Day 118

The semi-nude auto mechanic.

Since I truthfully lack the energy to even keep my eyelids ajar, I am going to try to keep this short and sweet.  The day was like every other Wednesday with one bright exception.  As usual, the youngest would not attend class and the eldest would only be obligated for half the day.  Instead of picking up one youngster at noon, I came home with two.  One of my eldest's friends from the UK would come for a visit and ultimately stay the night.  His mother is moving and needed someone to look after him while she tended to the move.  I willingly obliged and we are now wrapping up a very busy evening herding cats so to speak.  With laughing boys running this way and that, I will be glad for a little peace and quiet come morning.

I took them to the market, fixed them two fairly elaborate meals and kept the house in one piece . . . more or less.  I consider it to have been an effort of herculean proportions and am please to escape with most of my sanity in tact.  There was only one small oversight on my part and it required my return to the supermarket to pick up that missing ingredient for dinner that always seems to be realized at the worst possible moment.  I had my wife tend to the items already in the oven and I took the short walk to the market.  Nothing out of the ordinary at the market.  In fact, in an out in record time.  The walk back home however took a turn for the worse.  When I turned the corner, I noted a gentleman changing the breaks on his rust and primer Citroen in the shortest pair of blue shorts I have ever seen.  The shorts had a round bottom hem circa 1983 and he chose to set off his jaunty pantalonies with a white cotton polo shirt that did not quite reach the waist band of the shorts.  This left a lovely inch and a half or so of his fairly hairy torso exposed for the world to behold.  The shoes were brown loafers and the socks were dress black.  He was wearing a very greasy pair of cotton jersey gloves to keep his presumably delicate hands from getting soiled. The whole scene was so peculiar I couldn't look away . . . and then it happened.  The slightest shift in his squatted stance and out it popped.  The man never looked away from the breakpads and yet he never took an eye off of me, if you get my drift.  Staring me down with one squinty little eye.

Not knowing what to do, I hastened my gate and tripped over the curb nearly rolling my ankle and dropping my parcel to the ground.  Gathering myself and my groceries, I broke into a jog and then a run to escape the scene that will likely cause me to cry myself to sleep at night for at least the foreseeable future.  That about covers the news for the day.  I will catch up again tomorrow.  Good Day, Good Evening, and Good Night.