more normal than not

Isaac and I replaced 2 of the 8 broken panes of glass over at the new (really old) place yesterday.

It’s amazing what a difference clear glass that isn’t broken can make.

If you can focus on that one section of the window, you’d swear that things were looking up….that the house is really “coming together”.

The new glass is clear.

The new glass is fresh.

Of course, the windows should all be replaced. They’re in pretty bad shape.

I don’t want to put lipstick on the pig quite yet, though.

There has to be a method to the madness….I can bring order to this chaos.

So, for now, I’ll just close up whatever nasty holes I see and let it be what it is for the moment.

Watching the YouTube video about how to glaze a window after I’d done these two probably wasn’t the right order to do things in, either.

Oh, well….funky glazing will take my mind off some of the other stuff that needs to be done.

I can distract myself with an extended period of temporary incompetence.

If I can pick the right window to look through, my world can seem pretty nice.

What’s that saying about eating an elephant? The “one bite” statement?

It’s going to be a couple of new panes a day….a board or 3,200 ripped out every once in a while…another burn pile….for a while.

One little chunk at a time…and….voila!! ….

….a really old and decrepit house with some new panes of glass in the old window frames.

If I remember to focus on the clear and new, things look better all ready.

” I Can Only Be Me” Keith John

It’s raining here after a week of dry weather.

It’s easier when it’s dry.

I used to think that it would be kind of “cool” to live on a commune.

What can I say? I was born in 1960 and grew up some in California….there were some hippies around back then….

Now, I just want people to stay out of my stuff….stay out of my face.

I’d be a bad one for a commune.

I like to share….but not on that level.

I guess that I’m just a selfish Capitalist at heart.

Maybe it’s just the appeal of letting my beard get big….maybe that’s the appeal of a commune….

Here’s a couple of documentaries about The Farm in Tennessee.

It’s one of the oldest communes around….now called a “collective”, I guess.

There has been a lot of people who’ve passed through The Farm at some point….for a lot of different reasons.

The farm has an excellent midwifery program….lots of kids were born on the Farm with Ina May Gaskin’s help.

Maybe, in the end, that would be the most effective way to use this new property that we’ve purchased? A commune on 7 acres….tipis in the fields, people swimming in the nasty pond….loud Canned Heat playing on the sound system up at the Main House.

Our neighbors would love that.

Maybe that’s what “development” is all about?

Nahhhh…..that would drive me crazy.

I think that I’ll just put up some of those “POSTED” signs, instead.

There is a “key” on the flywheel of my lawnmower.

I don’t know why I put it in quotation marks….it’s called a key….I didn’t need the quotation marks.

Anyway, this key is designed to keep everything in alignment.

If you didn’t know that it was there…you’d never know that it was there.

It’s hidden….if you don’t know where to look.

Sometimes, if you hit a rock while you’re mowing….or hit a stump….or even a bicycle….you can shear that key and things start to get interesting.

What happens when you lose your key is that the flywheel starts to move on the shaft a little and it gets a little harder to start the mower the next time you want to use it.

It gets a little harder to start it and it runs a little less effectively.

It doesn’t run all that well when the alignment is out of whack.

So now you have a flywheel that’s turning “free” on the shaft….and the only thing that holds it in place is the nut that keeps the flywheel on.

You really can’t torque that nut tight enough to really keep things from getting wonky when you hit a stump.

What screws you up more than anything while all this is going on is that the bad changes sometimes don’t happen all at once.

You can pull that cord a bunch of times and sometimes the mower will still start and run.

It won’t run like it used to….but it’s an old mower….it’s getting worn out….it’s seen its day.

Its power was in the past.

It’s the “still running” part that screws you up.

That mower will occasionally start if you sweat at the end of the string long enough….and then it will run badly for as long as you need it to mow the lawn one more time….but you know that something’s not right.

When something breaks completely, you know that it’s time to repair or replace….but when you limp along with something wrong…but you still “kind of function”….it’s hard to get the gumption train going and correct the problem.

So…with my mower, when it got to the point that taking the carburetor off and cleaning it….changing the plug….putting fresh gas in the tank….and pulling, pulling, pulling on the cord….I checked the key and….

it was gone…..and I was a quarter turn away from where I was supposed to be.

There is no way in Hades that my mower would run right with that much of a bad turn in the works.

I replaced the key….got the alignment right….and now the mower runs like it did when I first got it….before the first stump was ever hit….before that bad rock left me cursing in the empty field.

That mower that I would have scrapped when I couldn’t get it to run starts with the first pull now.

It’s a simple thing to fix a lawnmower if you know how.

All this stuff is really simple if “you just know how”.

