Fall cleaning

Photo: The requisite annual back-to-school photo finds us with one freshman in high school, two students in sixth grade and one in fourth. The time is going by so fast; in a few short years these kids will (hopefully) be off being responsible adults, going to college and/or working somewhere. It’s hard to fathom how fast time flies by.

By Allan Olson

This past weekend, we stayed home. Lame.

After several weeks of doing nothing but running, and looking forward for the next month appears to be more of the same, we opted to stay home. At least on Saturday.

To kick off the weekend following the big win by the hometown CL-B Panthers football team, I finally got out of town around 10:00 on Friday night. I decided to make my way home away from civilization and check out a couple places I know of for any possible Aurora Borealis activity. Seeing none, I decided that sleep sounded like a good idea. 

However, by the time I got home, had a late snack and settled in for the evening it was nearly midnight. The next morning, I finally crawled out of bed at about 10 a.m. The kids had fended for themselves for breakfast, rather than wait to see if the parents were going to feed them. Good thing, because if they would’ve asked, we probably would’ve said, “Help yourself to whatever.”

My wife and I decided we wanted eggs for breakfast and that I would cook them, but when I went to the fridge I found that eggs somehow got missed on the shopping list last week (that and peanut butter – a staple in any house with kids). So, I headed to the nearest convenience store to get eggs and, since I was going, some gas for the lawn mower.

After getting home and cooking some eggs for my wife and I, it was time to catch up on that growing pile of laundry. My wife worked on that while I shifted my attention to other things – including delegating the kids to various other chores. Later, while we were all working on one room and, after moving furniture and cleaning windows, we broke a piece of hardware on a window and declared it a day. We probably quit a little early, because there were other rooms that could have used about the same amount of attention – but that was enough for one day.

The kids went back to their electronics, and I decided to go on to the garage. I set up a bunch of empty geocache containers and spray painted a number of them to get them ready for future hides. Then I decided I would do some mowing.

I aired up the tire again that I have yet to get fixed this summer, filled the tank up with gas and proceeded to mow about two feet before it quit – well the blades quit, that is. I called up my service technician (my younger brother) and explained that I tried the trick he did last time it quit and that didn’t work – so now what? He ran me through a variety of other options to test, but all of those resulted in the same – no blades spinning. He suggested contacting my oldest brother and place an order for a new belt – because the current one – circa six years old, is probably too weak to do the job anymore. Upon closer inspection, I did notice a small crack in it, but really, why couldn’t it have just finished out the season – maybe one or two more times for mowing. I did as he suggested, but at the same time, I was thinking – maybe I should just let it grow long and call it a season.

During the time I was trying to get it running – my oldest and my youngest were arguing about who was going to get to mow. Turns out the joke was on them – neither of them got to do any mowing.

I probably should have cleaned up my garage some so I could get the vehicles back in there for winter – but I didn’t. Instead I did some reading and watched a show.

Once again we chose to sleep late on Sunday morning, and once again the kids fended for themselves for breakfast, and since it was a day of rest we didn’t really do anything until that evening when the kids and I met my parents at the state park for a couple hours.

At the park we roasted our supper over the open flame – food always tastes better that way – and then we walked down the Bog Walk and back. The time went fast and we got home a little after 8 p.m. and I started sending kids to get ready for bed. 

The weekend itself was at least productive – even if we didn’t do anything very exciting (like geocaching, fishing or playing in the woods with off road vehicles).

Nothing is planned – yet – for this coming weekend, although there are a few ideas being tossed around in my head. I’m torn between taking off on a geocaching road trip somewhere – or fishing – or just staying home again, since I know the rest of the month and some of next month will be busy. I also wouldn’t mind taking a drive to check out the fall colors on the North Shore – but that probably won’t happen.

I don’t know about the rest of you parents with children back in school, but I’m certainly happy that they are no longer sitting around the house!

Please remember to watch out for the buses that will be carrying our most precious cargo. Also, snap a photo or two to preserve a lifetime of memories. Thanks for reading, and have a great week! Feel free to drop me a line at cltimes1@arvig.net or stop by the office for a visit.