Back after a day off from the blog

Sorry about yesterday’s lapse. I was busy doing things and then busy enjoying not doing things.

The month of June began yesterday, so Maria and I decided to welcome it with a clean back porch.

Our screened back porch was one of the features that sold us on this house almost seven years ago. It affords an unobstructed view of the fenced dog zone and beyond to the woods that bound our little 1.23 acres on two sides.

If I can’t have a view of a lake or the ocean or mountains, a view of dense woods full of deer, coyotes, armadillos, raccoons, possums, turkeys, owls and other critters is a damn fine substitute.

Even though we live in mosquito country, one rarely makes it onto the porch, so we can sit at our glass-top table sipping iced tea or whatever and enjoy the Arkansas outdoors unmolested.

We started by collecting all of the sticks and tree branches the dogs dragged onto the porch and pitching them onto the fire pit. Then, after collecting the dog toys, we swept the porch floor and I ShopVaced the creases and crannies.

Maria went off to clean our 2½ bathrooms while I fired up the pressure washer and blasted a year’s worth of accumulated pollen, dust and dirt from the siding and screens before turning my attention to the porch furniture.

The trick now is to stay ahead of the dogs and their penchant for littering the porch with sticks and toys and tumbleweeds of dog fur.

I noticed later than Dora continues to use the chairs to access the table top, where she naps and surveys her domain.

Now that we’re eating on that table, I guess we’ll have to pull the chairs out far enough that she won’t be able to take her usual route to the table top.

I got in a little motorcycle ride in the afternoon, cruising down to Kroger to restock my supply of Starbucks Italian Roast coffee and Campbell’s tomato juice.

On the way down to Kroger, I found myself remembering how my high school band director Dick Laughlin would occasionally sit in as organist at the First Presbyterian Church of Delphi. It was customary for the organist to play some kind of hymn or churchy sounding background music while the collection plates were passed around and I remember seeing him grinning as he played a well disguised version of the Kroger jingle, “Let’s go Krogering, Krogering, Krogering…”

I capped the evening by sniping a set of the Catholic Encyclopedia on Ebay for my father-in-law. I waited until the last 30 seconds of the auction and stuck like the sword of St. Michael, getting the books for the minimum bid.

Maria had today off because she wasn’t needed to substitute teach, so she’s busy reverse engineering some scrubs to wear in her new job as office manager for a Jonesboro dentist. She starts on Wednesday and the prospect of a steady paycheck has us both sleeping better and being more relaxed and optimistic.