Loser
By Bob Stevens, The Muddled Male
Fall is a tough time of year
for your friend, the Muddled Male. Don’t
get me wrong. It is breathtaking to
drive down Logan Canyon in the fall when the evergreens stand as dark green
backdrops for leaves of pink, gold, red, yellow, and brilliant orange that
burst forth from the seasonal trees that have begun their annual slide into
winter. And who can complain about
gorgeous sunny days followed by nights cool enough to turn my infestation of
box elder bugs into a fossilized zoo of barely moving creatures just waiting
for my shop vacuum to inhale them into its darkened tomb of similarly expired insects. Okay, I confess. It is Ann, my wife, who brings frustration
into the fall of my life.
Ann, you see, is what my dad would
call a fuss-budget. Each fall, in spite
of the pending storms of wind and dust and rain that are the harbingers of
winter, Ann, like a lemming to the sea, marches to a drum that only she can
hear; and we wash windows. Now I don’t
mean just a few windows given a once over wipe down. There are thirty-eight, including sliding
windows, fixed windows, sliding glass doors, decorative doors, and storm doors. Window cleaning to Ann doesn’t mean just
cleaning the window panes. It also includes
removing each sliding window, then removing the rail in the bottom channel of
the frame so that any bugs or stains that might have snuck in on the coattails
of melting snow during the spring can be scrubbed away. Next we scrub down the frames inside and out,
the channels where the windows nest, the glass inside and out, and the sills. All of that is followed by reassembly while
making certain, of course, that I hadn’t
disturbed the curtains.
The friction in our loving
relationship comes from a difference in style.
I am one of those window washers whose method of cleaning is more of a “squirt, swish, swish, zip” and I’m ready
to go to town for an order of French fries and then a nap. Ann, on the other hand, is more of a “squirt, rub, rub, rub, inspect, rub, rub,
inspect, rub inspect squirt, rub, rub, rub, rub, rub” kind of window
cleaner. Then she insists on going back
to check the window we just finished to make certain that I hadn’t left any
fingerprints during reassembly. This
went on for two long days before I could lay my poor head down for a nap.
I might have survived all that
except that a few days prior, our friend Kathy, who just happens to hold the
land speed record for a car driven through Logan Canyon, called and woke me
from a sound sleep just to ask if I had forgotten that my assignment that day
was to clean the Church restrooms. And
did I realize that I was to have started at 8:00 AM and it was now 8:30 AM? She didn’t say, but I could tell from the
giggle that the word would spread immediately around town that the Muddled Male,
as one might expect because he is a man, had failed an assignment. On top of that Ann, my wife, punished me by
refusing to let me buy a $5 bag of delectable waffle fries, but she paid
$3.49/pound for sprig of broccoli.
P.S.
Ann said that I have exaggerated so much that the chocolate chunk
cookies she just made to thank me for helping with the windows are now going to
be given away to a more truthful person.
It is true, I may have exaggerated a LITTLE. But losing a whole batch of chocolate chunk
cookies really makes me a loser.
No comments:
Post a Comment