Thursday, October 26, 2006

Words of Wisdom

Don't sweat petty things,
and don't pet sweaty things.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Not a lot going on, but I wanted to update. We're just trying to keep up with schoolwork around here and I'm trying (really, I am) to get the clutter under control. So what did we do? Get more stuff from Jerry's aunt's house when his cousin was throwing it all out. *Sigh*

It seems there are never enough hours in the day. Back in the summer I created a website for Dad's new business and trying to keep that updated is a challenge, trying to find the time to do it. Then there's keeping up with my real jobs (gotta pay the bills, ya know), and last but not least, trying to edumacate my son. (Yes, I meant to write edumacate - please don't write to me about my lack of intelligence!).

Aunt Ruby passed away last week. A few months ago she was at a casino in Delaware with Uncle Bill when she collapsed. At the hospital in Dover they found a brain tumor. She was unresponsive and Uncle Bill had started making funeral plans. Then over the course of the week she started coming out of it and they thought there might be hope to treat the tumor. She got well enough to go home, but has been declining in the past few weeks. It turned out it wasn't just the brain tumor. She had lung cancer that had spread to her stomach, brain and bones, so there really wasn't anything they could do for her. Uncle Bill had throat cancer a number of years back and has a hole in his throat that he talks through. These things coupled with the reports that I type day in and day out about smoking-related illnesses and complications, really make me wish that Jerry would quit. I have lost track of the number of reports I have typed where people went in for simple surgeries; gallbladder, appendix - what should be simple procedures - and ended up on a respirator because their lungs just couldn't handle the anesthesia from the damage done by smoking. Grrrr.....I hate cigarettes.

Well, I guess I shouldn't be whining about not having enough time for stuff. I obviously found the time to write this, didn't I?! Now I'd better get busy doing something. Where to start.........

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Here's Andy checking out the carnage.
Jerry does not look like a happy camper, does he?!
Jars, jars, and more jars!
The chipper from Hades.

I'm Baaaaaaack! (Like a favorite relative or a recurring boil, depending on how you see it!)

Yes, I'm back. I didn't actually go anywhere, just didn't make time to blog. But, I miss writing so I'll just have to make time for it. Now if I could just make time for exercise.........

Okay - some catching up. Jerry had an aunt and uncle who used to live in a brick house at the intersection of Route 2 & 258. His aunt (Edna) who lived there died two years ago, and his uncle (Jack) who lived there died last week. Also living there had been Jack's brother and one of Jack and Edna's sons, Larry, who is autistic. They have another son, Tom, who is married and living in Pennsylvania. When Jack died last week, Tom had to make some tough decisions. He decided to sell the house and use the proceeds to buy a house near him in Pennsylvania where Larry and Jack's brother could live. The problem was that the house needed to be cleaned out and put on the market - FAST. That wouldn't have been a problem except that Edna and Jack had been there since 1968 and, well, so has everything else in the house. The house was nearly bursting with STUFF. Jerry took his dump trailer and helped Tom clean stuff out a few days. They got two full trailer loads of stuff to go to the dump - and that's not counting the countless trips Tom made to the local landfill with a loaded pickup truck while Jerry was dumping his trailer. (The dump trailer had to be dumped at the landfill here near us - the one near the house wouldn't accept large loads like that). In the basement they found boxes and boxes of canning jars. Jack's brother used to have a produce stand at Wayson's Corner and so Edna never had a shortage of things to can. Jerry's mom told Jerry to take the jars home for me. Wow! I don't think I'll ever need to buy jars again. I love them! One of them was an old blue jar. I won't use that for canning - it looks too pretty on my table. Now I've found a produce auction in St. Mary's County that I hope I can get to before the end of October when it closes for the season. You have to buy in bulk, but that's okay. The local grocery stores buy their produce from there. There are BIG lots of things (like the huge cardboard boxes of watermelons you see in the stores in the summer) and then there are smaller lots which small shops and restaurants buy. That's more my size! Well, we'll see if I can make it there this season. If not, there's always spring. We're talking with Jerry's brother about another beef this year, and probably getting a hog from Amish people who raise them. It's nice having food that you know where it came from and what's in it - grain-fed and no antibiotics. No E. coli, either!

I am not a superstitious person, but Friday the 13th was definitely a bad day for Jerry. I don't know if I posted about this before or not, but a few months ago Jerry, his uncle, and another man went in together and bought a chipper for when they do tree jobs. To make a long story short, they got taken on the chipper, and it has been a total pain in the you-know-what, and has cost more to repair so far than what they paid for it. On a side note, right around the time that they bought this one, a chipper was stolen down the road from us. Jerry had his in the garage while he was fixing it and then painted it. We teased him that it looked highly suspicious that a chipper was stolen, then he got one that he had in the garage for a long time and then painted it!. Unfortunately, there's a bill of sale for Jerry's, and it came from Virginia. I say unfortunately because it's unfortunate that they actually paid money for this thing. Okay, back to the story.

Jerry was going to do a tree job yesterday and was sitting in his truck waiting at the meeting place for his uncle. He had picked up his cousin on the way. While the two of them were sitting in a parking lot at a convenience store waiting, a solid black cat climbed out of a storm drain and walked right in front of them across the parking lot. Jerry said he and his cousin looked at each other and his cousin remarked that this couldn't be a good sign. They laughed about it and Jerry said he didn't give it another thought. At the first job the chipper ran fine at first, but then the radiator started leaking. Luckily, they were finishing up so they didn't worry too much about it. Then they went to a second job and here the belts flew off, the radiator continued leaking, and it became obvious that the bearings in the power unit (which Jerry had meticulously replaced a month ago after having to order specialized parts and have them specially machined) were broken. They had just finished that job too, so they figured they would worry it about it later. While they were cleaning up after this job, the elderly man who owns the property where they were doing the tree work backed into the driveway - right into Jerry's new truck. How's that for a Friday the 13th? Jerry called me and told me about all of this shortly after the truck incident. I told him he needed to just come home, crawl in bed and call it a day. Actually, he probably should have done just that when the black cat crossed his path!

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