Here and now in These titles mean nothing.

It’s getting light. The dark bare trees are black against a gray sky.

The washer in the basement is rumbling. Do you know how long it takes to wash a load of clothes? I never do. I have no idea when I started it and when it will end. I don’t care enough. I wonder if other people are like that too. Or not.

I was wandering this morning when the phone on the wall rang. This early it’s for Jim, but I answered it anyway. It was the neighbor across the field, the Amish man, and I assumed it was about wandering cattle. It was. Jim’s gone now. He took the truck. He’s have taken the 4-wheeler but wasn’t sure how he was getting the cows home. It’s not the kind of farm task I’d ever been involved with but now I’m not doing anything. The time-bomb in my chest and all.

I thought of apologizing to the Amish man for the cows’ foot prints in his lawn. My lawn, especially the part west of the house by the clothesline and the path through the orchard to the mailbox is really torn up by cow tracks. Cows have sharp feet and they put a lot of pounds per square inch on soft ground. That’s also the route the immigrants made putting in the still non-hooked up fiber optic line last summer. It’s hard walking now but when the grass comes up it will be worse.

Talking grass. Mid-last-summer the cute little diesel Kobota lawn mower died on us. It’s the one Jim got ‘on-approval’ when I was gone on my first Canadian trip. I’d never wanted a riding mower - I believed in pushing lawn mowers. Turned out the luxury of a sturdy mower for our lawn and for Joana’s was a luxury that I really liked. It was a lot like the propane furnace in the basement. It was expensive but it made life so much easier.

Jim tried to get it fixed. He tried to find one similar. But we are going into another lawn mowing season without a mower. I’m not sure how that will turn out. He has been subscribing to No Mow May the last few years - meaning you let the grass grow till June - so no doubt we will do that again.

Funny how life is full of just plain bad luck.

Today I go north to Medical-Land. I am exploring a whole new branch of medicine. ENT - ENT stands for Ear, Nose, and Throat, and it refers to a medical specialty focusing on the diagnosis and treatment of conditions affecting those areas. I haven’t been there before. Oh well. I dread and look forward to it at the same time.

I expect lunch and trips to the grocery store and perhaps the book store. I might look for something by Ian Frazier. I have a couple of his books - I was reading The Cursing Mommy’s Book of Days lately. It’s pretty much how it sounds. It’s easy to identify with. It reminds me of what we write here only a little bit funnier. It also reminds me of what’s on YouTube, all the self-explaining, self-exposing, aimed at being helpful stuff by people we get to know…
Frazier has a book about Siberia - yeah Siberia - called Travels in Siberia that I might like to have. He’s a New Yorker writer (of course) and I watched a conversation of his with NY editor David Remnick that I liked.

I apologize if it’s not available where you are. It probably isn’t your cup of tea anyway.

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I’m full of ideas but I’m short of keystrokes.

So good bye everyone.

Have a good day.

I’ll see what I can do too.

** fixed two typos