Category Archives: Personal

One thing leads to another

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Some tasks aren’t as straightforward as they seem. Sometimes things have to be done in a certain sequence; you can’t do one thing until something else is done first, and sometimes the chain of things that have to be done goes back a ways.

We ran out of firewood this winter. Also, the trees on the east side of the house are getting tall enough that they’re beginning to block our view. So it seemed like a good time to start cutting a bunch of trees. One thing led to another, and I had about five trees down. Now that we have a chipper, I planned to use that to make mulch to put on the path I use when I walk Zeke and Lucy around the house.

You can see the how the trees are blocking the view to the east. On the lower left you can see a little bit of the trees I have cut.

obstructed view

I learned a few years ago that I need to take care of the trees as I cut them rather than cutting a bunch of trees and then cleaning up. I once cut a large number of trees and ended up with a disaster area that took a couple of years to finally clean up. From now on I clean up as I go.

So, I intended to chip the limbs for the path right away, but first I needed to do some work on the path. I had been intending to level out the path where it leads from the back of the house around to the east into the leach field, but a lot of other things were higher on the priority list. So now I had a bunch of trees with a bunch of limbs to chip, but the path wasn’t ready for the chips. Before I could chip the limbs, I had to level out the path.

It’s easy enough in principle. All I needed to do was cut into the slope on the uphill side and dump the dirt onto the lower side. But when I cut into the slope, I needed material for a low retaining wall. So I had to make a trip to Lowe’s for garden wall blocks. I got 40 blocks, which is not enough.

Here’s the work in progress. The little line of blocks on the left took care of the 40 blocks I got.

dirt path2

As I worked up towards the back of the house I realized I needed to finish the retaining wall at the corner of the house that I started a little while ago. Make that a few years ago. It’s made of landscape timbers. Here’s the view down from the deck. The landscape timber on the left is part of the existing wall. The three others were left over from some work I did in the front of the yard.

dirt path

Today I got the landscape timber retaining wall finished and backfilled. Now I can restart on leveling the path, and then I can get about 80 to 100 more garden wall blocks and make the low retaining wall along the path. And then, after touching up the level of the path, I can bring the chipper around and start chipping the limbs.And then I can cut some more trees.

Unless I run into another chore that needs to be done first.

Old School

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I had occasion late Tuesday night to drive around for a while. I put diesel in the car, I dropped by Walmart, I drove the long way home, all the way around Texas Valley

I kind of like driving around late at night like that, when most normal people are in bed. I could almost count on my fingers the number of people I saw. The streets were nearly empty. Traffic lights cycled from red to green, but no one drove through the intersections. The streetlights were on, but with no headlights on the streets, the city looked dark. Rome looked like a movie set after the lights were turned off and all the actors went home.

When you’re driving around those empty streets, you notice every car. If they’re behind you, you notice when they turn off. You see the police officer in his patrol car, and you know he sees you.

The service station was brightly lighted but almost deserted. No one else was at the pumps. The doughnut shop attached to the service station was closing. When I pulled up to the front of the station, the last doughnut shop employee looked out at me and then turned the lights out and disappeared.

I went back towards home and stopped at Walmart to get a couple of unnecessary things. It looks like after 11 PM is a good time to grocery shop at Walmart; no waiting in line. But I kind of doubt that Leah and I will start shopping that late.

As I was walking out of Walmart I heard someone calling something. I heard it twice before I turned around and a youngish man called “Hey, Old School” to me. He said he had walked all the way from his apartment and was short one quarter for what he wanted to buy. I gave him a quarter and asked if he needed more. He thanked me and said no. That was the only time I actually interacted with any person that night.

When I drove out Huffaker Road, instead of turning right onto Fouche Gap and driving the mile and a half up the mountain to our house, I kept going for a few miles to Texas Valley Road. And then, after about five miles, instead of turning right to drive along the mountain and then up the other side of Fouche Gap Road, I kept going straight to make the big loop around Rocky Mountain in the middle of the valley and come back to Fouche Gap Road from the other end.

I have bicycled Texas Valley Road quite a few times, but I couldn’t remember which way the road would turn, and how sharp the next curve was going to be. Along one stretch I had a feeling that the woods were different, but until I pulled sideways across the road to shine the headlights into the forest I couldn’t tell that the whole area had been logged since the last time I was there.

I drove slowly because the road is narrow and winding in some places, and because there are lots of deer around. I didn’t see a single car for the entire 20 miles, or any deer.

I think it was close to 1 AM when I got home. Not that late, but late enough for me.

