The Lawnmower Man

That's me, the lawnmower man. At least that's the way I feel about now. We closed on our new home in Webster, NY and I thought that we needed some way to keep the lawn mowed, like hire a lawn service until we moved there. We spoke to one of Anne's brothers and he volunteered to cut the grass for us. He has an older, spare, riding mower that he thought he would bring there even though the lawn is small. Ever since he fell off a barn roof several years ago, fractured both feet and the doctors told him he would never walk again, he finds walking long distance or standing for long periods irritating, so he likes his riding mowers. Before we went up there I had studied Consumers' Reports about electric cordless mowers and had a couple in mind that were rated good. The idea is to get away from the gas, oil and pull starting and to be more environmentally friendly. Anne's brother thought a small mower would be good for places he couldn't reach with the larger mower. So, we went out to the store and the next store and the next store and couldn't find the mowers I had selected. We did find a Worx mower, designed in Italy and made in China. In the store I had no way to check Consumers' Reports to see how it is rated, so I found the side of the box that had some English words and read all about it. We bought it and after one mowing, I'm pleased with it. I hope it is reliable over time.

We returned home last night and found that the lawn here had grown by leaps and bounds since we left on Sunday, so, today, I got out our thirteen year old, self propelled Craftsman and proceeded to get control of the grass. We pretty much need a self propelled model here because our grass is rather thick. I was proceeding along getting control when, all of a sudden, I heard a snap sound and the self propelled mower was being only propelled by me. I decided to finish the back yard the way it was and then have a look to see what was the matter. The matter was that the cable controlling the self propelled part broke. Oh great, now what to do. I didn't want to buy another mower for here that I wouldn't need for our new home (read the paragraph above, in case you missed the story of the lawnmower purchase for our new home). I thought about a lawn service, but the lawn really needed cutting and we do have the house listed for sale. Someone could possibly come to look at it. I thought about lugging it to a repair shop, but was afraid I wouldn't see it again until December. I went on line and found that Sears, in fact, stocked the part and could send it to me by priority shipping for Tuesday delivery. Then I read further that the part may be available at a local Sears store. I called the parts department in Middletown and, wonder of wonders, they had two in stock and the nice lady said she would put one aside for me. Taking the old part with me, I quickly made my way to Middletown, not that I thought that there would be a run on control cable assemblies for a thirteen year old mower, but, you never know. I got the thing. It was only $34.95, plus tax and it went on the mower as easy as pie (I don't really know what pie has to do with things being hard or easy, but people say that, so...).

Now you can understand why I am the lawnmower man. My back also hurts (from typing, I think), so I will stop now and report other adventures as they happen.

Good Friend Jim

Our good friend Jim Ciskowski died. We visited him in the hospital in New Brunswick on Wednesday. He was on a lot of pain medication to combat the effects of his pancreatic cancer. He had been diagnosed about a year ago. He packed a lot into his final year. He started finishing up projects that he started around the house, hauled a loads of his firewood to his son, cooked dinner for us one night with his wife, Alice, danced at his son's wedding and called us to go kayaking on the Navesink. He always had a smile on his face and never complained. When asked, he would say when things weren't going well, but took it all in stride.

Jim was an avid gardener and was even talking about it with Anne three days before he died. He had a huge vegetable garden in his back yard, a couple of grills and a smoker. He even showed us how to pet bees. Jim was an inspiration on how to live with cancer and how to die with it. Godspeed Jim. You will be missed.

Dizzy Me

I know that some of my readers would not raise an eyebrow to hear that I was and am dizzy, but I raised an eyebrow. Last evening, Anne and I went to a play at the local Presbyterian church. She knows one of the men who was in it. The group is called Spotlight Players and they do a dessert show where you sit at tables and during intermission the have a very nice cake and coffee spread. Anyway, the place isn't very big and you get to sit very close. When I got up to go for the dessert I felt like I had had a couple of drinks and was unsteady on my feet. My first thought was that if anyone was looking at me they would think I was drunk. I made a pretty good effort to get my chocolate cake, whipped cream and strawberriesand get back to my seat without incident. When I woke up this morning I still felt an equilibrium problem. We remembered that our daughter had some sort of a similar problem a while ago and we found out from her that it was probably caused by allergies causing an infection in the inner ear. Taking allergy and seasickness medicine seemed to work for her. I took some allergy medicine this morning, but don't have any seasickness medicine on hand.

My mother had equilibrium problems, but I have nmever experienced anything like that before now. Anne looked up "dizziness" in one of her books and it said that it effected mainly elderly people. Well, I know that has nothing to do with me, so we'll stick with the allergy approach for now.

Let's see, what else is going on. Our Rochester closing was scheduled for May 20th with the sellers moving out on May 21st. I said, "No, that won't do at all." Now they are moving out on the weekend and we are closing on the 23rd. In New York the sellers don't attend the closing apparently and they're not there for the walk through either. You don't get to talk to them at all. I would much rather be able to talk with them and learn any things they can tell us after having built the house and lived there for thirty years. So, we'll see what happens. Still no activity on our buyers' house, so we are going to list with a realtor if there isn't some action by the time we close on the house up north.

