Lest you think all Smuffy does is renovate the kitchen, let’s get back to what the man does in his off hours. He doesn’t get too many of those, so he likes to jazz them up as much as possible. I remember closing out Episode 6 of Life With Smuffy by giving thanks that there are enough angels to go around.
If I am to be honest and share the little phrase that floats through my head most often lately, it is this: “Poor Smuffy”. Living in an old house means constant upkeep and what isn’t actually broken needs updating. Then, there are acts of God, nature’s tendency to descend from order into chaos and the animal world to contend with. Because Smuffy knows how to do everything, he does everything. Why call the man when you can be the man?
We try to take a bit of leisure on Saturday mornings before we plunge into the mammoth project of the day and discuss the plan of attack, sighing a lot as we exchange looks that tell us that we are of like mind in wondering when and if this will ever end this side of Heaven. A couple of weeks ago, we were doing just that.
I took a sip of tea and snuggled more comfortably into the sofa. Smuffy, while never having contracted the Boogie Woogie Flu, has had a severe case of Rockin’ Pneumonia all his life and I’ve had to train myself to hold my head still when conversing with him while he’s in his rocking chair lest I get whatever it is people get in their necks from sitting at tennis matches and whipping their heads from side to side all day. I hoped against all hope that I wouldn’t be losing my kitchen contractor for the day. Nature, in the form of a once orderly tree, had descended into such a state that the whopper just to the south of our driveway would soon be causing plenty of chaos should the next big storm send it crashing onto the vehicles or the house.
“What’s the day look like, Dear?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that tree,” Smuffy sighed, taking another sip of coffee and making me wonder, yet again, how he can sip the hot stuff while moving so fast. He can hold a plate of hot food and eat an entire meal while rocking at top speed, too, but that’s another story.
I stifled my own sigh and the groan that threatened to escape me. Smuffy didn’t have any business up in that big old tree, but I’d never known that bit of common sense to stop him. In addition to the danger of plummeting from a great height, the day promised to be hot enough to cause a heat stroke.
“The more I think about it,” he went on, “the less I want to climb it. I’ve decided I’m just gonna call somebody and have it taken down.”
I could have jumped off the sofa and gone into a buck and wing dance right there in my jammies, but I refrained, lest it send him into one of those so-are-you-saying-I-can’t-get-that-tree-down-by-myself? attitudes.
We spent a few minutes discussing who we might call for the job and I actually began to feel like we were getting a little posh just for calling anybody for anything. Smuffy listed off a few smaller outside chores he wanted to attend to before getting to work on the kitchen and then we each went our own way with him heading outside while I set about to get dishes, laundry and a few other things started before I got dressed and plunged into serious cleaning.
Just as I grabbed some clothes and headed for the bathroom, the phone rang. Smuffy’s voice on the other end came slow and measured.
“I’m on the roof.”
Before the “Why?” that trembled upon my lips could escape me, he continued.
“There are wasps. I have agitated them. They are between me and the only way down. I need you to bring the wasp and hornet spray out and throw it up onto the roof so I can spray them and get down.”
“Okay,” I said, “but I hope you realize that I’m the last person you want throwing something at anything. And I’ll have to find it first.”
Smuffy tried to tell me where the can of spray was, but I knew he naively spoke of where it was supposed to be. When we’d moved and reinstalled the reverse osmosis for the kitchen, I’d had to empty the shelf that held all that sort of thing and disperse the items around the basement wherever they’d fit. On the way to the basement, I shed the robe, knowing it would hamper my (as I loosely referred to it in my mind) throwing arm. The neighbors, if they didn’t get too close, would interpret my nightie to be a sundress, or so I told myself.
I don’t know if you have one of those “old house basements” that looks like a game of “Where’s Waldo and How Long Do You Think He’s Been Dead?” but locating the can nearly had me weeping at the thought that by the time I finally found it Smuffy could be sliding off the roof, a swollen mass of stings. Laying hands on it at last, I imagined this must be how Sherlock Holmes felt every time he searched through cigar ash and discovered a speck of something that could only have fallen from a gentleman of independent means wearing a scarf of Shetland wool and carrying an Orpington hen.
I ran outside and around to the back of the house to find Smuffy perched near the highest point of the roof. I thought this might be the proper time to ask him why he was up there. He reminded me that he’d been wanting to adjust the antenna for a while now. He explained that he couldn’t come any closer without agitating the wasps further and that I needed to back up and fling the can with all my might.
