The prize of happiness

Now and again I make myself a cup of coffee and take time to sit down and just think about this and that. It is quite useful as I am probably one of the most distracted people I know of; I forget things which should be obvious and I just need that time of reflection to remember.

I went to town today to get new flower pots. I had a lovely arrangement of Margarites at my front door, but I had planted them in buckets of zink, and no draining… totally thoughtless (even though it looked ever so idyllic) considering the weather here: they were swimming, if not in fact drowning, so I had to get something else to put them in. Something which looks nice and has a couple of holes in the bottom for drainage.

My youngest son and I went to the store and I found just the perfect flower pots and was about to pay,  when my son (who had found one of these brilliant selling ideas: children size shopping carts!) appeared with quite a few items he just had to have: Gargamel and Azrael (he has quite a few Smurfs and needed Gargamel too… and his cat of course), a drinking bottle looking like a piece of Lego, a stick of candy, a pair of socks… and then some. All very necessary and useful. He presented a whole list of very reasonable arguments, so (as I fetched an assumed sigh) I paid for all the items and we went home. I am still not sure who did the best buy. I, who got exactly what I wanted, or he, who got a lot he did not even know he wanted.

When we got home, one of my son’s friends came over. I usually like it when my kids have friends over, but some kids are very enterprising, and that characteristic does not always agree with my level of energy.

They were playing outside on the lawn with all the smurfs and a couple of actionmen, seemingly quite content and settled down, so I went around the house doing my thing.

When I returned, I realized I had misjudged the situation completely:

They had found my lawn mower. Usually I would have been ever so happy for the help, but this time the result was my lavender hedge is gone. I loved that hedge. I only hope it will grow back. A futile hope, perhaps, but still…

You can’t really yell when the intentions are good. I just explained that there was a reason why there was a tiny fence between the grass and the flowerbed.

The boys understood it was not such a good idea to cut vegetation in a garden, which does not look like grass, with a lawn mower.

So, the matter was clarified and I went back to round off my project. Within a couple of minutes it started to rain, so I called the boys inside, reminding them to bring the smurfs and actionmen with them. Toys should not be left outside in the rain if you want to keep them for a while.

The boys watched children’s television while eating candy. (Saturdays are good like that: the only day of the week my kids get all the candy they can possibly eat. It never turns out to be a lot anyway.)

I went outside to check the garden for left behind gardening tools and clothes and found both the remote controlled robots left in the rain, the remote controlled helicopter was left on the trampoline (I realize it looks like a heliport, but still I was dejected) and no less than four teddy-bears sat in the rain looking miserable.

Oh well, they were never told to bring all the toys inside: I should have been more specific…

The friend had to go home because it was dinnertime, so I got him dressed and waved him off.

I had just started cooking dinner when the phone rang. It was the friend’s mother calling to thank me for the wonderful afternoon her son had spent at my house, and the huge bouquet of yellow and red tulips was just stunning! Her children were not allowed to pick flowers in her garden, so she was overwhelmed with my generosity…

Shopping with my son cost me more money, but the raid on my garden cost me more grief: The tulips would have adorned my garden for at least two more weeks, and then another week in vases inside, but perhaps the mother’s joy was worth the prize I paid. For some strange reason I do not think she is too accustomed to the feeling.