Chisholm in my Bosom

Confession is good for the soul and since I've already had my fiber for the day, here goes:

The other day, when we had that rain come up out of nowhere at about 1100 with the torrential rains, and the gale-force winds and the incredible amounts of lightning and thunder? That was my fault. Sorry-I promise to try hard not to have it happen again, but that may not be possible.

I had the car washed--hey, it's a black color with gold or green reflective parts in it (I'm never really sure-and the only part of it I am sure about is when/if I have an accident that requires body work and a new paint job, it will NEVER match what's on the car right now.) that looks very cool when it's clean and shiny, and the wheels are black and the rims are clean. I have tinted windows, not Pimp My Ride tinted windows (how do the people who do that on that show see out those car windows at night?) and except that it's a Subaru Forester XS, you might think it's a cool ride. (And if you clinked on the link, and read Toups' review, him and AutoChannel can take a long walk off a short pier.)

And I have a garden (actually, another confession; my soul will be glowing!) my daughter has a garden. She and I have been at this every summer but one since we moved to Norwich, CT from Offenbach, Germany in 1991. Some years we've gotten a bit exotic-we had Lima beans one year and tried corn (not so successful) and we didn't get discouraged the first year a pest I had never before encountered, slugs, ate every single one of our started from seed in the house in late winter and transplanted into the backyard afte the last frost tomato plants in one night. But I neither forgive, nor forget.

I have since done a lot of very focused research on slugs, though mostly confined to how to kill them by drowning them in empty cans buried around the garden with an inch or so of skunky beer inside. For the slugs, it's like catnip and they cannot resist it. The trap really works but don't waste money on good beer-they don't have any idea what good beer is and I always use Golden Anniversary because I can buy a case for what a six-pack of domestic name-brand beer costs. Maybe I should ask them for an endorsement deal? Or not.

Anyway, in addition to getting the car washed, I watered the garden. Which is code for I turned the sprinkler on and forgot about it for about forty-five minutes until my wife, sitting in the kitchen with those bat ears of hers (she can hear a mosquito break wind-from across the street), looked up from her newspaper and asked 'what's that noise I'm hearing?' I guessed wrong for quite some time (thirty years of marriage has its effect), and then she demanded to know 'are you watering your garden?' and sonuvagun, if I wasn't.

About fifteen minutes after turning off the water, the heavens opened. So if I saved you a car wash or a moment of bonding in the backyard while trying to light the hibachi for that cookout you just learned you're hosting for your sister and her husband, the guy who says 'yo!' to start every sentence, you're welcome. I'm sure you'll return the favor, if you haven't already. As Arthur Brown would be the first to admit, it's a Crazy World.
-bill kenny