This Job Stinks

You never really appreciate your spouse's contributions to household life until such time as the spouse can no longer perform those duties. Case in point: Friday is Atkins' garbage day, and they come really early in the morning, so Carl usually gets the garbage together on Thursday night and then puts it out by the "curb" when he leaves for work. It's Mary's chore to help Carl gather the garbage together inside the house, but it's Carl's duty to bag it up and haul it out.

Well, needless to say, you can't be picking up forty pounds of garbage when your hernia stitches are still healing, so the bagging of the garbage fell to me. And of course this is the first week of 2005 where the temperature is 90-plus degrees, and anything out in the garage garbage can gets ripe within half an hour of deposit. And this was a really ripe load: chicken fat and skin, dog poop, banana peels and a dead mouse. Then add the regular household garbage, and P.U.!!!! You develop an instant appreciation of your spouse's ability to do this job and not puke.

But I got the bagging done. Now all that's left to do is get up at 6 am and haul the garbage to the end of the driveway. That's the easy part. I don't dare leave it out overnight, not with the size of our local raccoon and coyote populations. And getting up at 6 am isn't that bad - I can get other stuff done outside before it gets too hot. And I can always take a mid-morning nap while Mary's at swim lessons.

Oh, by the way, Carl's doing better every day. He hasn't taken any Percocet today, just ibuprofen, so he can't be in too much pain. (As if he'd tell me, anyway.) He has a good appetite and can't seem to keep away from his remote login at Rockwell, so all things considered he's as close to back to normal as you can get for the second day after your surgery. Thanks for your prayers; God's taken good care of my little Schnookie. Ain't God wonderful?

I think I'll go now. I hear a Hershey bar in the cupboard calling me...........