Midsummer minion madness

Summer is half over--half! And I haven't come close to doing half of what I need to do. Clearly, I need help. Where are my minions?

I need one set of minions to locate, scan, and send all the documents required to refinance my mortgage, and they have to be happy working in sub-human conditions because the air conditioning in my office building is on the fritz and it's really hard to breathe in there without gills.

I need another set of minions to take care of all the paperwork required in the current round of Musical Cars: I'm buying one car, selling another, and transferring a third over to my son's name. I need minions to find titles, find a notary, collect money, borrow money, arrange insurance, and buy tags--not to mention signing my life away on the loan document.

I need yet another set of minions to mediate between the mortgage refinance people and the car-loan people, who seem to be competing for my loyalty and my credit, and to deal with the legions of phone solicitors who have taken sudden interest in my willingness to borrow money.

Yesterday I needed minions to scout out a good place to launch my canoe in the Little Muskingum River, because the Muskingum itself was too high for canoeing and my guidebook is apparently out of date, promising a boat launch on the Little Muskingum where no boat launch currently exists. The place we eventually found to launch required some scrambling down a steep, muddy bank on a narrow path surrounded by poison ivy, and then the Little Muskingum was so tangled with fallen logs that we had to stop and turn around after paddling upstream only about an hour. We enjoyed the peace, the ducks, and the historic covered bridge, but a handful of minions could have bridged (ha!) the gap between our guidebook and the real world.

I need minions in the garden to hold the baling twine while I tie up tomato plants and to help me distinguish between weeds and beans--or better yet, let them do the weeding themselves while I go wandering off in search of kingfishers.

And of course I need minions to overhaul my Sports Literature class, create a new version of freshman composition just for Mass Media students, and find the anthology I seem to have misplaced somewhere in my office. But again, they'd better have gills. And they'd better come quickly because in case you haven't noticed, the summer is half over.