Making a bed

So time is rushing along and I'm trying to get my work caught up at work because I'm taking annual leave next week because my daughter, Jean, is flying down from Boston to Charleston to spend the week with us...

And the sheets from the guest room are in the dryer after being washed from after Barclay slept on them two weeks ago...

And I don't know what we'll do or where we'll take her...what she likes to eat. And I'm upstairs trying to fill out an on-line college financial aid form for Brian, our son, and it's complicated as heck and I need to ask him some questions, but he's not answering his phone...

And Conner, the grandbaby is downstairs beginning to get fussy and I hear Karen desperately, or at least loudly, trying to entertain him, so I figure I'm still better off working with frustrating government online forms...

And when Jean contacted me by email a little over a year ago after a 22 year gap (She was 10 and now she's 32...long long story), I wrote back and wasn't sure how to sign the letter -- Dad? Mark? The bum who walked out on you? And she suggested that Mark was good because that was how she had been thinking of me. ..

And Saturday afternoon she's getting off a plane. People ask me if I'm excited or nervous. My logical and overly clever mind does some calculations and replies, "I'm 80% excited and 20% nervous." Although I'm probably about 50-50. And maybe I'm mostly nervous. But since I can do all this calculation, I'm probably just repressed and calculating...

And Karen makes a loud but probably printable oath and yells up that Conner has just pooped all over everything and I don't respond and begin to find even greater pleasure in these *%#&ing forms...

And Karen calls up to ask if I want to take Conner or make up the bed since the sheets are dry...

No brainer. I go down, collect the sheets and pillow cases, go upstairs and start making the bed and suddenly it sneaks up behind me and slams me in the chest. I am making a bed for my daughter to sleep in. She's going to call me, Mark. I'm going to call her, Jean -- and not Jeannie Beannie. But I'm making a bed for my daughter and the last time I did it she was ten years old and cute and bubbly and I was about to break her heart. And Saturday afternoon she is getting off a plane and we're going to hug each other and I will probably be irritated at my inability really cry because my face will get all tight and, as usual, I won't really release it...

So I'll probably make some clever comment and we will all laugh.

I spend more than the usual amount of time smoothing the sheets and making sure the pillows are straight.