Job Satisfaction

This will be a multi-part story - I think most people like sequels, although generally the second installment often falls short of the mark. I will attempt in this coupling of weeks to produce some semblance of profundity, but if I fail, ah well, just a blog. Just a blog.

This is a tale of two Mondays. The first, I, Reid, an observer. The second, I, Reid, a character worthy of a Oscar nomination.

Monday #1:

The day blossomed brightly; the light shone through the cracks in the window panes of my bedroom between the shade and the wood. It splayed lightly on the hardwood floor of the bedroom, illuminating the dust that hangs suspended in the air. I rolled over to spy the alarm clock on the dresser and after glancing at the face glowing 6:27, I groaned inwardly calculating how many seconds I could postpone putting my bare feet on the cold floor. But, once my body was awake, and my brain sufficiently suffused with blood from the act of calculating, there was no going back to the glorious, blissful ignorance of early morning sleep.

I stretched my legs hearing the joints crack like a bag full of popcorn. I turned back to my wife, Christine, who had pulled the blankets up over her head like a groundhog returning to its darkened den. I looked up into the mirror that sits next to our bed and noticed the lines of weariness haloing my eyes. The nest of my hair poked out around my ears and I brought a hand up to attempt to tame the static charged follicles. To no avail; the savage hair fought back and stayed standing at attention.

Placing my feet on the ground, I felt the coolness begin to soak the warmth out of my body. Shivering, I reached for the clothes that I had discarded on the floor eight hours before and put them on. Twice I attempted to put my sweatpants on; the first time backwards, the second time both legs in one hole. What a great way to start a day.

I walked out into the hallway to roust the girls from their own pleasant slumbers. The youngest, eyes already opened but smile hidden by the covers, slipped out of bed and reached arms up wanting me to carry her to the breakfast table. I denied her the opportunity, but I always have to remember that the days of carrying my girls are rapidly closing and I want to continue to hold on to their last piece of childhood that I can. I looked at the middle daughter who caught my eye and then emulated her mother by snapping back into the darkened tunnel of her covers.

"Breakfast in 10 minutes, Josephine." I said.

I only got a muffled grunt.

I opened Elsa's door. Her light was already on and a book was open on her bed. "How long have you been up?" I asked.

"When does the sun start shining?" She smiled and pushed her glasses back up on her nose with one finger. Her brown eyes looked at me quizzically as if I had asked her the most inane question in the world.
"Elsa, you have to start turning on more lights when you read. That's why God made the sun so nine-year-old girls can wake up too early in the morning to feed their reading addiction."

Elsa rolled her eyes and said, "Dad, you're so weird."

"10 minutes, Els, 10 minutes." I could see her calculating in her own head how long it would take to get dressed and how many pages that would leave her to read.

Walking down the hallway I heard how the floor made the same sounds as my creaking bones did when I awoke. Maybe it's the same thing: the bones of the house, the floors and walls, creak when they are wakened? Flipping the kitchen light, I shuffled across the grainy, tiled floor of the kitchen noticing the dishes that I'd neglected the night before. Housework never seems to be over, have you ever noticed that? Is there ever a moment when you sit down, look at every corner of the house and say, "Great, now I can take a break."

After making the traditional breakfast and lunch for the girls, cereal and milk for the former and traditional Vegemite sandwiches for the latter (isn't that what all children have for lunch?), I perused my calendar for the day. It was my day off - or as 'off' as it gets. As an adult, there really is no such thing as an off day, no day to leisurely read a book or take a walk, I noticed a star by the calendar. Today was the day that the tree removal experts were coming. Over the years two trees in our front yard had gradually begun shedding limbs like chickens molting feathers and it was only a matter of time when one of those thousand pound feathers was going to pulverize the roof of the house. Well, that certainly would be an exciting way to spend a morning.

Christine had been having some back problems, so she, too, stayed home from work that day. After reviving ourselves with coffee for me and breakfast for her, we sent the girls off to their respective schools and waited for tree specialists to come and commit arbor-cide. We loved our trees but we loved our roof even more.

Not much later we heard the muffler of a truck pull up in front of our house. As I looked out the front window, the passenger door of the van opened and before any person exited the vehicle, a cloud of cigarette smoke preceded the person. It was like when a famous performer comes on stage and the smoke machines buffet out smog to hide the performer to the last minute. Well, the 'performer' finally emerged waving away the smoke from his addiction. He was of medium height wearing a sleeveless shirt exposing arms encircled by barbed wire tattoos. His compatriots were vomited forth from the van and it was apparent from the beginning that Monday had started off in a very negative way for these men. The four of them proceeded to avoid all conversation, eye contact and in general, communication. The one with a pony tail looked like he'd actually slept in the van over night; the tallest one ground his teeth so hard that the muscles in his jaws rolled back and forth like and earthquake. The smallest one took a long drag on his cigarette and flicked the still lit cancer stick into our yard. It was lucky that Christine did not see that - she would have made their morning even worse with a verbal tongue lashing and perhaps her own sermon on the dangers of cigarette use. It is somewhat ironic, though, that all the men who work with wood would all be smokers.

As they split apart to their respective responsibilities like neutrons splitting apart in a nuclear reaction, it became quite clear we were in for a very interesting spectacle. In fact, Christine and I pulled up lawn chairs to watch the show.

As we settled in, the tallest one, who, as far as we could find out was from the planet Moronia - at least that's what we gathered from the smallest one - began to hack off the limbs of one of the trees with the greatest of ease. With seemingly precise calculation he lopped off branch after branch away from the house. It was hard to watch, but he was such and artist, that I even stopped to praise him for his artistry.

"Wow!" I said as I walked over to him. "You have real talent." He stared at me without responding. Perhaps he didn't hear me. Perhaps he'd lost his hearing from being around chainsaws for a large chunk of his adulthood. Perhaps he thought I was joking. Either way, he started his chainsaw and raised it like Jason from the Halloween movies. I guess on the planet Moronia they have no expression for the word "thank you?"

Next blog I'll get to the other characters of the operation who had names, as far as we could tell, that resembled what most people would call a domesticated donkey - one of them was called by the others "Idiot", another "Doorknob" - I'm not sure any of them called each other by the name given them by their parents. All in all, this was the grumpiest group of working people I'd ever seen.