4/21/03

Please don't write and tell me that today's update is hard to follow.

I already know it is.

This weekend I rode a pendulum that swung between moments of potent physical exertion and complete sloth.

I moved my den down to the basement.

Turns out I had a heavy den. But now the futon, computer, fax machine, library table, books, filing cabinet, etc. all reside in a corner of our semifinished basement. It seems cozy enough down here, but in the back of my mind I still feel a little like all my stuff has been relegated to a hole in the ground. A hole with Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound and a foosball table, but a hole nonetheless.

If you're interested I can tell you about the weekend as it happened.

Oh...

Well, I'll go over it anyway.

On Friday I took the afternoon off to prepare Easter baskets for Deb and Allie. I may have overdone it a little but I kept finding things that seemed to belong in each basket. I had a good time. The thing that kept popping up in mind was that come next year I'll need to put together three baskets.

When I got to the house I still had time before I had to pick up Allie. I thought I'd better start hauling the heavy stuff out of the den. I didn't want to risk finding out what a dropped filing cabinet sprouting a three-year-old's legs from beneath it would look like.

The futon gave me less trouble than I thought it would. I danced with the frame down four flights of stairs pulling, tugging and adjusting the thing so it wouldn't attack the walls with its flailing feet. The whole time I tried my best to keep my lower intestine out of my scrotum.

It really wasn't that heavy.

When I brought Allie home we went upstairs into the now mostly empty den. Allie was talking to me about what she did that day as she stood in the middle of the newly empty room. She went on for about a minute or so and stopped mid-sentence. "Hey! Where's the computer, Daddy?" she asked.

I don't think I'll be signing her up for the Junior Detective League anytime soon. However she did eventually notice that 150 or so square feet of furniture had disappeared on her own. I find that reassuring.

We had more work to do. There was more stuff to move downstairs and a Gordian knot of USB, Firewire and power cables that required untangling. "This is big girl and Daddy work, not Mommy work," Allie said as she moved the same cable between the tangled and untangled piles three times in a row. I nodded and thought to myself, "Mommy's way too smart to get mixed up in this sort of thing."

The phone works. The modem works. All the breakers responsible for preventing basement electrical fires have remained in their original upright and locked positions (so far). I should be happy. Except for the all the driving.

Saturday morning I drove Tom to Madison to pick up a car he had parked in a friend's garage.

Later that morning I drove Howie's truck to Madison to buy Allie a big girl bed.

Saturday afternoon I drove to Madison to buy more book shelves for the basement and bedding for the new big girl bed.

Now I'm not complaining, mind you. I got to see Tom's 1960 something Grand Prix named Ethyl.

Ethyl is a nimble white beauty with red interior in like new condition. I was behind Ethyl the entire trip home. Every now and again Tom would hit the accelerator and try to blow out the cobwebs from Ethyl's ample engine. In turn I would hit the gas pedal in the Mazda and try to keep up. Ethyl made me feel like putting one of those orange triangles you often see on Amish buggies on the back of my Mazda.

Later that morning Deb, Alex and I were back in the Mazda on our way to buy a bed. Our plan was to rent a truck from one of the local mega hardware stores and rush the bed back home. Howie didn't like this plan and insisted that we take his truck. I promise you we didn't ask to use the truck. The fact that we were going to buy Allie a bed just popped-up in conversation. Howie's the one that asked us how we were going to get it home. He did. Really. I swear.

Thank God for Howie.

When we finally got Allie's bed home we realized that Sunday was Easter and that spending money on this holiday would be a sacrilege (plus Target was going to be closed). So we all piled into the other Mazda and drove back to town.

Sunday was spent on the futon in the basement watching a horror movie Tom let me borrow. I also assembled the bookcases and helped the big piles of books that had collected upstairs migrate downstairs. Books are heavy.

Oh, and Sunday was Easter.

Allie woke up and we told her that the Easter Bunny had been to the house. Alex and her mother looked for the basket the big bunny had left for her. It was in the downstairs bathroom. Not too hard to find. I'm guessing E. Bunny is a good judge of a kid's ability to sustain interest in an activity that provides no immediate reward and/or isn't animated and on TV. Debbie's Easter Basket was almost as easy to spot downstairs, under a blanket inside Allie's tent (you know the rule, the older you get, the tougher it is to find your basket).

Then I got crabby.

I think I was sick of moving heavy things down stairs. I hid my "new den" for most of the day. I did come up long enough to follow Debbie's recipe for Yankee Pot Roast. An unusual substitute for the traditional Easter ham, but it's one of my favorites. Did it turn out? Yes. It was good. And I ate a great deal of it. And yes, I'm still trying to eat right, but I was very busy attempting to perpetrate a passive aggressive coup d'etat against my wife.

Not that it would matter to Deb. She has become accustomed to my strange behavioral displays that occur with little or no provocation. I made sure Deb saw me with two, count 'em, two Heath bars but the significance was lost on her. Suddenly I had this image of myself holding a Cinnabon next to my head shouting, "I'll do it, Debbie. Don't think that I won't do it, because I'm right on the edge!" Pretty sad to say the least. Especially when Deb didn't even notice. In fact, she brought buttered popcorn downstairs to me. Perhaps she is the one who is the true master of the passive aggressive attack.

So the big question here is, "How does Allie like her new bed?"

She loves her new bed. I'm glad, because she'll more than likely be sleeping on it until she begins life in a dorm room.