Call of the wild

I was piddling around in the garage and heard a crash and gasp of pain from our neighbors' house to the west. This couldn't be good, I thought, because by golly the youngest of the two ladies living there is dragging 65 behind her like a renegade pirate being keel-hauled. The oldest woman, the mother of the aforementioned daughter, was sprawled helplessly on the front stoop. She had lost her balance, grabbed a spindly branch of a bush for security, and crashed with it onto the concrete. I asked her politely if there was anything I could do. She let me help her back up, and I made sure she was stable before walking back home. While I felt like a cross between a Boy Scout and Captain America, it was still a little sad and humbling (for me) to have been in that right place at the right time. Give me 50 years and it could be me (they'd better have jet-propelled walkers by then).

Here I am again, like during that incident, home alone without the family. They'll thankfully be back tomorrow – despite the fact I'll have to drive past so many strip joints to get to the airport – I'll be so so glad to see them. I bet the Cutlet's voice has changed by now ('cause that happens to 2-year-olds, right?). I'm always glad to get back to normal, even if the routine can be a little boring or, well, routine. Like most true-blooded males, I revert to bachelorhood/caveman-style living when left to my own devices. It ain't pretty:

• I haven't come within three feet of a bar of soap since Friday morning.
• The tower of dirty plates in the kitchen sink is taller than an angry grizzly.
• The tower of dirty plates in the kitchen sink smells like an angry grizzly.
• The dog has better table manners than I do.
• Oh yeah, the dog is now eating from the table.
• I spend too much time on the Internet. The caveman equivalent is going funky-fresh-crazy with the cave paintings, I guess.
• I look in the mirror and think for a moment that it would be cool if I shaved only half my face.
• I've wrestled with some home projects, even randomly hitting things with a hammer, but haven't gotten anything of substance done.
• Food inventory: two pieces of bread, some milk that looks oddly like cottage cheese, a brown head of lettuce, 3 bottles of lite beer, some raw chicken and a Yumsters yogurt (orange creme flavor) with Dora the Explorer and her friend Boots the Monkey on it.
• There's one roll of toilet paper left. Talk about highway to the danger zone, people.
• Our bedroom floor has become the laundry "hamper" and stuff is "sorted" into little "piles" of smelly wearables.
• Despite having had our house sprayed for bugs (a necessity in Tejas, for sure), I found a water roach the size of a '59 Cadillac in the shower. I valiantly squashed it with one of my wife's shoes, and then haven't cleaned it up.
• I mowed half the lawn (that may be where I got the shaving-half-my-face idea).
• I washed my truck, because nothing says "taking care of business" quite like a beat up, 10-year-old SUV that you can see your reflection in.
• I've put a little fun where it counts in the form of riding my bicycle. I do this anyway, but the rides have been longer and more random.
• I stay up too late, which puts me in the position of yet again missing church.

This time, however, I'm gonna make it. I owe it to the old lady next door. And myself.