Friends, today I wish to speak to you about unreasonable requests. I was speaking to my wife on the phone this morning about allergy skin testing, when I decided to change the subject.

“Cheryl, I need to get going. I’m about to leave work early today… in about 10 minutes. I wanted to try and get the raking done before this weekend, and I’ve got that extra time built up from court running long this week. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to get some stuff done at home.”

“Oh, that sounds good. After you get done with that why don’t you….”

As the immortal Dicky V. might say, “I need a T.O. baby!”

As far as I’m concerned raking is the Everest of yard work details. There is no “after” you get done with raking, unless you’re talking about a little horizontal time with your favorite pillow. The problem we have here is that one of us is a little out of touch, and John’s got just thing to put us back in perceptive sync.

I think it’s high time my wife did a little raking.