Ralf Kircher: List of chores accumulates while gone

In my absence, the hedges, darn them, have continued to sprout, one dog now requires daily medication, and the bills have accumulated at a rate that somehow seems faster, seeing them all towering on the kitchen counter rather than trickling in piecemeal.

While it was awfully thoughtful of the long distance company to inquire as to my whereabouts, it would have been even nicer of them when they welcomed me home not also to remind me that I'd failed to remit a $27 payment in the rush before my departure.

A simple accounting slip-up, I explain in a note to the machine that will open my payment. The machine won't take notice, but it just feels better to lend an air of civility to the process. Might as well take the high road.

On the subject of ailing dog, which I came home to find, she has not been a very good patient, it was reported to me. She simply refuses to take her pills.

Discussion with the dog on this subject I have found to be as fruitful as handwritten correspondence with the long distance company, although with the dog, I detect a certain greater appreciation than with the long distance company.

The old pill-wrapped-in-cheese technique has not been successful for the administration of medicine. The dog's taste buds are apparently too acute and are able to sort the flavor of antibiotic capsule from American, Swiss, provolone, even brie cheeses. All were tried with equal failure, and as much as it might make the good master's chest swell with the pride of having a dog with such discriminating tastes, there was still the task at hand of somehow getting pill into dog.

And so topping the list of chores every 12 hours and preferably after meals is the feat of prying open mouth and cramming pill down throat of ailing dog. It is a chore as distasteful to dog as it is to master, from what I can gather by her grimace and my bitten hands. For an old, sick dog, she can still defend herself admirably. Whether she exhibits the same agility when defending her master is a question that fortunately has yet gone unanswered.

These chores are all part of the homecoming process. Next up on the list are those hedges that have seemed to taken a dislike to me in my absence. Each day as the sun sets while I stare out the office window, those hedges must be giving a little extra effort purely out of spite to appear more scraggly and gangly than when I left in the bright promising morning.

I have little doubt that the morning is not far off when the hedges grab me as I leave for work as if to ask, "Where do you think you're going, mister?" I'll try to wrest myself from the situation, pleading for a time until a weekend day comes free. To trim them after work in the dark would be like giving a haircut in the closet -- they wouldn't like that, now, would they?

The hedges have thus far held off, the long distance company is temporarily appeased, and the dog, God love her, isn't holding a grudge. But I've got a busy weekend of chores.

E-mail Ralf E. "Ted" Kircher at rekircher@naplesnews.com.