Making Do

You know how when MoSup goes off on her class reunion, and I immediately, despite my most determined other-wising, revert to bachelorhoodity?  And when she calls and says she's reached Tappahannock on her way home, and I spring into a frenzy of cleaning, washing and picking up?  Well, she hasn't called from Tappahannock yet, but she will soon, and, holy mother of God, I bent over to tie my boots this morning and snap!  I threw my back out in a major way.  Srsly, while I am sitting in my computer chair right now, even moving to engage the Caps Lock key sends a jolt through me.  Most people in this state would be screaming out an open window, "Help, I've fallen and can't get up," but I am a warrior and will not!.  Instead, I will spend this time setting the scene so that when she does get home, I will receive her approbation for suffering through instead of her  going into a sullen silence while she bangs loudly about in the kitchen, clanging dishes (and my good knives) and thrown into the dishwasher; and then storming into the den picking up strewn socks and underpants;  and without asking "can I run the vacuum cleaner?,"  fires up the old Hoover that sounds like a jet engine and, one which pitch causes me excruciating pain, which she knows is an audio form of water boarding for me.  You know how that is? But no.  When she arrives home, she will find me laying on the floor, with a six day growth of beard, a broom in my hand and dust pan not far away.  A scene not unlike the Marine who covered for his platoon and was later found with a .45  clutched in his hand, empty, with 8 Japanese troops, dead – three of them with bullet-holes in the middle of their forehead.  And I will have peach pie served to me, and a back rub. I am not making this up.