Today is a gray day outside and there is a forecast of possible showers. I have to be doing something, so I had better get to work looking for things to pack or sort or something. Trouble is that I have taken the antihistamine which is beginning to make me feel drowsy.  I don't want to fall asleep on the job. Oh hum!

Resting in Peace

I have been to four funerals since December, four more than I would have like to have attended. It has got me thinking about the afterlife. I must warn the reader that there are no answers here. I have not figured out who goes where, where where is or even what where is. Leo Tolstoy spent a great deal of time railing against the church for deceiving people through the ages and scaring them into believing it's doctrines and, at the same time, paying money so that the hierarchy can get rich and against governments for threatening people with force to get them to do as the government wants. I'm simplifying things here, but he believed that the Kingdom of God is within each of us and each of us has the power within us to change the world and to bring to fruition the things Christ taught us.

All of the great religions of the world, of which I am aware, believe in some type of life after death. Some believe that we are reincarnated and that we keep going until we achieve a state of perfection. Some, like my Roman Catholic tradition, believe that we go to heaven (the good place) or hell (the bad place). Some say hell is a place of torture, others believe it is going out of existence so that we are in the same state as before we were born. But, wait. How do we know we weren't in existence before we were born? Maybe we were in another dimension, or another incarnation.

I was tempted to do a Google search for the afterlife, but then I thought how foolish that would be. I would get a zillion posts with two zillion opinions. I know, I don't believe, I know that it all has somehow to do with love. I don't know how it all works, but I think that we will end up all loving one another, but how? If we don't love one another here on earth, how will we, all of a sudden, become such great people after we die? Don't know. But, I believe Tolstoy is right. We have the power within us, each of us, to love, and to love not only those close to us, but to love every one of our neighbors in the world. It's not easy though. I can like people, but to truly love them is harder. Not that there is anything wrong with the people (except congress people this week), but there is something lacking in me. I have to change myself. Maybe then I can realize that the Kingdom of God is really within me and that I can help to make it come into being here on earth.

This is profound and I haven't even begun to write all that I think on this subject. It is difficult because we don't know what lies beyond this life and, let's face it, no matter how religious we are, or how much we say we accept that our reward will be in heaven, we don't really look forward to going anyplace. We don't want to die. We are afraid of what may be out there, oh we of little faith.

To be continued.

Congress Should Dissolve Itself

Congress, those lunkheads. How dare they threaten to close down our government. They get paid very well, both the house and the senate, to run the government, not to threaten to shut it down. They would close the national parks and monuments, OUR national parks and monuments. The President showed up at the Lincoln Memorial to greet visitors and told them that both sides had worked out their differences and therefore they could enjoy their visit. How dare he? They have no right to even think about shutting down our monuments, our parks, our country.  They would delay our tax refund checks and delay pay for countless soldiers and federal employees. Please note that the members of congress, house and senate, would not do without their own pay. How dare they, these arrogant people who only think about how to get re-elected so that they can take advantage of all of the perks that they get. And what about that guy, presiding in the house, who was caught on camera sitting there autographing pictures of himself while this is all going on. How dare they. The whole bunch of them, republicans, democrats, tea partyers, coffee drinkers, the whole pack of them, should get out and let us replace them. None of them should be eligible to run again. In each district every taxpayer's name should be put in a hat, a kindergarten child should be selected by lot who would then reach into the hat and pick out the next congressman or senator for that district. How much worse could it be? It would probably be a lot better. I'm disgusted with the whole lot of them. They waste or steal money. They can't seem to reject special interest groups. They think only of themselves. Get out. Get out you bums and let us have our country back.

I guess you could say I'm disturbed by the current state of our governmental affairs.

An International Following

I discovered the heading "Stats" on my blog and found that I had over a thousand views of my posts since I began writing, or since last May, I'm not sure which. I was surprised to see that the viewers are from the same countries that also view my other blog and several others with which I am familiar. And here I thought that my two followers were coming back to read it again and again.

We are going to another wake tonight. Our friend, Jim Carr passed on to a better life. He had some type of cancer. I have been in more than my share of funeral homes lately, although, thankfully, I'm going in and out of my own accord.

Rite-Aid Redeemed

After the snafu with refilling my prescription with Rite-Aid, I decided to wait to order my next prescription from Shop-Rite until I finally had the one I ordered from Rite-Aid so that, hopefully, the doctor's office would send the right one to the right store. I got a call the other evening from Rite-Aid and I thought, "Oh no, they have the prescription order I phoned into Shop Rite." Instead it was the managing pharmacist calling to apologize for the mix up. He said he had a message from corporate that there had been a problem. That surprised me because I didn't contact corporate, or even really complain other than to tell the person who waited on me that I hadn't ordered drugs B and C, but drug A and that I didn't really understand how that could happen since I used their automated phone system. Anyway, they called up and I told them that all was right with the world and that I finally got the correct meds, but kudos to Rite-Aid for following up.