As I sit here looking out onto the Ponderosa pines and reviewing the week, I can honestly say I didn’t do one damn thing for the business!  Nothing sums it up better than that handy phrase which incorporates a bad four-letter word, followed by the word “all.”  That is precisely how much I did.

However, I was busy working like a lumberjack around this house and yard.  I went outside on the weekend and raked mounds of pine needles.  I washed some of the windows, and then I decided to paint the kitchen ceiling.  I figured after 21 years it was probably time.

You can blindfold me and let me loose in Winners or Home Sense and I can find my way around effortlessly.  But being in Rona looking for paint supplies is another world for me.  I wisely went early, so I was able to find a person to  help me.  From what I was saying, and from what they were saying, I could see this was going to be a challenging day.

After two days, the kitchen ceiling was painted.  My neck and shoulders will likely never work properly again, but the job is done.  The ceiling is textured, so you have to push like a maniac on the roller to fill in all the spaces.  Luckily I’m a fitness proponent or would’ve likely died halfway through.

You’ll notice I’m not mentioning Nicky as any kind of assistant here.  God no, he was busy playing ball hockey with his pals out in the yard.  but come on, let’s try to be positive here.  He did say what a lovely job I had done, so that’s something.

His forte is being an excellent host in his lair, the basement.  After each weekend I pick up the dripping bags of beer cans and bottles and attempt to make them acceptable for returning to the licquor store.  It’s beneath the kids to do so, and I really enjoy having the cash because to me it’s free money.

The other day I took in a haggard-looking assortment, and said to the nice clerk, “I’m really sorry about this can, it appears as though someone has bitten into it, doesn’t it?”  The poor clerk just looked at my blankly, and I shrugged saying, “My 21-year-old son and his friends….”

The clerk asked if my son still lived at home, and I said he did as he’s attending school.  He said he had lived at home while going to school, and so we chatted about how he got into the job at the licquor store.  Being interested in finding ways to entice Nicky to get a job and move, I asked how one applies.

I came home and told Nicky about how to apply at the licquor store, and he said he would like that kind of work.  I mean, really, who wouldn’t want to work in a licquor store?  But then he got out the frying pan and a pound of bacon and prepared himself a snack.  Soon after, the boys arrived and they were out shooting a ball into a net, any thoughts of job applications far away.