Jack's home...

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

I was taking a vacation day, but no matter.  I hurried off to the farm to push up the manure pile, which was flowing out into the parking lot because the Manure Guy had yet to come to take away the overflowing accumulation.  I had picked Heidi up before driving to the farm since she was coming home for the holidays and had never seen the place.  She declined to look around though, because she was concerned about her cat, Bellatrix, who was acting anxious during the car ride. 

“I’m going to push up the manure pile in my New Holland tractor, which is pretty cool and something I’d sure you’d like to capture on your camera,” I suggested. 

She was pretty sure that it wasn’t that cool and elected to stay behind.

I spent some time going over issues with the concrete the plumber had poured over the hole we’d dug the previous Saturday with the guys installing the new industrial washer after manuring.

“He only skim-coated this thing where there used to be four inches of concrete.  It’ll never stand up to this new washer,” the installer told me.

“Okay…so what do you want to do?” I asked, hoping they weren’t looking for me to go out and get concrete and pour the pad.  Jack was on his way from the airport and we were going to go from home to pick up Jason to do a ‘guy’ thing for his birthday.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said.  Sweet words.

Jack arrived home for a nine-day holiday visit, but with little time to rest from a long day of travel.  We drove to pick up Jason and headed for Joughlin’s Hardware, an old style hardware store in Painesville with all the great stuff any handyman liked to peruse.  We drove him there, handed him $150 in cash and told him he couldn’t leave until it was gone.

On the ride home, we stopped at Lowe’s where I was told there were still a few Christmas trees.  That had been two hours ago.  I stopped a clerk in the garden section and asked about trees.

“I think we have one left up front,” she said, indicating the door through which we’d just entered the store.  I couldn’t help but think it must have been pretty small.

“Yup…one left,” she said, grasping the tree and holding it up for us to examine.  It was about the size of the one in ‘Charlie Brown’s Christmas’, but I’d been to two other places and no one had any trees.

“It’s five dollars,” she said.

I was shocked at how little they wanted for it and blurted, “Five dollars?”

“Alright, alright…you can have it for three,” she said.

And so I loaded the tree into the glove box and headed for home.  I was sure I could get at least one strand of 25 lights on it and maybe half a dozen of our special ornaments, but that would have to be determined.  So much for procrastinating on tree purchases.  I’d learned another valuable, life lesson.

Bike duration:  60 minutes.

Training Heart Rate:  120 bpm.

Calories burned during workout:  850.