Saturday mornings, man.

You wake up early, and you are just rip-roarin’ and ready to go. Which is funny, as, the day prior it took every ounce of strength I had to get up and outta bed and drag my corpse down to the shop to make stuff. And I usually spring out of bed on Fridays.

But not on Saturday. I had a list and I was gonna accomplish every item on it before sundown.

The main push was to handle all Groundskeeping Duties at the ranch. Here’s what the list looked like:

01. Mow everything with the analog mower.
02. Give it all a good rake.
03. Prune the overhanging trees in the back yard.
04. Weed the front, sides and back of the house.
05. Edge the front lawn.
06. Weed wack the fuck out of whatever was above an inch high.
07. Sweep the driveway.
08. Install a new hose and hose rack.
09. Clear out some nasty rose bushes beneath the back fence.
10. Straighten up the garage.
11. Clean up the recycling station.
12. And bundle up all debris into my yard waste bins.

Okay, so after a quick stop at the Park Rose True Value to grab some tools, weed whack oil and some bitchin’ high-tensile pruners I was off to the races. Hell, I had half the list completed by 10am, sweating like a pig, wheezin’ and cussin’.

And then, while digging up some rocks near the back steps, I saw a little Roly Poly rolling up, and in that instant, the whole world just sorta slowed down all around me.

This little bug, rolled up in a little ball, defending itself like it did a grillion years ago. A perfect design. So beautiful. So efficient. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

And my thinker was flooded with a million things. Things like the “marvels of evolution” and “our place in the grande scheme of things” and “whether or not that little creature had a soul” and “whether or not I had a soul” and “did it think like I think?” and “what did it look like to look up at me, looking down at him?” and “how funny those stubborn creationists are” and “if you tried hard enough, you could trace his ancestry all the way back to the dawn of time” and “what created him?” and “what created me?” and “how much time do we have?” and “what happens when we die” and other festive topics.

All in a couple seconds.

And I felt honored to have the little fella in my backyard and for whatever it was worth, felt connected to him or “it” or “all of this” that much more. Just by turning over a rock.

Then I went back to weed-whackin’ and kicked the shit out of whatever was in my path. Ask Dale.