Bless the Hands of a Working Man

Yesterday morning I settled down for my chair nap at 5:30 a.m. I had my chair nap accouterments at the ready on the table at my right. Bubba cup of ice water. TV/DISH remote. Puffs With Lotion. That's all I need, really, to kick back in the La-Z-Boy and grab 20 ZZZZs while Hick is in the shower and The Pony is taking his last half-hour snooze.

Of course Hick has to come to stand beside my reclined head to say goodbye. I wouldn't mind if he didn't. Like those weekend mornings when he disappears at 6:00 and comes home around 2:00, after allegedly getting a haircut. But no. He likes to say goodbye, which is not so much about how much he loves me and misses me and wishes he could spend the entire day with me, in fact how great it would be if there were 25 hours in a day instead of 24. Nope. He mainly wants me to know how much he hates his job, and can't wait another year and three months to retire, and how he doesn't dislike work so much as he dislikes his place of employment, even though (says Val) it has done him well for nigh on 25 years, what with us not wanting for nothing, bills paid, kids insured, college educations not a hardship for them, him raking in twice the valedictorian's salary.

Anyhoo...Hick's presence discombobulates Val, him standing there in the dark, a silhouette against the undercabinet kitchen lights in the background, and her head turned to gaze upon his belt buckle gets her inner ear (freshly returned from its holiday at death's door) all out of whack, making the reclining Val feel a bit off-kilter. So it really should come as no surprise to hear that Val, upon reaching for the remote to turn on the TV for a bit of light (and the intro to the first episode of Parking Wars), accidentally knocked that remote off the table and into the underworld of La-Z-Boy bottom, undertable boxes, and possible lost donuts and banana peels (Hick's, not Val's).

"Oh! Could you please pick up my remote? I'm so comfy under my afghan. I don't want to get up just yet."

"Huuuuuuhhhhhh." Not so much a word, as a long-suffering exhalation.

Hick tried. He knelt down. Retched (his word for reached) around and patted the carpet. Couldn't find the remote.

"Huuuuuuhhhhhh." Not so much Val's word, as a long-suffering exhalation. "That's okay. I'll get up and look for it. You can go to work."

But no. Hick, my sweet baboo, stumped around to the front of the table. Got out his cell phone. And turned on the light attachment. That's how I think of it. A light attachment. Like a tool on a Swiss Army Knife. My phone doesn't have a flashlight. But The Pony's does. I think I'm getting the short end of the stick when cell phones are ordered. I'm like the 19th kid, who gets the hand-me-downs that have gone out of style and come back around. Except cell phones, not so much.

"EEEEEEEE!" Hick's phonelight shone directly through my pupils and burned its way through my retinas. "Stop! You're blinding me!"

"I'm just looking for your remote, Val."

"I didn't drop it in my EYE! I dropped it on the floor." And with that, Hick knelt down again, and honed in on his search. He found the remote immediately.

"Here you go."

"As long as you have that light out, would you mind looking at the bottom of my foot? You know. While I have it up there at face level on the recliner footrest? I swear there's something in the bottom of my foot. Just under that big toe bunion. Near the middle. The Pony looked yesterday with a magnifying glass, and he said there's nothing in it. Last Wednesday, as I came out of the bathroom to wake you up, I felt something go in my foot. Something on the rug. Like a needle. Or a staple. Or something you dragged in on your pantsleg from the goat pen."

"Huuuuuuhhhhhh." Not so much a word, as a long-suffering exhalation. Hick shone his phonelight over the undersurface of my foot. "No. I don't see anything."

"I don't know how both of you can say that! It feels like something is stabbing me through the bottom of my foot. I can run my hand along there and pinpoint the place that hurts. It even hurts when I'm laying in bed on my side and put the other foot on top of it. It hurts on the bottom. In that same place. When I bend it sideways to look, I can't see anything. But my glasses are terrible, you know."

"Well, I don't see anything. And The Pony didn't see anything. I've got to go to work."

 Yeah. Val is great at getting her man all pumped up to go to work in the morning.

[Where the title came from]