Summer is upon us and as I get prepared for the summer I typically want to get all of the things checked off my not fun to do list before I get to the to do list that involves fun stuff. Fortunately, there were two things that held me back from attending Parker’s lacrosse tournament this weekend in Oxford so I was able to get the not fun to do list completed. The first thing holding me back that was further complicated a week ago Saturday, that was our pets. Someone needed to stay back and take care of the pets. Two dogs, that was the extent or our pet portfolio until that fateful Saturday. Shirley had been laying the ground work that we were getting a kitten, which inevitably will become a cat with no attributes other than its ability to kill rodents. That morning I returned home and heard noise upstairs, thinking it was the dogs I didn’t pay much attention to it until I realized it was Parker. I yelled up to him “what are you doing up there?” His response “playing with the kittens”. My response “Kittens?!?!?!” Shirley and I had discussed her desire to acquire two cats and I gave her a hard no. Of course when she arrived home she said she would return the one that hissed at every one in the house when you even looked at it, but it wouldn’t be until Monday. Guess what happened on Monday? Or should I say, what didn’t happen on Monday.

The second thing holding me back was an occurrence completely out of my control, the kittens thing was somewhat out of my control, but me totaling my truck, entirely out of my control. I had a guy do a u-turn in and out of a driveway without looking both ways leading to an unavoidable collision between he and I and the unavoidable me yelling at him WHAT THE FUCK!?!? (amongst other things) when I got out of my vehicle. He took it well and ultimately gave me a ride home. I was with in walking distance had I not had my golf clubs, water ski, and tennis equipment to carry home with me. When we got in his truck we discovered he couldn’t really turn left, fortunately it was mostly right turns to get back to my house. Saturday was the day I was picking up my new truck making it impossible for me to go to waste my, I mean attend the tournament.

Now, I love my father in law, and he is a great guy, but he is old and old people I have found to be particularly annoying, everyone annoys me, but old people do it the most. He was nice enough to let me borrow his truck and then nice enough to give me a ride to get my new truck so he could have his truck back. (I actually drove us to Battle Creek but that was best for everyone) He has gotten to the stage in his life that if my mother in law isn’t around he is a rudderless ship. Aiden was also with us, and on the way back we decided to stop at McDonalds for lunch. It had been years since I had eaten anything other than an egg McMuffin or a Mcflurry at McDonalds. Jim Gaffigan use to do this bit about how people were embarrassed to admit eating at McDonalds and if encountering someone they knew there, would rather claim to be meeting a hooker there instead of eating at McDonalds. Over my protests we landed on McDonalds due to lack of other viable options. Al went up to get his drink filled and asked no one in particular “where are the napkins?” despite there being thousands of them right in front of him. I wanted to tell him we were at the rare McDonalds where they didn’t have napkins and that he needed to go into the bathroom for some toilet paper if he wanted to clean off his hands as he ate, but another patron pointed them out before I could sarcastically respond to his cry for help. I was pleasantly surprised at how tasty the spicy chicken sandwich was and I was also reminded that McDonalds fries are the best in the business.

It was just me Aiden, Max, and Murphy, and the two cats, whose names I’m not learning, Saturday night. Aiden wanted to watch a movie and we started out with Super Bad, but even that movie made me uncomfortable to watch with Aiden so we moved on to Hot Tub Time Machine. I knew Super Bad was raunchy because I had seen it before, I just forgot how raunchy. Hot Tub Time Machine on the other hand was a first view for both Aiden and I. A discerning parent would have, at the very least, looked to see if there was anything particularly objectionable to be concerned about in the movie. The first set of bare breasts took me by surprise as did the second. I told Aiden to turn his head away as I continued to look at the wonderful breasts presented on my 65 inch television, HD tv is truly remarkable.

The Lacrosse tournament ran into Sunday and I left Aiden home to keep an eye on the pets so I could get a Sunday morning round of 18 holes in. When I made it back home I was instantly attacked by Aiden asking me if we could go to Green Lake. He normally is very eager to go to Green Lake, but he was even more relentless and impatient about going due to the fact he had obtained his boater’s safety certificate and wanted to take the Wave Runner out on his own. The weather wasn’t great and I had to clean out the garage and my storage shed, where I keep my mower and other important things, as well as many non important things that should have been thrown out years ago. I also had to make sure the Wave Runner would actually start and had oil in it. Four hours later, and after being asked an uncountable number of times if we were going out to the lake by Aiden, we were on our way. I managed to get the Wave Runner fired up and took it for a short test drive to make sure none of the warning lights went off. I had winterized it and did it based off a Youtube instructional video, skipping many of the possibly important steps along the way. I handed it off to Aiden and he came back and summoned me claiming it was smoking, which it was. I took it out again, burned off what I assumed was oil (white smoke) and handed it back off to him.

Shirley and I were putting new carpet on one of the wood bunks on the wave runner shore station. Usually when we try to do a project together it’s we but really just me. This time it was both of us and as we toiled away we lost track of Aiden. Eventually it seemed like he had been gone for too long so I went off to ask my cousin’s husband if I could borrow their personal watercraft to see where Aiden was. As I was asking I saw Aiden whip by and was relieved. A few minutes later he came up to us crying and upset. Turns out a wakeboard boat had confronted him about coming too close to their boat. He claims they called him a pussy and that they were filming him. Sadly, it was the first time a strange adult had spoken to him like that. By the time I was his age I had had dozens of encounters with adults that required them to yell at me like that. My first instinct was to get on the wave runner with Aiden and have him point them out to me. I am like a moth to a flame when it comes to conflict and I was going to stir some shit up. Shirley talked me down and we finished up the shore station project and headed home. I stopped and picked up a pizza and when I made it home Shirley informed me that Aiden wasn’t actually legal to be riding the Wave Runner…..by 3 years. When I was a kid you could get your boater’s “license” when you were 12 and that entitled you to drive whatever you wanted, I could have driven a 45 foot scarab with twin 454 engines if I wanted to. I had heard some chatter that they had changed the laws, but hadn’t paid much attention because I wasn’t trying to get my boater’s license.

There are two problems with this latest development. The first being that I had already determined that Aiden being able to ride solo on the Wave Runner was the best thing ever, I would only have to drive the damn thing twice a year, when I put it in and when I take it out. The second problem is that when he is 14 he can legally drive it with a parent accompanying him. It is terrifying letting anyone else drive one of those things when you are the passenger, especially a teenager. There is always a work around that allows one to break the law and get away with it. My work around, which hinges on selling it to Shirley, is me getting a stand up jet ski (I’ve always wanted one) so that Aiden can drive the wave runner by himself still and I will just keep an eye on him. What could go wrong?