I forgot about “Old School” until Leah and I were having huevos rancheros Wednesday for lunch at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants, Los Portales. Leah asked what “Old School” meant. I didn’t know, so I looked it up in the urban dictionary. Here’s what it says:

Anything that is from an earlier era and looked upon with high regard or respect. Can be used to refer to music, clothing, language, or anything really.

We had a laugh about that.

Mmmm.

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Leah and I don’t talk about politics to other people. We pretty much agree with each other about that kind of thing, so we talk to each other, and sometimes we talk to the TV, but not to other people. So why do so many other people talk about politics to us, thinking that we must agree with what they say?

Leah’s 92-year old uncle wants to complain about getting Obama out of office. A store owner tells us the real estate market is not going to improve until Obama is out of office. A Walmart worker tells us he wants to burn all the cardboard boxes he’s breaking down and to heck with global warming; he doesn’t believe in global warming anyway. A neighbor blames Obama for health insurance increases and says Obamacare keeps poor people from getting health insurance.

I don’t think we actually invite any of the comments we keep hearing. We don’t encourage them, but they keep coming anyway. We don’t argue. We don’t engage them in conversation. We just say something like, “Mmmm,” and keep on going. We may talk about later it between ourselves, but not with them.

I don’t point out that Obama was elected for a second term and he’ll be out as soon as he completes it. I don’t point out that the real estate market is actually improving after a precipitous decline that started before Obama was elected. I don’t point out that burning cardboard boxes doesn’t add any carbon to the global carbon cycle like burning gasoline does, or that climatologists have spent their lives working on climatology and probably know about global warming better than nonscientists. I don’t point out that poor people can get assistance to help pay their health insurance premiums.

I suppose they assume that everyone in town agrees with them. After all, Georgia is every bit as solidly Republican today as it was Democratic 40 or 50 years ago. And I’m an old, white guy from Georgia, so I must be a Republican, too.

But you know what they say about assuming things.

“I can’t believe it’s my 60th birthday.”

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Today, March 11, Leah turned 60. She can’t believe it, and neither can I. Apparently all the people I knew in their 60s when I was a kid were actually much, much older than 60. Say 95 or so. Because they didn’t look like Leah.

(I’m checking my memory. OK, right, they looked like they were 45 or 50 years older than me.)

Leah wanted to go out to lunch (and for the margaritas) to one of our regular Mexican restaurants, Los Portales, for huevos rancheros. Mexican food is not Leah’s favorite, unlike me, but she does like huevos rancheros. A lot.

Leah and the nearly finished margarita

Leah and the nearly finished margarita

We told the waitress it was Leah’s birthday, so after we finished our lunches, three of the staff sang “Happy Birthday” and brought out a sopapilla.

Taking a bite of sopapilla

Taking a bite of sopapilla.I already had a bite. Or two.

Around here, sopapillas are made by frying a flour tortilla and then covering it with honey and cinnamon. In this case, they added chocolate and whipped cream. I prefer New Mexico sopapillas, but this one was good. Leah gave all three waitresses a “thank you” and a good hug. We really appreciated it.

At the rate Leah is aging, I think she’ll probably live to about 130. She says she doesn’t want to reach that age, but I hope I’m around to see it. I know where to find ranchera sauce, so I’ll make the huevos rancheros and the margaritas. Maybe I’ll practice it before her 130th.

IBS

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It’s a condition that affects many, many people, but it’s never talked about, and as far as I know, there is no research on the subject. It’s embarrassing. Many people are hesitant to even to mention it. Doctors don’t seem to be inclined to help, if you can bring yourself to talk about it. The few treatments aimed at similar conditions don’t seem to help much, so most of the afflicted are left to suffer on their own. The condition is, of course, IBS – Itchy Back Syndrome*.

I have to wonder: how many people you see every day walking through the store or driving along the highway are IBS sufferers? You might see someone reaching around as far as they can for that spot on their back that’s just a little too far away. Why does it seem that the itch is right in the middle of the back, too far to reach from any direction? Especially since most sufferers are older and not as limber as they used to be.

My father was an IBS sufferer. I can picture him now standing in the doorway, rubbing his back against the door frame, like a bear scratching on a tree.

I never thought I would have it, but I do now. And so does Leah.

We’re among the lucky ones who can talk about the problem. Now we both understand that old saying, “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”

* I know that a lot of people suffer from a more serious version of IBS, that collection of symptoms known as irritable bowel syndrome. Leah was once diagnosed with IBS. That’s when I learned that there isn’t much that doctors can do about the “real” IBS either. In Leah’s case, her problem turned out to be a bowel obstruction caused by scar tissue from the colon cancer she had back in the late ‘90s.