Screw in the New Tank

I’ll get some meat to grill.  That’ll be the thing.  I’m stuck here in line at the ATM.  It’s in a butcher shop and I glance over and convince myself buying meat and fish is something that I should do, before leaving.  I get a few beef cutlets and a side of salmon.  My older one had been asking for salmon for some time. 

“Dad, I have plans for tonight.”  “I see.  Can I make it for you, for lunch?”  “I’m not really into fish for lunch.”  “Maybe when you come home late?”  I need to make dinner for the little one, but she and her friend want mac & cheese, which is easy enough to dispense with.  In the dark, with the mosquitos, and a light that isn’t working, I tried to screw in the new tank of gas in the grill.  It isn’t going in.  I try to screw the other direction.   Twisting, for naught.  Change direction. Brace the tank against my leg and try the other direction.  Again.  Spin it the other way, then.   The remains of the kids Mac & Cheese and zucchini and hot dogs was starting to look rather more appetizing than it did when I set out to do all this screwing.

My younger daughter and her friend are in the other room watching “Poltergeist.”   They are enraptured, terrified.  I was hoping it was the “original” which is about as ancient as “Psycho” was for my generation, I suppose.  No, this one just came out.  Of course.  Why else would you be aware of it?  My daughter’s friend pronounces it with a soft-‘g’, in a knowing way.  I say it with a hard-‘g’ and we discuss this.  It appears that they are marketing the soft-‘g’ version for the redux. 

Later, after they’ve been thoroughly frightened and are too scared to go any where in the house, we trade notes.  Girl sucked into a TV?  Check.  Boy counts the time between the lightening and the thunder till the tree reaches in and grabs him? – Check.  The housing complex is built on a graveyard?  “No.”  “Really?”  Hmm.  That is, alas, what is most oddly appropriate about the plot and our current villa complex.   Best not to think too much about what these places are built on top of.  Dead people are likely the least of our worries.