Adding to Ed's Edifice

For the last several days, the temperature here at the northern end of southern nowhere has climbed up to and past the four score mark on Herr Fehrenheit's scale and yesterday the spring-like weather flipped a "let's clean the house" switch in the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda's brain housing group. Cleaning house ain't on the Colonel's short (or long, for that matter) list of favorite participation sports, and the strong whiff of Pinesol that jangled my olfactory nerves served as a sufficient catalyst to activate my desire to attack the growing list of projects requiring attention on the grounds of the capital of the Tallahatchie Free State (a government in opposition, formed as much hand on wallet as tongue in cheek).

One of the aforementioned projects, The Tractor Shed, an open-sided, roofed addition to the Eegeebeegee Man Toy Storage and Sawdust Production Facility under which to park Semper Field (the Colonel's tractor; not to be confused with the Colonel's pick-up, Semper Fillit, and the Colonel's boat, Semper Fish) between forays afield, has languished as concept in the few remaining cognitive cells in my hat rack for several months now. On the promise and expectation of stimulus funding (an earmark for which I have been promised has been included in the omnibus appropriations bill), the Colonel began construction yesterday on said addition to the Eegeebeegee Man Toy Storage and Sawdust Production Facility.

The preparatory phase of said construction project involved a prolonged period of strategic planning, risk assessment, and work site survey, the predominance of which was accomplished by the Colonel in his open-air office, ensconced in his "thinking chair," eyes closed and shaded from the thought-damaging effects of ultraviolet light. A few short minutes into this vitally important stage of engineering excellence, which, due to the temporal distortion of the bubble of relative irrelevant relativity surrounding the Colonel (see post entitled "Time in a Bucket" for an explanation of this heretofore undocumented phenomenon), seemed more like several hours to the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda, the mother of my children stepped outside to conduct the regular safety check and supervisory security sweep required of the wives of Gregory men. The Colonel's super-natural situational awareness provided sufficient aural stimuli to warn of the impending presence of the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda, but, not wanting to startle and traumatize her with a demonstration of my explosive, cat-like reflexes, I remained carefully stationary and motionless in my strategic planning repose and only, and very slowly, responded to my dearest's attention-getting attempts when her gentle nudging escalated to the level of mild shaking.

"What have you gotten done this morning?" The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda was interested in her man's accomplishments--how heart-warming!