Saturday Morning

In my humdrum and banal life, Saturday morning was a bit of an adventure, but permit me to segue to the weather, for it is related, before I describe my adventures.

By golly, it has been hot here, and there's no relief in sight. Temperatures remain in the 85-95 range along with high humidity. It may go down into the low 80s next Sunday, which is hot enough, but every day between now and then will be torrid. It has also been droughtish, and we find ourselves doing a bit of watering every day. We really need rain.

Now for the adventures; for whatever reason I'll begin with the second event.

Living in a townhouse, our backyards require access through other people's' properties. The way that it is done in our little section is to double-fence. There is one fence between our properties and the street and another to keep our yards private. But the access strip between the two fences belongs to the property owners, and it is up to us to maintain.  Being out of sight and usually, therefore, out of mind, our caretaking efforts tend to become a little lax by times. When I say a little lax, what I really means is that it can become quite jungle-like back there.

With it being so hot, I determined to get back there to do some mowing and weed whacking early in the day before the heat became too oppressive. During the whacking of the weeds, I got quite a whacking myself as my weed trimmer lifted and tossed some lilac branches that I had trimmed both last autumn and this spring.

Said branches whacked my bare legs pretty good below my shorts, and when I came back into the house blood was dripping down my leg from more than one cut.

Mind you, this was after my earlier experience of running down the street in my pjs carrying a bag of garbage in one hand and a bag of recycling in the other.

You see, our garbage pickup normally takes place on Wednesday, but that was Canada Day, so it was rescheduled for Saturday. We never know the pickup schedule. However, the earliest time will be about 9:30, and they often don't pick up until late afternoon.

There I was, sitting at the computer in my pjs just a little after 7, not at all concerned about not having yet brought the garbage to the curb, when I heard what sounded like the garbage truck. I looked out the window, and sure enough it was the garbage truck and it was already passing our house, and I hadn't put the trash out yet. It is rather a miracle that I heard the truck at all because I don't put my hearing aids in until Sue arises, which is often many hours after my rising.

I hurried down the stairs, as much as this semi lame old man can hurry, that is, grabbed the two bags, and ran outside desperately hailing the truck to wait up a sec. Thankfully, the truck did just that and one young collector took pity on me, met me partway, and relieved me of my burden.

Thankfully, both the garbage and recycling had been bagged and were ready for me to grab, for that is not the usual case. We keep the garbage out back but for some reason I had already brought it to the garage earlier. Sue had also dealt with the recycling. Neither of these things are usually done ahead of time, but on this day, both were.

That was my Saturday morning, or at least the early part of it. These are not big adventures unless you are at my stage of life when even cutting your toenails can be an event.