The weekend is in the bag! Woe to the man whose Monday feels like a Friday, feels like another Monday! I've got, like, ten patio covers to build this weak [sic] and all of them behind schedule. It didn't help that no one really got much sleep last night.

Another Home Show, another set of work -or at least one hopes. I wondered for half a second yesterday how many Home Shows we have done since we started the family business, and then I immediately decided not to count. Too depressing. And I was angry about it yesterday as I drove down there to the Del Mar Fairgrounds. I was thinking: I'm sick of these Home Shows. I'm sick of building these stupid patio covers. I'm sick of these kids screaming at me all day long. I'm sick of not having any time to myself to do all the things that are really important to me like playing video games and drinking beer. And I'm sick of Sunset Magazine telling me where the 50 Best Campsites in the West are because, guess what? I already KNOW where the fifty best campsites in the west are and that's not my problem -and that's when I remembered how much more miserable I was before all of this, back when I was single and just sitting around all day playing video games and drinking beer. And then presto! my attitude just changed -it suddenly burst like an ugly little bubble! Pop! A conscious perspective change, and then I felt better. On the way home, the Little Ditchman threw up all over herself. A couple times.

When I got the call for help I immediately thought SWINE FLU! No, seriously: crowded public area near the Mexican border... lots of handshaking... twenty miles from the Hot Zone... within the time frame of incubation... Then my own psychosomatic reaction: pain in the lower back, a rush of blood to the head, itchy throat, cough, cough... Mrs. Ditchman recited what the kid had for lunch, since she was mopping up the barf, and Granny said aloud that "maybe it was a bad pickle." So all night it was the Little Ditchman following me around all accusatory: "Daddy, did you give me a bad pickle?" Me, I didn't think pickles went bad -what with all that salt and vinegar! Aren't they still eating the pickles that the slaves packed for Thomas Jefferson? Aww, hell's bells, I don't know. Bad Dad strikes again.

Anyway, we're all fine now, which is more than I can say for those in the local Hot Zone. Swine Flu! Sounds terrible. Sounds like something you'd get if you were bedding down with pigs in the Tijuana River. Not like "Avian Flu" which sounds practically angelic by contrast, though I know it happens to be more deadly. One thing for sure, flu is not something this family needs this week. We're all stocked up here.

Gotta go. My mouse just broke.


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