreed to spend at least parts of three days of that with us. He has to go back to school early next week because he has to begin winterizing the baseball field. It's been gorgeous in the greater Chicago area the last couple of weeks -- but the one certainty about Midwest weather is that, now we're in October, Winter may begin at any moment. There's no transition required.

Long Suffering Spouse had a brutal week at school. She had an evaluation scheduled for yesterday and her principal is using a new method this year requiring the kind of detailed lesson plan that education majors don't have to write in their most paper-intense class. She's been up late every night this week stressing about the evaluation -- and trying to keep up with everything else she has to do. And then she had to schedule a conference with a problem student as well; that was supposed to take place at the end of the day yesterday.

The parent meeting did take place -- but the evaluation didn't. The principal had gotten behind. When Long Suffering Spouse found her later in the afternoon (giving her the lesson-plan-on-steroids) the principal was surprised. "Why didn't you send someone to get me?" she asked. "I figured you must have had someone in your office or that something else had come up," my wife said. Leafing through the massive lesson plan, the principal said, "Well, thank you for being so considerate." She promised to drop by some other time, assuring my wife that she needn't do another of these lesson plans.

My wife is not happy. "She's going to drop in on me unannounced and I'm going to look totally unprepared." I tried to reassure her -- she's always prepared -- but she wasn't buying.

We'll see how things go today. Fortunately, she has Monday off. Courts are closed Monday, too.

And I actually had some legal work to do this week. I'd tell you about some of that, too, except I still have legal work to do and the morning is getting away from me. Again.