Help Wanted.

NB.That is Fabio on top of the house.











I was talking with Tony at the corner store the other day. I was saying how much respect I had for single mothers. He said that he had none. He complained of them bilking the system. I was like what if they are widowed? He had sympathy in that case. Abandoned? Maybe, depends. No matter how they arrived at their station, I have nothing but respect. The sheer enormity of the task! It requires two people. When you do it alone, you are severely understaffed.

I have been doing it alone for 2 weeks now and have 4 more to go. Fabio! I miss him. He is such a help. Everything works better when he is around. Eddie's bowl is always full (don't worry, I am not starving the boy, it is just now I have to think about it).
A light bulb is only out for as long as it takes to screw a new one in. I sit in the dark for days.

Honestly, Fabio makes this house run like a top. I cook, I clean but I don't fix things, I don't avert crisis. I tend not to think too far in advance. Fabio does all that. He revels in being the provider. He tries to explain things to me but I don't listen. He repeats himself so often that I figure I will catch it the next time. Eventually it sticks, but not before some avoidable disaster. I should change my tact.


He had a running list of things to go over in his absence. He didn't sleep for days before he left. He was a bundle of nerves. He was so worried about the snow. He SHOULD have been worried about the snow! We have been socked 3 times since he left.
Let's hear it for good neighbors.

A week before he left it snowed and we went sledding at North Providence High School. The kids had so much fun. Fabio spent the entire time worrying about how we would manage all this fun when he was in Hawaii for 6 weeks.

That night it rained and rained. When we woke up all of the snow was gone and it was almost warm. I heard Fabio puttering around in the garage. We have two cars. One is this ugly mauve Ford Windstar mini van that I absolutely HATE to drive and the other is this ugly little Nissan that I don't mind driving. These are my punishments for wrecking 3 Volvos in 4 years time. That was almost 5 years ago and I haven't had an accident since, it was a weird time for me.

Fabio called me outside, he knows I hate that mini van. He had stuffed one of the 2 inflatable sleds in the back seat of the Nissan, and he showed me how to safely strap 2 boys in. The other sled was sticking out of the trunk. He wanted to show me how to carefully lay a towel across the sled and pull the trunk down with a bungee cord. As he was doing this,our neighbor walked by and said, "Hate to disappoint you kids, but the snow is all gone."