VA Employee Of The Month–August 2011

VA’s employee of the month at VAMC American Lake, Washington is Edna. Or is it Ethel? I thought it was Maria several weeks ago. I put in my right hearing aid and then discovered next visit it was Edna. Yesterday, I was corrected and I think the appointments clerk said Ethel. No biggee. She is still the neatest dental technician since sliced bread became available. She is efficient and gave me the heads up about grabbing the first appt. of the day @ 0715 hrs when there is plenty of parking and nobody in front of me. But I must say the primary reason I feel she is the EOTM is that she likes vegetables. Yessir. I can unload all my zuccini, summer squash and extra cukes on her and she doesn’t even whimper. After the sugar snap peas Tsunami in June, I’ve rather worn out my welcome here in my neighborhood. I tried something different and planted the pea crop in two phases a month apart. The little bastards got on the PRC-100, communicated with each other and all of them started producing simultaneously.

People routinely close the curtains and refuse to answer the door when I arrive. They reverse direction in my aisle at the Supermarket and abandon their carts. The food bank wants to know if there’s anything else available as their clients are “squashed out”. In fact, my friend’s wives are so veggied out they’re looking positively anorexic. One complained of an exotic disease related to excessive cucumber ingestion and politely begged off.

I am at fault.I am Pro-Life. I cannot bring myself to kill anything that germinates. I just plant it and carry on with the watering and fertilizer. When you have vegetables planted, what do several more entail workwise? The short answer is very little. The long one is finding a home for it all. The squash appears to go from flower to done in 3 days and some of it gets away from me. I found one the size of a football hiding at the bottom under everything. The horse was so intimidated by its size, he wouldn’t go near it.

I’m not even going to talk about the 41 tomato plants that germinated this April nor will I divulge the fact that I control butternut squash futures and plan to manipulate the market this fall. I think I’ll surprise my friends-and Eunice, of course. Maybe its Eurydice?