A Day Off

When's the last time you had a day off, you know-- those special moments when people are drinking champagne in front of water falls and women are kayaking down some river while their man stands on the shore cheering them on?

Oh, yes, I know you have two days off every weekend from your job.  Those are the day's off when you catch up a week's worth of dirty dishes, sort and launder five to ten loads of dirty clothes, and take care of dirty hair, nails and underarms.

While those chores are sloshing or soaking, you sit down at the desk and write Aunt Martha, call Mom, pay the cable television bill, and open the mound of mail that accumulated over the week to your houseguests, occupant, you may have won, and to whom it may concern.

On this particular Saturday, Janella had to go to the lawyer's office.  Aunt Martha's will was being read and Janella had been name a beneficiary.  Maybe all those years of writing to her were finally paying off.

While she was gone her husband, Cardiff, settled into his big easy chair to watch a few sports.

Meanwhile back at my house, the company started pouring in.  First Nancy with her three curly blonde toddlers, second Mary with her eight-year old, and finally Suzanne with her six-year old.  I adore the girls, but they couldn't have come at a worse time.  I was showing the house to two prospective buyers and the bedlam was not conducive to a sale, so they left.

I mean the buyers left.  I was left with five little girls to amuse while their Mommies did some volunteer service.  I decided to take them for a walk around our neighborhood.  My plan was three-pronged.  If I kept them outside, my house was safe from ravage.  While we hiked around the hilly block, their energetic bones might tire out.  Lastly, the girls might actually have a good time.

Our home is situated on a picturesque hill overlooking Fairbanks.  Each road ends in a cul de sac, French for "you're lost now, buddy." A short path through the woods brings you to the next subdivision with it's collection of wavy streets that went nowhere.

My plan was simple:  walk around the block.

As we cut through the yard of Janella's house, the three toddlers decided they were tired and sat down on the bottom step of the porch.  Cardiff comes to the door to see what all the commotion is about.

"You don't mind if we sit here and rest on your steps, do you?"  I'd guess it was the desperation in my eyes that convinced him to say yes as he glanced back at his game on television.

The girls sat down on the steps, bleacher style, except that the toddlers thought this was a game, and kept upstaging each other until they got to the top.  Then in they went.  The little cuties had never been denied entrance in their whole life, and they weren't starting now.

Blushing red with embarrassment, I chase them up the stairs, but my uh forty-something-year-old lungs couldn't keep up with their two, three, and four-year-old ones.  By the time I reached the door, two girls were sitting in front of the television as if Cardiff and they were long lost buddies.

Along the way toddler number one had shed her wet diaper and in solidarity, toddler number two had followed suit.  I collected the diapers, wrapped the wet one inside the dry one and stuffed them deeply into the kitchen trash.

I informed Cardiff, who was standing by the kitchen sink, "I'd empty this trash as soon as possible as these 'things' can get pretty smelly in a day or two.  I'd take them myself, but as you can see, I have my hands full already."

We were lost.  I hate to admit that.  I've lived in this neighborhood for over twenty years and I can't walk around the block without getting lost.  Of course, my tracking talents have never rivaled Lewis and Clark, and it didn't help that the surveyors were tracking a moose when they laid out these streets.

I could see that if I went west I was leaving the heavily populated area in which I lived.  If I went north, I didn't recognize a thing.  If I went south, I'd have to go back through Janella's yard (heaven forbid).  If I went east, I knew or I thought I knew my house was in that direction.  The only problem is that you couldn't walk east.

If I was going to go east, I had to go north, south, or west first until I found a street going east.  All the while I had to keep walking and singing so the girls didn't know how panicked I was.

My salvation came from "Mommy," the three toddlers cried in unison, as we saw Suzanne coming towards us.  She loaned me the map she was using for canvassing the neighborhood, and we trekked our way home, west, north and then east.

When Nancy and Suzanne knocked at Cardiff's house, Janella came to the door.

"Hi," began Nancy, "I hate to interrupt what is probably a very busy Saturday of chores, but we are..."

"Oh, no, not at all," says Janella, "I don't know what got into him, but while I was out my husband cleaned the kitchen, emptied the trash, and straightened the family room."

Now that I think of it, I do remember that Cardiff was washing the dishes as I was stuffing those smelly diapers into the trash.