First blog of 2015! And Dad and his eccentricites already promise to make this a very entertaining year.
This afternoon I was lost in work, trying to catch up where I got behind over Christmas. At some point I became aware of thumps and bumps, and Dad's customary assortment of exclamations, including: "Damn it all to hell! Goddamn bastard!"
Then there was one almighty THUNK, followed by, "Fucking BASTARD!" Almost immediately the front door slammed and Dad tornadoed past the window, hurried round the outside of the house to the back door.
After a lifetime of listening to his harmless rants I have become highly immune, so I tuned it out, distracted by the sight of a luminescent golden moon hanging in a pink sky, so close over the neighbor's house that it looked like it might rest on top on the chimney tops. Grabbing my camera I headed down to the kitchen to go outside and take a picture. But the door from the kitchen into the utility room was blocked by a garden two-seater cane sofa.
Dad was on the other side, working at a metal screw in one of the sofa legs.
"What's happening here?" I asked without thinking.
"What does it look like?" he retorted.
Again, so used to his ways I automatically replied, "You've perfected Star Trek's teleportation device disguised in this sofa and you're trying to beam to another planet?"
Obviously so used to my ways, he didn't even react and carried on working at the leg.
"How did ... " I began and then stopped. I didn't want to know.
He'd gotten a new year's urge to clean out the spare room, and had hauled out two ancient mattresses, intending to take them to the dump this weekend. He had mentioned he wanted to retrieve this sofa from the garage and put it in there, trying to make a nice guest room. I just didn't think he meant today. The mattresses now stood upright in the corridor, awaiting transportation.
Putting down my camera I used both hands and shoved at the sofa to see how wedged in it was. It didn't budge.
The screwdriver slipped from Dad's grasp and clanged to the tiled floor. "Oh, for goodness' sake!" He flounced out the back door, letting it slam behind him.
Bending down I saw that on the other side the rocker part of the sofa was loose, and if I could push it out a little, the sofa might shift enough to slide through the doorway. I pulled over the pine kitchen stool, climbed up onto the counter by the door and clambered over the sofa.
Dad came in through the front door, and between us, we got the sofa back out into the ulitity room and outside.
"Shall we try the front door?" I asked.
"No, put it back in the garage. I can' t be bloody bothered, anymore."
Good, I thought. "It would be hard getting it past the mattresses, anyway."
"Oh," he said. "I'd forgotten about those. This was a fruitless task from the beginning."
I wondered how long he'd been dragging all that furniture about? I'd been so involved in my writing I hadn't even noticed.
We stowed the sofa back in the garage and as we returned to the house I noticed the moon again. "Did you see the moon?" I asked him.
"What moon?"
"The only moon up there that I know of."
"Where is it?"
I knew he was teasing me and chuckled. "Up there. Come and see." I headed back outside.
"I'm not that bloody interested," I heard him say but ignored him.
"Look." I pointed.
With a sigh he joined me. "Sure, it always looks like that," he muttered, turned on his heel and went into the house.
I could only see the funny side and doubled over, laughing. I'm so glad to see he's still indominatably eccentric. What will he get up to next, I wonder?