It went just about like I had expected. In fact, it went that way three or four times. Finally, Smuffy suggested that I go around to the northwest corner of the house to higher ground so I wouldn’t have so far to throw. He could then climb over the roof and most of the way down and be ready to catch the can. I didn’t balk at this, but I do admit to having the unpleasant awareness that I would now be much nearer to the street in my nightie, flinging myself about while being hollered at by a guy on the roof. Oh, well…
While sound in theory, I had no faith in this new plan of Smuffy’s. The last thing I wanted to see was Smuffy scrambling up, down and sideways across a steep roof trying to catch an oblong metal object launched by a woman in a manner which was bound to convince passersby that she’d been having a couple.
I scrambled in amongst the petunias and boxwood, tightened my grip on the can and drew my arm back in preparation to let it fly.
“It’s not a shot put!” Smuffy yelled. “Here, watch me.” Instructing me to back up, he stood up and motioned with his arm, instructing me how to hold the can, how to swing my arm and when to release. Then, crouching as near the edge of the roof as he could safely get, he cupped his hands and squinted as though he fully expected to receive a concussion.
Well, you can’t call me a slow learner! I’ll have you know I landed it near enough to Smuffy that he managed, with a few interesting dance steps, to grab the can on my second attempt. I ducked inside out of public view and he slithered over the top of the roof and down the other side to tackle the swarm. Watching out the dining room window at the back of the house, I asked myself if this was the kind of thing I’d traded the tree job for and if it might have been wiser to save the money for hospital bills. I gave thanks that there are enough angels to go around and went to get dressed.
A short while later, with the washer and dryer going and now the dishwasher, I finished dusting and pulled out the vacuum cleaner and continued my mission to get the basic chores done before I started my list of extras. It was then that the earth moved.
The whole house shook with the crash. The windows rattled. The floor moved under my feet. Phoebe June did a little shaking of her own. The force was such that I looked around to see if cracks were snaking across the plaster on the walls and I wouldn’t have been surprised to find that the foundation had shifted. Had some huge explosion occurred on the other side of town? Sirens would probably sound any minute. I raced around to the south kitchen window and my eyes followed a tall ladder as it stretched up into the very tree we had just decided not to cut down ourselves. The gutter dangled off the east end of the porch and the fallen portion of the tree wouldn’t let me get down the deck steps. I spotted Smuffy at the top of the ladder before I ran back through the house and out the front door.
I still couldn’t get anywhere near him for the tree lay over the front lawn, flower beds, driveway and the yard on the other side of the driveway, not to mention a portion of our truck.
Seeing me, Smuffy pointed at the truck. “I thought I parked the truck far enough away,” he yelled. “Guess not.”
I looked at our dangling bumper – a nice match for the gutter. Turning to the house, I gave it the once over. No broken windows and the porch remained attached. Shingles seemed to be in their places. Now I gave Smuffy the once over.
“What are you doing up there? What happened to calling the man to come cut down the tree?” I yelled.
“Well,” Smuffy replied, and I’m not sure he didn’t give his chin a thoughtful rub. “I just decided I wasn’t going to let this old tree beat me.”
I resisted the urge to scream that for two cents I’d be happy to beat him.
“I suppose it never occurred to you to tell me in advance that you were going to climb up there and cut down that tree?”
At this point I threw my hands up in the air and went back in the house, figuring that his logic must be that after the wasp incident, this was mere child’s play. Your mind can’t help but take some sort of stab at Smuffy’s reasoning.
Once my heart stopped racing and the urge to strangle Smuffy subsided a bit, I stopped to give thanks again that there are enough angels to go around.
The scary part about it is that Smuffy only took down a third of that tree. Maybe he’ll give me a while to recover before the next chapter in this story.
The answer is “yes” in case you are wondering – Smuffy has always been this way.
Dig those socks!
Life With Smuffy does, indeed, have its ups and downs. I’m glad that his angels specialize in bringing him down gently.
My Life With Smuffy has been exciting from Day 1. Read about our Smokin’ Hot Honeymoon. You’ll find, in Smuffy Takes the Cure that I did try intervention. His river adventures here and here will make this story seem like a walk in the park (on flat ground)!
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