{The Helping Hand?}

I’m back! Did you think I’d given up? After the hordes of fan mail begging me to update the blog, I decided to get back in the saddle. Oh, no one sent any fan mail?  My bad.

One thing I’ve come to find since moving in with grandpa is how awfully helpful he can be. Literally. Awfully helpful.

It’s true … he does attempt to make my bed when I’ve left it a mess after waking up before the birds to go to work. That’s cute. But I draw the line at saving used garbage bags. Each day, after grandpa takes out the trash, I take out the garbage bag. This action requires much stealth. I can’t simply grab the bag and say, “Hey grandpa, I’m just gonna throw this away, too. You know, it’s okay to toss the bag with the trash. We have more bags and I’m happy to buy them if that will clear your waste-not conscience.”

But no. If grandpa catches me taking the bag, he throws me a suspicious glance and says, “I already took out the trash.”

And I say, “Well, it’s sometimes good to take the bag, too. Actually, it’s always good to take out the bag.”

And he says, “Oh no. Your nose is too sensitive.”

Woe is me, to be cursed with this hypersensitive sniffer. {It’s often the cause of my distress in this house.}

Grandpa also helps out by going to the grocery store. Now this really can be helpful…except when grandpa’s memory fails and he buys all of the same stuff. For instance, after grandpa’s latest grocery store venture, I’m faced with the challenge of eating 10 lbs. of Idaho’s finest Russet Burbank potatoes. But no fear. I cranked up the oven on the hottest day of the year and we had baked potatoes for dinner. To make things better, I didn’t realize grandpa was “helping” to cool off the house by opening the backdoor. The 97-degree summer breeze really made things easy for the Little Air Conditioner That Could. {That’s what I’ve started calling the poor AC unit. Every day it rallies through grandpa’s helpful hand – "I think I can, I think I can." What really dampens its spirit is when the grandpa turns it off and pulls on a sweater as the temperature drops to a frigid 82 degrees.} Nothing sounds better than a steaming hot spud while soaking in your own sweat, right?

But grandpa seemed to enjoy the meal …  except for the part when he said, “Nevertheless, that was a good dinner.” What does that mean? Nevertheless? Nevertheless what? We weren't talking about anything, so I'm not sure where the "Nevertheless" came from or where it was directed. Oh well. At least he said it was good.

Grandpa then allowed me to clean up the dishes and put away leftovers while he went to his burrow to watch the World Series of Poker, Greco-Roman wrestling or the Hutterites. {Those are just a few of his favorite programs.} This is good because I can monitor where the dirty dishes go and what scraps are saved. But his helpful hand didn’t leave with him. When I went for a plastic baggie, I found a used fried chicken bag in the drawer. You know, just in case we wanted to reuse that to hold a sandwich or something.  

Oh, grandpa. 

I like help, but maybe this whole experience is to force me into becoming more independent. Jordan's probably behind the whole thing ... no worries, I'll resist.

So this week’s lesson? Conserve! {Or throw away all that you can while the old man’s not looking…}