Weekend Round Up – UPDATED

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Your mileage may vary, of course, depending on where you are, but we had a lovely late-springish weekend here in the neighborhood of Port Swiller Manor capped off with a fine lightning display last evening as a line of storms moved through.  (Alas, it’s going to turn chillier again this week.  I blame globull enwarmening.  Oh, wait….)

Anyhoo, Ol’ Robbo was able to mow the lawn Saturday and weed the garden path yesterday in perfect comfort.  I had mentioned here a week or two ago being savaged by the gnats whilst working in the yard.  Well this week Mrs. R happened to be at Whole Paycheck and came across an “all-natural” pest repellent called Nantucket Spider.  It certainly seems to do the job, but it smells like nothing else on this planet and furthermore the smell doesn’t seem to go away:  My work hat is now saturated with it, as is the air any place I leave the thing.

Friends of the decanter who keep track of these things will be happy to hear that our house hummingbird has returned!  (I’m guessing she’s the same one from prior years.)  She must have just got back since I hadn’t seen her at all previously and then saw her half a dozen times yesterday.

On a slightly darker note, alas, Eldest Gel and I took a walk down to the Seven-11 Saturday afternoon to pick up some extra charcoal.  At the register – socially distanced as per the floor markers, of course – we were behind a guy buying “pods” for his “jewel”.  He was about six foot four but flabby and pear-shaped.  Neither the Gel nor I were wearing masks (nor were a bunch of kids who had just left).  The guy (who was) gave us the side-eye and then said to the clerk in a pointed manner, “Isn’t there a state law here that requires people to wear masks in this store?”  (The guy later drove off in a car with Murrland plates.)

The clerk politely answered (having to remove his own mask in order to be understood, bless him) that no, management instructed  employees to wear them but the law didn’t require it of customers.

The guy gave us another glance.  I could tell he was weighing whether to thrown down the Karen card.  (“ZerMerGerd!  You’re selfish and hateful! You want to kill little old ladies!  You beasts!!”)  Ol’ Robbo is the very model of propriety and diplomacy when dealing with the world as a rule, but I tell you truly that I was quite prepared to invite him to engage in an anatomical impossibility if he had started in on us.  For whatever reason, he decided not to and instead flounced out.

“What a soyboy,” laughed the Gel.

As Ferris Bueller said of the snooty restaurant host, “If I’m going to get busted, it’s not gonna be by a guy like that!”

UPDATE:  I forgot to mention that I think I’m going to get rid of my house arrest beard today.  Mrs. R, while insisting that she’s not telling me what to do, has taken to pointedly shuddering when looking at it and, well, it’s just easier to knuckle under.  (Ol’ Jeff Chaucer knew what he was about when he tagged sovereignty as the thing All Women Want in the prologue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale.)