This weekend I dug literal and figurative holes. The former were for our new fence, a home project that has stretched out because of inevitable time restrictions. The latter were on Mother’s Day. But first, a picture of the digger.
Here’s the augur that fits into the bottom of the engine.
The business end of the augur has teeth just like the cave troll’s teeth from Lord of the Rings: thick blunt chisels unstopped by stone.
This bad boy was a two-man machine. My wife did an incredible job manning the other half of this machine. When the soil was agreeable and pliant, the augur drove down like a fork through pound cake. That happened half the time. The rest of the time, it would hit a rock or root and buck like, well, Baby Harbat in a bad mood. Sometimes it would catch a rock and stop dead with a neck-snapping jerk to the side. Both of us were exhausted after 18 holes. But 14 were dug to final depth and the rest had either rocks or irrigation lines in the way, so I need to finish those off by hand. If anyone out there is planning to dig holes, I highly recommend the two-man augur from a tool rental place. I give my wife highest praise for recommending this over the manual post-hole clamshell digger, which would’ve brought me to apoplexy by the second hole.
The second hole I dug, on Mother’s Day morning, should have been familiar to me. It began with good intentions and ended with a disappointing breakfast. Just like when I was a kid! Here mom, have a sub-par breakfast served by a surly cook who saw everything go wrong in the kitchen for the last hour. It’s too painful to describe, but the punchline is that I’ll never attempt to make popovers again. Considering I am running a small bakery business, the whole Popover Affair will be stricken from the history books and erased from my memory. Oh, that it was that easy.
The rest of Mother’s Day was a long climb out from the hole, and ended as well as I could have hoped. I’m lucky to have such an incredible wife, and Baby Harbat is lucky she’s got such a great mom. Anything I bake or do can’t even come close to the gratitude I feel. It’s like giving Mother Theresa a cookie and a coupon for a free back rub. It doesn’t cut it, but nothing would be enough so you just say thank you over and over and try to show that you mean it.
No, this is not a crime scene. This morning Baby Harbat brought Panda into the kitchen for night night. Here she is giving him an air kiss with a loud “mwah!” I love starting my day this way.
Writer, architect, father, husband.
How lucky you are to have such a wonderful wife and Mom for Baby HB and how wonderful it is for her to have someone so appreciative of all she does. Let's not leave Ms. Panda out–she's lucky to have such doting attention and an opportunity to spend her night on the kitchen floor with her blankie.
Oh, she doesn't spend the night on the floor. BH makes sure to bring her back to her crib at night. Is it me or does that have a completely different connotation in an urban/hip-hop sense?
Well hey–BH's crib IS her crib!