Butchie Boy

My brother Bunny called early yesterday evening to wish me happy Fathers’ Day which I was happy to extend to him as well. During the course of our conversation he asked me if I had been having an exciting day. To which I replied that, indeed, I had been having an exciting day.

It started out as just being a pleasant day. Both Karen and I slept in late, something she practically never does. Then she cooked me bacon for breakfast, a rare treat. We read the paper and lounged around a bit, all very lazy.

Later on, Lance and Cherise visited. They brought the grandkids and dropped off a card and Fathers’ Day present. We were having a nice little chat when the phone rang. It was Wendy wondering if we would like to have a video conference call on the computer. We use a program called Skype to do this. After a few false starts we got the call going and the whole family gathered around to say their greetings. Lance and Cherise left after a little bit because they had to get to Cherise’s folks’ house to wish her dad, Howard, an equally happy day.

During our call Wendy described an incident involving TP throwing ninjas, a narrative I am here charging her to tell in her own blog.

We prepared a midafternoon meal of steaks and cold German potato salad. Very tasty.

We settled back to relaxing and I suggested that I would like to have a little nap and I would like Karen to wake me up no later than 5:00.

Here is where the exciting part begins.

Sometime during my nap she decided to clean out our gutters. Over time they had accumulated quite a bit of gravel from our tar and gravel roof and the inevitable acorns and twigs that living beneath oak trees results in. At 5:00 she woke me up and told me to come out and help her with the gutter cleaning, not a very appropriate Fathers’ Day activity in my estimation. She had mucked out the worst part and proceeded around the corner that led down the stairs. I knew this could not go on much longer because she would soon get to the point on the stairs where the ladder could no longer reach up to the gutters.

At that point she decided to rinse the remaining goo out of the part she had done and asked me to hand her the hose. The section she was working on quickly filled with water since it was blocked by the part where she couldn’t continue. I turned off the water and she moved the ladder to the first part she had done, the better to get a straight shot from the corner above our front door to the end of the gutter that drains into the driveway back to the shop. I had an uneasy feeling about the arrangement and as I went back down the stairs to turn the water on I told her if the ladder slipped, not to hold on to the rails since this could smash her fingers on the cement. I didn’t even make it back to the faucet before I heard a terrible crash. Karen was on the ground with her legs entangled in the ladder. I thought for sure she must have compound fractures of her shins from the way things looked. I rushed back up the stairs to extricate her asking her the whole way if her legs were broken. She said she didn’t think so. She was crying and so scared I couldn’t stand it.

When she had moved the ladder around the corner, she stood on it one rung higher than she usually does to get a better vantage point of the gutter. Unfortunately, this was a rung where the extension part of the ladder was above the rest of the ladder. She usually only goes as high as the point where two rungs coincide. In extending the ladder initially, the extension hooks had not fully snapped back to completely engage the rung below. When she stood on the unsupported rung, the hooks shifted and the ladder retracted. Once the top was below the level of the gutter, it tipped towards the house and the feet eventually slid out from under the ladder and it crashed to the ground horizontally carrying Karen with it.

It was hard to see what was wrong because not only did she have injuries, she was covered with the black muck from the gutters. When her legs were free she sat there sobbing and I consoled her as best I could. I had her hobble over to one of the lawn chairs, then I went to get a wash cloth and towel. I cleaned off the grime and did a more thorough inspection. There were no serious injuries. She was bruised in 4 or 5 places where her shins had banged against the rungs when they hit bottom. One of the spots was banged but not enough to do more than graze the skin. I suggested it would be better if we went into the house. She sat on the sofa and I got ice packs for the 2 worst bruises.

After a while she had relaxed a little and I asked her if she would like to have a little ride in the country, a favorite pasttime. We ended the ride by getting her a Dairy Queen malt, chocolate, with double malt.

Well. I would say that was an exciting Fathers’ Day.

Karen’s stepdad, Vern Becker, died last Thursday evening. His son Kevin called us the next day to let us know. He had been sick the last few months and discovered he had cancer in his neck. They operated and removed as much of it as they could but they told him it would grow back. He could have had radiation treatment if he wanted but he chose not to and went into hospice care. Below is his obituary.

Those of you who would like to leave rememberences or comments are invited to do so.

Now that the snow has gone, the little woodland critters have started visiting again. This morning I looked out the kitchen window to see a possum chowing down on a fallen bird feeder’s contents. This is the first time we have seen a possum and up close at that. The hostas are starting to peek through too.

The squirrels knock the bird feeder off its hook. I didn’t catch any of them doing it but I know its them because I’ve seen them do it before. I will probably need to redesign the hook that the feeder hangs from to make it harder for them to knock it off.

We have also started to see the chipmunks again. They hybernate over the winter and are only just emerging. I saw my first one this year about a week or two ago. Yesterday I saw two, one out by the driveway and another getting beat up by an overpossesive squirrel at the fallen feeder.

Karen has also been getting into the warm weather. Last weekend we bought 8 bags of mulch that she spread around the hostas by the path to the shop. She said she will probably need another 8 to finish the job.