Life is kind of funny sometimes.

30 years ago, I was in a far away country, doing things that had, to a small degree, impact to the future of my country, and having the time of my life.

This morning, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment because I pulled down about a dozen dead branches and widowmakers from the maple tree in our yard.

The other day, I about 3/4 filled the 23 quart turkey roaster with tomato juice and set it to about 200 degrees. Over the next 36 hours or so, it boiled down enough to fill 9 half pint jars with what is either a very thick tomato sauce or a rather thin tomato paste.

Not sure where I took that left turn at Albuquerque in my life, but I guess personal evolution is a good thing.

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Our Friday evening consisted of taking The Young Prince to a Scout weekend camp, then going to a Van Halen tribute band concert in semi-rural Kentucky.

Maggie slept all the way down to the drop off point, but was awake enough to reenact the last act of Jaws II with Irish Woman as we drove through the Kentucky countryside on our way to the concert.

You’d think that a 10 week old puppy would be freaked out by loud music, flashing lights, and hundreds of people shouting at the top of their lungs, but Maggie looked around, yawned, and went to sleep. I guess all of her energy was expended wrestling with and tenderizing Irish Woman.

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Taking a Labrador puppy to a farmer’s market is about the same as taking a baby to the beach – Every female you come in contact with wants to talk to you.

Luckily for my reputation and marriage, my darling wife was with me as we made our way through the crowd. I’m not very bright sometimes, but I’m smart enough to make sure Irish Woman is present whenever I come into contact with strange women.

It’s not that I’m afraid that I’ll say or do something stupid. It’s that she has eyes everywhere, either related by blood or just somebody she’s known since she was 3. I choose life.

The puppy passed judgement on several products. She didn’t care for the freeze-dried liver treats, but the home baked pumpkin biscuits were delightful. She was very interested in the bakery that had Amish fried pies, but was not at all happy with the woodcarver and his handmade bowls.

Life was simpler, some would say better, when our entertainment was made up principally of falling anvils, ACME deliveries, and ducks with their bills blown halfway around their heads.

When a redhead trying to feverishly package bonbons, to the point she stuffed the excess into her own mouth, all of us laughed until we cried. When a cartoon husband bellowed for his brontosaurus burger, and his shapely redhead of a wife cut him down to size with a quick remark and a raised eyebrow, we all realized that this was the pinnacle of domesticity.

Now, we’re bombarded with “I’m better because I’m special!” dreck, or “I’m different from all of you, so you have to do what I think is right!” nonsense. Our airwaves and network bandwidth are overloaded with “You’re the husband/father/boyfriend, so you must be the buffoon!”.

And people wonder why old TV shows and movies do so well in DVD sales and streaming.

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I want credit for my self control and patience this morning.

Yesterday, I was mowing using the less than a year old, zero turn mower. Suddenly, it bucked, made a weird sound, started shaking violently, and began plowing our side yard.

Let me tell ya, when a 46 inch lawnmower cuts a groove into a patch of grass, you can see it from orbit. In thousands of years, archeologists will be bickering over whenther or not I was trying to signal extraterrestrial visitors.

Apparently, the Young Prince had left a short handled shovel in some tall grass/weeds after digging up a few small maple and sycamore seedlings. The last scion of his mother’s house neglected to police up his tools after finishing. I did not see it, being distracted by other tools he left next to the flowerbed, and ran it over.

Not sure what exactly got broken in the mower, but the steel head of the shovel was cut into two pieces and the handle was shredded.

I was not, physically at least, harmed. No fragments of shovel, rapidly spinning blade, or mower components were flung in my general direction.

So, mower goes to the dealer for evaluation and, hopefully, repair later this week. It’s going to take at least a couple of weeks before there’s any chance of it being operational again.

As I am a merciful domestic tyrant, and the Young Prince received an innoculation this morning, I am not going to have him start push mowing the remainder of our acreage until tomorrow. Luckily for him, the seasonal humidity and heat will return to the area overnight, so he’ll be able to atone for his sins through copious sweat. Perhaps, in his labors, he’ll have a vision of his ancestors standing to the side, their arms crossed and their heads shaking in disappointment.

I may or may not be sitting under an umbrella on the back deck, a fan playing over me and a glass of ice cold tea sweating next to me, while I watch him work that mower until the lawn looks like a putting green.

It is only because of my deep and persistent love of his mother that the young man still has any butt left. I’m so angry that I’m afraid to get angry. Visions of signing him over to Marine recruiters, perhaps even paying them for their trouble, have danced in my head on multiple occasions in the last 24 hours.

Her loving presence, her steadfast loyalty over all of our tribulations over the past quarter century, her awesome cooking, all of these have ensured that her son has not been shipped to Australia in the steerage hold of a Salvadoran goat galley, there to muck out stalls in the Queensland water buffalo creamery and tannery.

Luckily for him, we are both too old to create a replacement child, so I must do my best to salvage what can be salvaged from what remains of his life. Now that I think of it, my grandfather begat my father in his 60’s. Hmmmm, no, she’d kill me if I made a baby with her, and she’d kill us both if I created new life with another woman.

Did I mention that the fool thing is less than a year old? It is now a bright yellow riding rototiller.

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Miss Maggie Mae decided to respond to Ellie May growling at her this afternoon by springing from side to side, wagging her tail and barking up a storm. Ellie looked over her shoulder at me, then walked away.

Something tells me that ye olde boundary setting is going to happen pretty soon. I’ll need to keep someone with thumbs handy to make sure it doesn’t go too far.