Saturday, August 6, 2011

THREE DAYS OF THE CODGERS

Yesterday Husband came home looking dejected and pitiful, prompting me to ask, "what's wrong?"  He sat down, removed his glasses and told how in the process of fixing friend Howard's VW, he nearly set fire to the entire shop and immolated friend Howard as well as his VW, sometimes referred to as the purple "grapenut."


Picture here if you will a purple VW bug, at once a pristine, nostalgic, and overstated emblem of egotistic eccentricity.  Whew, that statement hurt as much as childbirth.  Meanwhile, enjoy a picture from my garden.

It was a woeful admission, requiring a healing remark to repair his sagging confidence.  It seems he forgot to reattach the fuel line and then asked Howard to start the grapenut, which began spewing gasoline.  He saw it and shouted to turn it off averting disaster.  We are grateful that friend Howard, who is hard of hearing, got the message.

I comforted Husband with the reminder of my mega-mistake of the day before, which entailed another misadventure with the infamous Cub Cadet.  I felt inspired to cut grass, get some sunshine, and smell the wild onions.  So off I go on the Cub Cadet.  I no sooner pass the pumphouse than there are pieces of flying extension cord passing on either side.  It seems I drove over an electrocution trap laid by Husband, who was by this time running and shouting, "Drop it," meaning the section of cord I picked up (clearly cut on both ends).  So I dutifully dropped it.  He fumed and fussed.  The Cub Cadet took no notice.  But I thought I saw it smirk, insolent mechanical devil.


Today is another day!  No blotches on our record.  Then the phone rings.  Husband's deal to get free steamed crab claws is successful.  And it arrives:  a megalithic box of claws which fills two big garbage bags!




And we pick and crack and crack and pick.  We freeze some (above), eat some, give some to the neighbors, and let the cat have a cut.  Resolute in our desire to never look at another crab claw, we look forward to the next test of our competency/senility and what things may come on Waverly Lane.







2 comments:

  1. Wish I were there to help out with the crab claws. Darn!
    When I was a teenager living on the then-pretty-much-pristine west coast of Canada, my father had a friend who was a crab fisherman. He used to sell us a pound of crabmeat (just the meat, nothing to crack or pick) for $1.
    So my dad, who had never cooked anything beyond animal-shaped pancakes to amuse his offspring, would straightfacedly tell total strangers about his "recipe" for crab salad.
    "Take a big bowl," he'd say.
    "Yes, yes, and then..."
    "Then fill it up to the top with crabmeat," he'd go on. "Next, get yourself a fork, and start eating."
    Sounds like you were having one of those occasions with the claws. You know what "they" say, "Better watch what you pray for, because you just might get it."
    I have to admit, shamefacedly, that I laughed at the VW story, and the flying extension cord story. Tsk tsk. But I did enjoy the photo of the tomato, if that helps make me seem less callous.
    — K

    Kay, Alberta, Canada
    An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel

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  2. It is never a dull moment down there! And I wish I were there!!!

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