Trivial Pursuits

It's Saturday again and the world is filled with household chores and outside the house work and yard work.

The smell of fresh mown grass fills the neighborhood as the various lawn implements are pressed into service and the length of the grass is manicured to personal settings and preferences. Edging and weed eating are completed and the lawns throughout the neighborhood become examples of lawn care and pride of home ownership.

I confess that when the job becomes mine in a few short days, I am not looking forward to the effort required to make the yard look more Beverly Hills than Beverly Hillbillies. But I do enjoy that sense of satisfaction when the yard is groomed and tidied up for the coming week. It's like the feeling you get when the last load of laundry is completed late on Saturday night.

For that moment in time, I revel in the joy that my chores are done. And I try to keep at bay the thoughts that it will all begin again on Monday morning with the weekend's worth of towels, sheets and assorted clothing that rabbit-like breeds in the hamper creating an entire day of washing over a 48 hour period. I haven't figured out the math on that equation yet.

Our mail carrier must have changed recently. The mail, which at one time filled our box by the road no later than 10 a.m. is now dragging home to us around 3 in the afternoon. I miss being able to get the mail earlier in the day. Stupid, I know, but it was a little check-box in my day that has changed and I am not a creature who readily accepts changes.

The temperatures are beginning to look as if we will creep into fall a bit at a time. The delightful people at the weather channel say we will be thinking of sweaters and hot chocolate shortly. There is something so relaxing about the idea of lighting a fire and enjoying an evening barbecue.

My computer has a screen saver of a fireplace on a nice, comfortable burn.

My wonderful husband just laughed when he saw it. Actually, he laughed because he caught me 'warming' my hands in front of the digital flames. O.K., I admit it was stupid, but it was sort of an impulse. Flames dancing in and out of the logs in an incendiary peek-a-boo that is at once imaginary and soothing.

When I was a kid, we moved into a house with a fireplace and there was nothing better than sitting by the fireside and feeling the stored warmth of a thousand suns within the wood that crackled and burned so merrily in the fireplace grate.

I fully realize that greenhouse gasses and a plethora of carcinogens are released into the atmosphere when we light a fire. But until science can come up with a fireplace that can duplicate the aroma of ironwood on a cold night and the feeling of creeping warmth that comes from sitting with your hands extended to the flames, then they can just shut up about it. I'll just bet old Al Gore bought his family a butt load of 'offset credits' so they can light up the old fireplace at the Gore Ranch of Imperical Data and Personal Perfection.

I can just see Tipper now with a hot dog fork in her hands. It's a picture that will never make the media splash that it should and so richly deserves to make, but old Al didn't put on that paunch by running in triathalons.

Being a Southern born boy, he has bellied up to many a serving of old fashioned hickory smoked goodness on more than one occassion. And I can just bet that while he was chowing down on that savory blend of herbs, spices and good old fashioned smoke, he wasn't giving one hoot in hell for whether or not he was leaving a big old size 12 carbon footprint.

Oh no. Brother Al was reaching for another napkin and the bottle of hot pepper sauce to make his meal complete.

Here's hoping that fall will be all it should be. Football games, parades with pretty homecoming queens and their royal and innocent court, marching bands with showstopping tunes and majorettes who don't drop their batons, crisp nights under stadium lights with cheering fans and good times, nights out camping under the autumn skies where the stars are more than can ever be counted and a time that will be forever remembered as a great time with family and friends.