A Long Day

Yesterday was a long day.  There was work and violin lesson, late meetings and another trip to the grocery store.  We finally got home around 8:30 p.m. I had promised the kids I would make them spaghetti and meat sauce, so I started cooking the pasta.  When the angel hair was delightfully al dente, I proceeded to the sink to drain it.  My daughter, who was helping me cook, was talking to me and somehow as I was bringing the pasta over to the bowl, we bumped.  In slow motion, I watched the noddles squirm out of the colander. I tried to catch them but they only swam to the floor faster.  There on the floor in a steaming pile, sat our dinner.  "Quick, Mom, get them."  I felt a little uneasy serving my kids noodles that had just been all over my not too clean kitchen floor.   So we all stared at them for a moment.  The kids wondered if I might lose it and decide we were all going to eat cereal instead.  But I started laughing and reached for another noodle box. By the time dinner was done, I was exhausted.
 The kids started getting ready for bed and the phone rang.  It was my 89 year old grandpa.  He sounded tired too.  "How ya doing Gramps?"  I asked.
"Well, Tiger, (he has called me Tiger ever since I can remember), I'm awfully tired.  It's terrible I don't seem to have much energy these days",  he said.
"Well, what have you been doing? "  I asked a little concerned.
"You know that pine tree out in the front yard, it got hit by lightening last year, so I chopped it down today and I hauled the wood in the wheelbarrow to the back.  Then I started making a raised planting bed in its place.  You should see it.  I think it will look real nice." He said, excited now about his future planting space.
"Wow Gramps, that sounds like a lot of work. All I did was go to work and make dinner", I said.
"I know but I used to be able to do so much more",  he sighed.  Then I remembered him telling me how he hand dug the foundation for his house with a shovel back in 1946.  He spent 3 weeks digging, every night after work. Finally, he had a large enough area to build a house with his own hands for his young family.  All of a sudden I didn't feel like my day had been all that long.

Kathy