The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

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June 15, 2009

Mike Pound: Nothing day turns out to be something

By Mike Pound

Globe columnist

mpound@joplinglobe.com

At about 10:30 Sunday morning, I decided to give my lawn mower the day off.

I didn’t give my lawn mower the day off because it had started raining, although that would have been a convenient excuse. I gave my lawn mower the day off because I decided I didn’t want to mow my lawn.

I mowed our back yard on Saturday, and I had every intention, when I got up Sunday, of mowing my front yard. But sometime between my first cup of coffee on our deck and my second cup of coffee, my intentions changed.

“I don’t intend to mow my front yard. Instead, I intend to do nothing today,” I said to myself.

Ever have a do-nothing day? One of those days when you decide to pack it in? A long time ago, when I was going to St. Xavier’s High School in Junction City, Kan., a couple of buddies and I decided we didn’t want to go to school, so we didn’t. This was despite the fact that we were at school when we decided we didn’t want to go to school. What we did was walk out of the school, climb into Brad Becker’s car and drive away. We spent the day driving around Milford Lake listening to a Led Zeppelin tape on Brad’s 8-track player (I told you it was a long time ago).

We knew we were going to get in big trouble later (and we did, by the way), but we didn’t care.

See, sometimes a man just has to unwind.

When it started raining Sunday morning, I moved off the deck and into our porch and finished reading the paper. Later, my wife walked out onto the porch.

Wife: What you are doing today?

Me: Nothing.

Wife: That sounds like fun. I think I will do that too.

I guess my wife wanted to unwind a bit too.

Of course, my wife’s definition of unwinding is a bit different from mine. My wife opted to unwind by going through our 11-year-old daughter Emma’s closet and dresser to get rid of clothes that Emma no longer wears. When I checked on Emma and my wife at noon, Emma was lying on her bed reading, and my wife was standing next to a Yao Ming-sized pile of clothes. What my wife would do was find an item of clothing and hold it up so Emma could see it. Emma would let my wife know if she still wears the item. If Emma did still wear the item, it went back into a drawer or the closet. If she didn’t, the item went into the Yao Ming pile.

To me, what my wife was doing appeared to be the exact opposite of doing nothing, but I’ve never been one to judge.

Since it had stopped raining, I opted to do nothing by taking a copy of the new Elmore Leonard novel out onto our deck and spending the afternoon reading. Earlier, I had taken a pork butt, on which I had put a dry rub the night before, out of the refrigerator and put it on my smoker, so when I sat down to read, hickory smoke was blowing across the deck.

It was a nice smell.

I spent a couple of hours on the deck reading the Elmore Leonard book. It’s called “Road Dogs,” and like most of his stuff, it’s very good. While I read, I sipped a beer, and the stray cat that has adopted us lay next to the chair in which I was sitting. Every so often, I would get up and check my smoker and, if I needed to, add some wood and charcoal to the fire. Not wanting to waste a trip after I got up to check the smoker, I would also check to see if I needed another beer, and if I did, I would walk inside and get one. So technically, I guess it’s not true that I did nothing on Sunday. I just didn’t do a lot.

Sometime around 2 p.m., my wife and Emma decided they wanted to get some sun, so they put a few blankets out in our back yard and stretched out on them. My wife brought a book out to read, and Emma brought out a couple of whatever magazines 11-year-old girls read. But my wife and Emma didn’t spend as much time reading as they spent talking. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could see them laughing.

“Probably talking about me,” I said to myself.

At one point Sunday afternoon, I put my book down and looked around. A stray cat was asleep at my feet, a cold beer was next to my chair, the smell of hickory was coming out of the smoker, and my wife and daughter were talking and laughing in the yard.

As nothing days go, my Sunday nothing day was something.

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