Piano, Mowing, Storms and Burning

Mother got onto the piano thing again Sunday morning, asking me who bought that piano. I, again, told her she did, and she, again, told me that was crap and she did not. This time I reminded her about me taking lessons from Myrla Peck. Ms. Peck was from Arlington and taught piano in Paducah.  That stopped her arguing.

Joe took a short run of the push mower on the front lawn.  There was a time he wouldn't have lifted a hand on Sunday. I think it used make him bored to tears.  Nowadays, it seems he's forgotten the rules he used to follow. I'm not going to fight him over it. He got really bored in the afternoon and wanted me to burn the pruning trimmings with him.

On Tuesday morning, Joe left the house just as a bad storm was coming. I put bells on the door, but they don't override the blaring volume from Mother's TV. As the storm hit, I vainly tried to find Joe. Before I could get to the workshop, the rain and wind hit. Since I didn't see his body on the lawn, I kept my fingers crossed and waited for the worst to be over. When the wind stopped blowing strongly enough to turn an umbrella inside out, I put on rubber boots and went to the workshop. The door was locked.

Then I heard a whistling. He's started whistling at me now. Gads I always hated that whistle. Anyway, sure enough, he was in the workshop and opened the door for me. I handed him the other umbrella and went back to the house.

While I walked around the workshop, I realized he'd burned the scrap pile this morning. Last night Lola got on her binge of "someone's looking through that window." So I had closed the heavier drapes. I forgot to turn my alarm clock on and really overslept this morning. In fact, I actually got 9 hours of sleep. It felt good, but.... Apparently Joe burned the pile while I was asleep this morning.

I knew this was on his mind. He'd been wanting to do it for a while. We've hidden as many matches and lighters as we run across, but he's got some squirreled away somewhere. We also have hidden all the gas because he thinks it's just dandy to drench the pile in gas before he starts it.

We have a 100-foot hose, and when I was in Paducah I got another 50-foot hose. I hadn't had a chance to get it out and connected yet. I'm hoping that will be long enough to have on hand when he wants to burn. But he won't damned listen to me. He's too damaged to realize how dangerous his little ideas are.  He's too obsessed to back off. And I'm just damned tired of chasing after him.