Up with The Concrete Guys this morning! Okay, not really. I'm going to put that off for a coupla hours, since I have to dig/mix/pour all by my lonesome. But we were up with The Crying Sickly Children this morning. Okay, so I didn't exactly get up, per se, rather I was merely awoken. Mrs. Ditchman did all the getting up, managing, and handling. I just lay there, thankful that she is such an attentive, conscientious mother.

So attentive and conscientious, in fact, that she chided me for yesterday's blog post. She doesn't often mention the blog around the house (leaving me wondering constantly about its own significance) so I take it seriously when it comes up. She said that she didn't like me referring to our friend Massimo as The Winemaker. "But he is the winemaker!" I cried. I think she was just annoyed that I had taken our family buddy and turned him into some sort of cultish, messianic figure defined by his vocation. I thought about it for a bit and came to the conclusion that I might be insulted if I was consistently referred to as The Blogger, or The Writer, or The Contractor, or worse: The Aluminum Patio Fabricator, even if it was in a cultish and messianic context. (Although, The Fabricator has a nice superhero ring to it. I think I would find it entertaining and funny if everyone started calling me The Fabricator. Feel free. "Look! In the backyard! It's a builder! It's an inventor! No! It's just a guy making sh!t up! It's... The Fabricator!") So I want to apologize for it: Sorry, Massimo. You will now be referred to only as The Italian Brother.

Thus ends our daily retraction.

[I want to add that I resisted the temptation to refer to Mrs. Ditchman as The Nagger, which had a comical ring to it, but I am wise enough to know that my new nickname as a result would soon be The Sufferer.]

It occurred to me how, interestingly, some vocations just become part of your name, like when you're a priest or a doctor, but become a General Contractor and no one ever calls you "Sir." Then it occurred to me, I wasn't a General Contractor as in "army officer of a very high rank," but rather a General Contractor as in "not specialized or limited in range of subject, application, and activity." And then I got kinda bummed out and wondered what all that extensive licensing was for.

Oh, I know exactly what it was all for: it was so I could go out and dig a bunch of holes today. I would call myself The Digger, but that name is already taken. Poor guy. Currently he is more apt to go by the moniker: The Snot Bearer.


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