On a normal Memorial Day weekend Saturday, my kids would already be at the pool, there to remain until 9 PM. My older son would be working his first lifeguard shift of the summer. And now that I remember, my younger son would maybe be working his first lifeguard shift ever. He was supposed to get his certification in March, but his class was cancelled just like everything else. I’d be doing some swim team work, then a little bit of housework, and then I too would be packing my swim bag and heading to the pool to see my friends and celebrate summer, my all-too-short favorite season.
But it’s still summer. I’m still wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The windows are open and the breeze is blowing, and the sun is streaming in and it’s a three-day weekend. Maybe I’ll have a drink later. Maybe I’ll have a drink now. There’s nothing stopping me.
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It’s Sunday morning now, late Sunday morning heading toward Sunday afternoon. It seems less summery today. There’s no sun. Well, there’s obviously a sun because the earth is not pitch-dark and frozen over, but it's not blazing overhead.
I didn’t do very much yesterday other than reading and walking and hanging around. We all hung around, and it wasn’t a bad way to spend a day. A holiday weekend always feels like a pause in regular life and so it doesn’t really bother me that nothing is normal now. Talk to me on Tuesday. I won’t be so sanguine.
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It's Monday now, Memorial Day. When I wrote this yesterday, I didn’t know what to do with myself, but my company’s proposal manager solved the problem for me, and I spent most of Sunday afternoon and part of the early evening rewriting past performance content. The section that I had to rewrite wasn’t badly written, it was just all wrong from a just-the-facts standpoint. So I fixed it. When I finally finished, I was cross-eyed and tired, and missing Thomas Cromwell and the Tudors; so I poured a glass of wine and rejoined Henry VIII and his courtiers as they discussed how to handle Robert Aske and the rest of the Pilgrims. Right now, Henry is promising safe conduct to Aske if he’ll just come to Windsor to negotiate. And I don’t have a direct line to Aske but if I did, I’d advise him not to fall into that trap because it’s not going to end well for him.
But 16th century gentlemen didn’t take advice from women, especially women of common origins, so he’s on his own. He can take his chances with Henry and the Lord Privy Seal. Maybe if he’s lucky, the execution will be a quick beheading with a sharp axe.
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Do you want to know who doesn’t get safe-conduct; not from York to London and not from Antwerp to Calais and DEFINITELY NOT from my house to my backyard or anywhere else? Mice, that’s who. Yes, the little fuckers are back and I do not grant them diplomatic immunity and I will not offer a pardon, not even if they pledge loyalty and recant their grievous heresies.
It’s probably just one mouse, actually. We saw evidence of its presence on Saturday, and then my son saw the actual creature, IN MY HOUSE, on Saturday night. It was very small, he said, so it might even be a vole. Did I not give them fair warning? Did I not state expressly and without qualification that this warning would be their only warning? They probably failed to read my blog that day, but as in Henry’s time, ignorance of the law is not an excuse. The mouse or mice or vole or voles are condemned as surely as Robert Aske and all of the rest of the rebels and eventually Thomas Cromwell himself. I might lure them to engage in peace talks, dangling false promises of clemency, but once they’re on my territory, their fate is in my hands.
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So yes, Memorial Day has come and gone, and it’s officially summer, and we’re still on lockdown, and someone has to pay. I’m going to post notices around the house, to give them one last warning. It’s them against me, and I don’t like their chances.
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