Been feeling lazy lately, falling behind on my yard responsibilities.

This evening I took a lazy walk around and I decided I better get the roses pruned. I am sure someone who knows what they are doing would cringe at my pruning technique, but I got it done.

Then I lazily walked around the fruit trees and I ate some apricots, one Santa Rosa plum that was not quite ripe, and an Artic Snow nectarine (white inside.) Yummy.

Moving to one of the garden areas, I picked the first zucchini of the year. June 2nd! Wow, that is early.

I moseyed on over to check out the gladioli. They remind me of those Big Haired 1980’s rock stars. They are quite beautiful though. Yes, we have many other vases. I just like the chips that are in this one. It is a reminder that beauty does not have to be perfect.

I then headed out to the shop to work on a little project for one of my daughters. We started it together a couple days ago but things went a little sideways.

She wanted to sand down some old boards for shelving in her closet. I appreciated the fact that she wanted to use these old boards instead of just buying new ones. The boards were quite old and were not the normal width and thickness that you find today.

With my daughter, I started sanding with a small orbital sander which was plugged into an extension cord with one of those handy 3 outlet ends. The orbital sander wasn’t doing it, so I plugged in the beefy belt sander into one of the available outlets on the extension chord. A fleeting thought went through my mind that I should not plug two sanders into that chord, even though I was only going to use one at a time, but I got so thrilled at how well the belt sander was doing the job, I just ignored that nagging thought.

Suddenly the belt sander came to a grinding halt. Somehow in my enthusiasm, I got the cord jammed into the sander. How? I don’t know. I kept saying, “That can’t be possible.” We removed every screw we could find, thinking I will never get this back together. The cord was jammed so tight within unremovable parts that I gave up saying, “Let’s just go back and use the orbital sander.” As we picked up the orbital sander, my daughter said, “Oh shit, Dad.” And, she said it with kind of a laugh. Through the years, I have learned that when my kids laugh like that, it is not going to be a good thing for me. The laugh starts small and then gets bigger, often with them bending over holding their stomachs from laughing too hard. She pointed out that it was not the belt sander cord stuck in the belt sander, it was the orbital sander cord. I had ruined 2 sanders with one move. However, I didn’t electrocute myself.

So, this evening I returned to the scene of the crime with a brand new cordless orbital sander. It worked like a charm. I am going to make a small display of the two ruined sanders and put it up in the shop as a reminder to listen to that nagging little voice. It is quite sobering to realize that that little voice is really just my brain trying to stop me from doing something stupid. You would think a fella’s brain would have a bigger voice. Maybe smart people do. I remember this guy telling me once “Gary, you know how people have a devil on one of their shoulders and an angel on the other? I have devils on both shoulders. I don’t have that angel providing wisdom.” I kind of understand what he was saying.

That concludes this session of This and That.