Rocket to Russia

Greeted by gray skies and warm temps, I was up around 730am. Before checking in on work I completed my morning calisthenics and started a pot of coffee. I took Frankie outside, too. But after relieving herself, she promptly scooted back into her pen. With the gray skies, I spent the early morning hours before my run updating my sorely neglected blog. I had all of the past ten days drafted but unedited and unpublished. I wasn’t sure of Mindy’s intentions as she was still asleep, but she talked about going to yoga. Kenny & I hinted about golf but it received a chilly reception from the wives the night before. Regardless, because I was on-call, it was my first priority. Somewhere around 930-10am the gray skies drifted away leaving nothing but blue skies overhead. Instantly it was like a summer sauna. Mindy got up around 1030am. Bella was already awake but Jacob still sleeping. I dressed and left for a run a few minutes later. My run was a steamy one, but also a great work out. It’s been a while since I’ve run in hot, steamy sunshine. After my run I took care of a few yard chores like watering the flower pots and baskets out back. Once I headed back inside I told Mindy that I was going after the boat to get it water ready. I asked Jacob if he wanted to join me, although I knew he had only an hour before his daddy would be there to get him. Jacob decided not to join me. I was OK with that. I left to fetch the boat heading up Old Dublin Rd. On my way up, I decided to stop by Tom Clarks’ place. Hadn’t seen it in a while. Unfortunately, Tom wasn’t home. Must’ve been working OT. I walked around the house to check out his crafty work: new fence, front porch, and new sod out back. Nice work Tom! At boat storage, I found my boat packed in pretty tight. I had to use the hand pull-tow to get it out in the open where I could more readily hitch it up. No worries. Back at home, I removed the boat cover then headed inside. Jimaken pulled up about the same time to get the kids. I spent the next hour or two getting the boat water ready. That entailed attaching the battery, checking oil, belts, and filters. All good. I attached the motor muffs and hose, turned on the water, and then fired it up. No problems! I didn’t bother giving it a bath. We got it out only on time all of last year, and it was still pretty clean. It was after 3pm when I finished up. I saw neighbor Carl out walking around his yard so I walked over to chat. He’s recovering from kidney removal surgery. Said to be doing great. Showed both Mindy & I his 20+ staples. Nice! We talked for about an hour, or so it seemed. Mindy and Frankie eventually peeled off back home. Before heading inside for shower I took Frankie out back. She ran over to see Woody and Kenny. While there, I saw that neighbors Mike & Teri were home from their week long Disney/Florida vacation. We chatted for a few. I eventually headed in for a shower. Between my earlier run and the work on the boat, I stunk to high heaven! It felt good to get a shower. Saturday night was Kenny’s official 35th birthday party. We headed down around 5pm best guess. I took four good beers along but didn’t drink anything but ice water for the next few hours. I watched the 3rd round of the US Open from the comfort of Chrissy & Kenny’s leather sofa. I eventually dosed off much to Mindy’s dismay. Between on-call and working in the sun all day, I was tired, not to mention being hypnotized by the TV. Around 7-730pm I got a call from work. I had to temporarily head home and ended up spending the next 2 hours working on the issue at hand. I wasn’t happy about being dragged into weeds but that’s my job sometimes. Somewhere near 10pm it seemed we had the issue under control. I headed back down to the neighbors and cracked open a beer. It wasn’t too much longer before Chrissy started TP’ing our back yard landscaping and deck. There was no stopping her. She even went in our house to get more TP to do her handy work. I gave her an earful, but it fell largely on deaf ears. I was one of the few not sporting a buzz. Mindy didn’t care. She was feeling no pain! I eventually let it go after Kenny promised he’d send her over in the morning to clean it all up. She TP’d the O’Connell’s front yard too. I talked Chrissy into bringing her Bose iDock out on the deck so we could jam/dance. By then I had a few beers in me. We sang and danced for the next several hours. It got a little crazy. The neighbors, Alex and Tanya, one house to the east had just returned home from a two week vacation in the Ukraine. Alex had the gull to ask that we stop the noise. It must’ve been around midnight, best guess. Kenny pretty much told him no way. Alex went on to share that they had a long 7 hour flight and had jet lag. Mindy piped up that they should be able to sleep through just about anything then. A couple hours passed before Tanya came over asking pretty much the same thing. Having had about all I could take from both of them, I curtly advised her to go back home. I went on about living there on the island for 16 years and didn’t need a new neighbor telling us when to end our yard parties. I suggested that they move if they didn’t like it. I threw a few expletives in my delivery for emphasis. It’s not like we do this every weekend. But the few times we have, they always come over to complain. Sucks being them. Mindy headed home around 2am. I stayed for another hour. I stumbled home around 3am with Frankie, who was asleep in the puppy pen with both Woody and Camilla. I choked down three Advil before jumping into bed. I woke Mindy to share the Tanya story. I was still a little worked up about it.