I think my wittiness has returned to some degree. Or maybe it was never here in the first place and I am dellusional. Whichever, now is the time to record Monday. It started out pretty normal-like. I got up, took a shower, had a quick breakfast and took Seth to work. I stopped at a store on the way home and picked up my prescription. I got home, made breakfast for the kids and started to clean up the kitchen. It was about this point that Crystal, my very pregnant and easily tired sister-in-law, informed me that we had a problem. Saturday night Seth and Crystal had found a tick in their bed. Sunday evening Crystal found a tick in Arianna’s hair. And just now Arianna told her that she had found a tick in her bedroom. I don’t know much about ticks, but I grasp the basics. Ticks- Bad. Ticks need to go bu-byes. So Crystal tells me that we have to bug-bomb the house. For those of you who have never bug-bombed first, you have my congratulations and my envy. Second, you should know it is a ridiculous amount of work. First we had to make sure there was no exposed food. So we clothed all the food and put it away in cupboards, the refrigerator and the microwave. Then we has to make sure there were no exposed dishes. So all the pots and pans hanging on the wall had to have a place. Then anything that we didn’t want chemicals on had to be covered, stowed or put on the list of things we would have to wash. We stripped everyone’s bed. We took all the clothes hanging in the closet-substitute down and cover it. The children had to go through their rooms and pack up all their toys into containers we could cover. The place set up for the new baby had to completely covered. Noah’s toys that are downstairs had to be covered. Now, you need to remember that we are trying to do all this and the regular there-are-four-children-in-the-house stuff. So Noah still had to be chased, fights still had to mediated and proper behavior still had to be enforced. When we were about finished I found Noah gleefully going behind us undoing our work. He got put in his playpen where he proceeded to scream off and on for the next thirty minutes. We fed the children lunch, gathered up the absurd amount of junk we require to go anywhere and realized we had to turn the gas off. So I spent the next, oh, fifteen minutes crawling behind the stove with a wrench wrestling with the valve. We got the children out to the van and set out the bombs. I took the fish over to a neighbors house so they wouldn’t, well, die. We packed the bird and the monster guinea pigs into the van with the rest of our paraphernalia. We were ready to go. It is a strange experience to shake up a can, push down the button and run. You get this feeling of fragility. If I stand here breathing these fumes it would be very bad for me. Not fatal, I don’t think, but very bad. We escaped from the house without harm, jumped in the van and sped off. It is about now that I should mention that Monday was the hottest day of the year, so far. I do not know exactly how hot it was, but it was over 105. Suffice it to say it was hot. Going to a playground for the next three hours was not an option. So we went to Samaritan, unloaded our vanful of stuff and settled in for the next several hours. I will skip over this part because it went well and is therefore boring. After some incredible amount of changes and revisions we hit on a plan that would work. Half an hour later we ditched that plan and made a new one. It was after six and we had eaten dinner already, but Seth had to stay late to do some extra work. So Crystal, myself and the three older children went back to the house full of death (we hoped) and opened all the windows to let it air out. And now we enter a new chapter of this tale. Now is when the sun is setting and we feel the cool of the evening (it was only 1oo degrees). Now we find the heroes of the story embarking on a venture to a mysterious and magical place. We went to GFS for the first time. GFS is like Sam’s Club, but different. We walked in and stood amazed. The music from “Madam Blueberry” started and if my legs hadn’t been so tired I might have waltzed. Shelves upon shelves of bulk food. Food that looked like it might feed our entire family. Good prices, pleasant service and really nifty looking carts. What more could you ask for. We walked up and down the aisles making complete fools of ourselves. It was like the Mecca of large families. We oohed and ahhed and I am surprised no one looked at us funny. We spent a very enjoyable half-hour there and, regretfully, took our leave. As we pulled out of the parking lot I gazed at the store one last time. It been a refuge, a haven. It had been a time of peace. A tear ran down my face as I whispered, “Farewell, farewell”. Okay, maybe not, but anyway we left. We closed up the house, turned the air conditioning back on and went to Samaritan to get Seth. We picked up Seth, Noah, our pets and any stray item that looked like it might belong to us. We went back home. It was 9:30. The children went to bed, we swept and mopped the floors, wiped down the table and the counters and put Seth and Crystal’s blanket in the wash. Since they couldn’t go to bed until it was done it was time for Babylon 5. Babylon 5 is a science fiction television show that I am enjoying more than I like to admit. We are borrowing the episodes from a friend. We watched two episodes and then I collapsed into bed. Oh, my bed felt so good. It was after midnight. All in all, the day went surprisingly well. The children held up very well, we had a place to hide from the heat, and the neighbors were home to watch our fish. Somewhere towards the end of the day I started thinking about a quote from that wholly remarkable book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The quote is from Arthur Dent. “I woke up this morning and thought I’d have a nice relaxed day, do a bit of reading, brush the dog…. It’s now just after four in the afternoon and I’m already being thrown off an alien spaceship six light-years from the smoking remains of the Earth!” I will grant you that my day wasn’t that bad, but that’s the quote I thought of. Now would be the time to list the many ways God was good to us during this time, but I think ya’ll can figure it out. Until next time then.
I think I was about nine when my father got out a pencil and paper to explain Einstein’s theory of relativity and E=MC2. I don’t remember the question that sparked this discussion but it probably came from a Heinlein book I was reading. 
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