Miss Bitty Sends Her Regrets

Dear Alanna,

I’m afraid I won’t be able to have lunch with you this Friday. Thanks to Mr. Gordon’s rule that each student must write 6000 words in our classes, I am barely able to breathe under the weight of half a ton of lovely white paper covered with sometimes incomprehensible squiggles.

I was so looking forward to it. Let’s not even try next week…last Friday before the last week of class.

I must devote part of my Friday to grading. Either I’ll get a lot of work done this weekend, or I’ll be in desperate condition next week. Tall Son had promised to come over this weekend and clean up some of the personal physical mess he left behind when he moved out and to finish – finally!—the work on the storage room so I can call the county building inspector for approval then slide all the shelves back against the walls. (I have a path open so he – it’ll be a he of course – can look at the quality of the construction.) Of course, if Tall Son follows through on his promise (always 50/50 odds, since he so often has to work Saturdays and even Sundays and there’s a new girlfriend – again – or, as far as I know she’s still around...), I’ll be distracted, wanting to direct him to this undone task or that one. I don’t want to be a nag, but this work was his only “rent” when he lived with me, and he’s behind on the rent AND no longer living with me. Ah, me.

Then there’s the kid across the street. You may well hear of a murder this weekend in my county, but if I can get a jury of working-woman homeowners I’ll be acquitted without fuss. It takes a lot to rile me up, but I think he’s accomplished it. He has only mowed my lawn once ALL SUMMER. The drought kept it from getting too out of hand in the early part of the season. When I returned from the Long Drive, he mowed. Since then it’s been one excuse after the other; he has promised to mow on a date certain each of the past three weekends. Here’s the thing, though: he doesn’t HAVE to mow my lawn. I would do it. But he keeps coming over and telling me he’s going to. Promising. Nine days ago when he promised to cut it on the Sunday just passed, I told him he had to let me know if he couldn’t because I needed to plan if I had to do it. (I only mow in the mornings due to the heat, and I’m not home that many mornings…). He promised, promised, promised it would get cut this past Sunday. I fumed all day waiting for him. Around 6 he showed up…said he’d planned to cut it that very evening when it was cooler, but now that a storm was brewing, he couldn’t do it. He promised to do it Monday eve. Of course when I came home Monday (after dark, after his family had put out the lights for the night), the lawn was not mowed. Might I add three things here? First, I looked at the Doppler on the weather channel after he left on Sunday. There was no rain in sight…just clouds. Second, he is mowing WITH A RIDING MOWER! A snowman could handle the job at two in the afternoon and still not melt away if he did it on a riding mower. Finally, young K works for a landscaper during the week! What, pray tell, does he do for the landscaper that he gets to avoid the frickin’ heat all day? At this point I don’t think I CAN mow because, except for the front and back which I did mow once since his last pass at it, the grass is too high. But if he doesn’t come through for me by Friday morning, I’m getting out there to do it. And I’ll have white-hot nuclear anger to power the mower.

So that’s why I can’t do lunch Friday.

Shall we aim for Friday, August 4?

Love,
Bitty