I think that I can live with “almost right” forever.

That’s a problem that’s harder to figure out than a broken lawnmower.

“Drift” David Wilcox

This is a song from David Wilcox’s new album “Blaze”….

I wish that I could write a post about me getting “cooler”.

I shouldn’t be the judge of that.

If something weird happened….and I got a little “cooler” somehow…..well, that would be cool.

But I’d need an outside jury to measure that.

I’d need some major monitoring and long term evaluation to really trust anyone else’s estimations.

It would take a lot to convince me that I was “cool”….even if I was wearing something that wasn’t age appropriate.  It’s hard to even care about cool these days.

So this post isn’t about me this morning.

I’m sitting by the window that we can still leave open overnight…and it’s cool air that’s migrating in.

That’s the “cool part”.

Fall is coming and I’m right in it’s path…loving the change from beastly to beauty.

I’ve found it hard to write about anything the last couple of days, for some reason.

Maybe it’s a part of waking up kind of tired.

Jenny has been waking up really tired.

That baby isn’t afraid….that baby rests whenever it wants and no one gets upset if it falls asleep on the couch.

So if the nite time is the right time for adventurous exploration, it’s hard to get that baby to calm down and JUST QUIT IT!!

GO TO SLEEP, BABY!!!

I guess that I shouldn’t complain.

Ultimately, the responsibility rests on my shoulders for being 54 years old with an eight month old daughter.

I’m the reason we’re so tired now.

Hey!! It is me, after all.

I’M THE MAN!!!

I shouldn’t blame that baby.

I AM LOVING THIS COOL AIR!!

That’s a GOOD CHANGE…..nice to know that the early morning is going to be pretty darn nice as far as the temperature goes.

I guess that there really is something to write about all the time.

The well is never dry…I’m just temporarily being the horse who won’t drink.

I stand soaked in the deluge….and complain about the lack of humidity.

Sometimes I can’t see it….even if it knocks me in the head.

GO TO SLEEP, BABY….GO TO SLEEP!!!!

“(Night Time) Is The Right Time” Ray Charles

THIS POST IS KINDA GROSS.

I THOUGHT IT WAS KIND OF FUNNY.

MY SENSE OF HUMOR DIDN’T PROGRESS MUCH AFTER THE AGE OF 12.

I guess it’s kind of gross….even though it’s a normal event in the life of a small, pampered terrier.

Here’s the deal:

My family and I drove up on the Parkway yesterday to have a picnic.

We pulled into the Craggy Gardens parking area and almost immediately Jenny said, “Oh…..what are they doing to that dog?!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a middle aged couple bent over a white terrier.

I couldn’t tell what they were doing, but to be provocative, I said, “They’re probably trying to scrub out a dingleberry.”

I thought that was kind of farfetched…and gross….and funny….to me.

“DINGLEBERRY!!” I thought to myself. “HAH!!”

When we stopped, the lady came walking over to us.

She had an accent that wasn’t native to North Carolina.

“EXCUSE ME….EXCUSE ME….THIS IS GOING TO SOUND KIND OF WEIRD, BUT YOU WOULDN’T HAPPEN TO HAVE A SMALL PAIR OF SCISSORS THAT I COULD BORROW FOR A MINUTE, WOULD YOU?”

“No….I don’t think so….hmmmm, wait! I have a small pair of scissors on my Swiss Army Knife! You could borrow that…..”

“Oh….” she said. “No….I don’t think you’d want me to use that for this….my dog has a….”

“Is it a dingleberry?” I asked….secretly amazed and excited that, even though I’d only been displaying my inappropriately adolescent sense of humor, I was right.

“It’s OK….we have some wet wipes. I’ll just use those…..”

“I told my husband to trim his butt before we left the house.”

And then this little dog and his dingleberry chased Nate and barked….and made Nate cry a little.

I told the lady that they’d probably be all right if the dog didn’t butt-scoot across the leather of their white Lexus….but she acted kind of nervous about it, so I don’t think that she took my advice to heart.

So, for the rest of the picnic, before these people finished the job and left, if we looked over their way, I could see them wiping this formerly pristine terrier’s behind with a rapidly emptying box of wet wipes.

I’m glad that she didn’t take me up on my offer to use my little scissors.

I never would have offered if I’d known it involved dingleberries.

I cut the cheese with that knife.

I thought it was all kind of embarrassing for those people….wiping a little dog’s butt in a crowded parking lot….but I could sense that they really loved that dog.

Enough to try and borrow my knife.

This story is true.

It’s a wacky life.

“Aqualung” Jethro Tull

Only for the “bends to pick a dog-end” part….