sun may 2
I am generalizing, of course, but …
If you ask a woman what she wants for her birthday, she won’t tell you.
She won’t hold back on what she doesn’t want, though. A washing machine, for example, would not be a good choice.
Fast forward to the other day, when I was on my hands and knees putting in bookcases I’d built out of boards from the barn. I was moving furniture and rugs, and exposing thick layers of crud, cursing, and thinking this whole thing would be a whole lot easier if we had a high quality handheld battery operated vacuum cleaner.
But Noooo. We’ve got a giant clunker of a corded canister on wheels, with a broken baton.
Well I’ve got a birthday coming up, and you know what I want?
I let her know. Nothing subtle.
fri may 7
I was still rearranging furniture in my office and I decided the rug needed to be shook out. Well, you don’t just stand on the stoop and ‘shake out’ a 9×12 rug, and it took me awhile to figure out what to do.
It finally dawned on me that, even in this day and age, there are still problems you can solve by beating it with a stick. And that’s what I did.
It felt good.
sat may 8
We noticed a bird nesting in a fan exhaust next door. Not good.
Yes, I should have covered the holes when I put them in, but I didn’t, so I set up a ladder on the roof of the shed, leaned it against the house, and braced myself for some high altitude labor.
It was a bitch. The nest, when I pulled it out, had 5 baby birds in it, which made me feel really bad. At one point, I was atop the ladder, atop the shed, with a 13 gallon shop-vac in one hand, wrangling a 16′ hose with the other, and I still couldn’t clear the whole line.
I’ll think of something…
Two days later, after I’d “thought of something,” the birds had already filled the pipe back up with straw. Between a much-improved stick-with-a-nail-in-the-end-of-it, and a much-improved suction adapter, the birds never had a chance.
Bye bye birdy
wed may 12
It’s spring time, when minds turn to yard chores and motorcycles.
I have half a dozen gas cans that I use around the house, and most of them usually have gas in them.
The weather’s been nice, so I filled up the Suzuki and took a couple joy rides.
The lawn’s gotten long, so I filled up the lawn mower and Mary mowed the lawn.
A tree fell in the woods, so I filled up the chainsaw and cut up the log
And suddenly, all my gas cans were empty. So I went to the gas station, lined all 7 of my gas cans up in front of the pump, and filled them up.
It turns out that today was the very day the malware attack shut down the big pipeline (if you recall) and a panicked population rushed to hoard as much gasoline as they could.
Which explains some of the skeptical looks I got at the gas station.
fri may 14
On my birthday, the apple blossoms began to bloom.
Another day, another deceased donkey. Poor Lisa.
It being my birthday, and Mary being Mary, I found the path to my chair blocked by a pile of wrapped presents. I sat down and focused my Spidey sense on the pile, taking in the shape, size, and heft of each box, while folding context and history into the puzzle.
“Book, chocolate, underwear, cordless vacuum cleaner,” I said to myself.
Then I sat down and opened them up.
Book, chocolate, underwear, cordless vacuum cleaner.
“I got the next size up,” she says.
wed may 19
A couple years ago, a couple big trees blew down behind the pond. Their combined rootballs were 6 feet high, 30 feet across, and ugly. From the pond, it looked like the trees were mooning me. Something had to be done, so I cut off the trunks and then watched the rootballs settle back into the ground for a few years.
That still left the trees laying there, ugly and in the way, and the plan was to ‘eventually’ cut them up.
Well ‘eventually’ caught up. I’ve been working in the woods all week and … it’s a lot of work.
I think I’ve finally got the knack for this chainsaw thing, though, because I cut up 11 trees with just one chain, and I didn’t get the blade stuck once.
I did, however, manage to lose my beloved blue coffee cup until an all-out search-and-rescue operation located it the next day.
Site C
I rented a splitter and towed it to the first pile of cut-up-logs. The plan was to tow the splitter across the meadow and through the woods to grandmother’s house
No. Wait. …
through the woods, pile to pile, splitting as I went, and then exit the woods without ever having to back up.
Did it work perfectly? No.
Did the splitter get stuck and end up upside down leaking gas onto the forest floor?
Just once.
Did I get stuck in the mud?
Close. Very close.
But in the big picture, my plan worked perfectly. I even got a refund on the splitter.
Wed may 25
I went to an auction. My first in the covid era.
Some old guy collected antique sewing machines and tinkered in his metal shop until he keeled over dead. It sounded interesting, so I ‘went.’
For about a year now, auctions have moved online, and it’s just not the same as on-site. Before, you’d go and check out the stuff and the people, and then you’d bid against the people for the stuff. Now, “there’s an app for that,” and you’ve got to go way out of your way to see any people or any stuff before you bid. I miss the stuff. And I miss the people.
Anyway … I entered a bunch of bids, lost most of them, but ended up ‘winning’ a cutoff saw. Which means I’ve gotta actually show up 100 miles away and pick up my saw.
Which means a whole half a day of driving. Maybe this saw is not such a bargain after all?
So I decided to turn the chore into an adventure, and I picked up the saw on the motorcycle. The saw was a little bigger than I remembered, but I lashed it down good on the back of the bike, and drove it home.
I took back roads down, and back roads back, and it took me most of the day, and you can’t beat the scenery, but I can’t quite believe I did that all day, every day for 36 straight days two years ago. I can’t wait to do that again.
Mon may 31
A moment of silence, please.
Thank you.
She’ll be driving any day now.
A couple nights ago, we were outside watching the sky, when a cluster of lights came into view overhead and headed straight off toward the horizon.
I’ve seen fireworks, fireflies, birds, planes, satellites, meteors, lightning, and even a fireball once. This was nothing I had ever seen before. Whoa! Holy Shit! Adrenaline kicked in. I started making mental notes. I put my wine glass down and headed onto the lawn for a better look. It disappeared silently into the southern sky, and the gears in my head were spinning like a gyro.
As it turns out, I’m pretty sure what we saw was a Starlink satellite cluster that had just been released from it’s booster.
But I felt like — I wish it had been something else.