A Bit of Heaven

Saturday August 6, 2011

It is the eve of my 38th birthday and that has absolutely nothing to do with the title of this post. No, that just makes me feel like I am getting older and the fact that I am back to running myself exhausted every day in a completely different manner then I was just a bit ago doesn’t help. I don’t know backs all that well but I can say that I have definitely pulled a muscle or something right there in the middle of the left side. I have done pretty well in avoiding that pain today but there were times when I thought I might just collapse and cry. What a wuss right? No, I am nearly 38, it is allowed.

Today was like a little bit of heaven for me. I spent much of the day doing some form of yard work. The kids were still asleep at 9:30 so I decided to fire up the mower and get to it. I got the front yard done along with the side yard and then paused first to dump the bag and second to clear the apples off the lawn. I find it amazing just how many apples fall off the tree. I wonder what the ratio of bad apples to good apples is; how many bad apples need to fall from the tree for each good apple that lasts the season? I almost don’t want to even look over at the tree because every time I do I see another apple hit the ground. We had the tree in the last house and it seemed to lose a ton of them. I don’t think we picked a single apple off of that tree. Actually, we probably picked a ton of apples off of that tree just not for eating. We’ll see how it goes this year.

So I was two buckets in to nasty rotting apples when Jack came out. He was so excited to see that I was picking up apples and asked if he could help. Absolutely. He came cruising over with his yellow dump truck and started loading. He didn’t like the rotting apples so that was my job. He would gather the fresher of the fallen. At one point he told me it would be better if we had a toy back hoe to fill the truck. I say forget the toy, let’s get the real thing. We had a good time working together. When you get Jack focused on a project he can get stuff done.

I got through our yard then made my way over to Jay and Sara’s to do a little weed whacking and edging. That went fairly well. I debated mowing but held off. Jack came and helped me over at Grandma and Grandpas as well. That one included a little of everything. Had a great time there edging, mowing, trimming the hedge at the entry and cutting up the Blue Spruce in the front yard. Actually just throwing out a guess on that Blue Spruce. Anyhow, it looks good. Maybe not quite as high as I would have gone if it were mine but I figured the folks didn’t need my extreme tree trimming used in their yard. Finally there was some sprinkler repair though none of it was caused by mine own hand. Oh man it was good fun. A bit of heaven. It was fantastic.

The remainder of the day was spent helping get kids bikes and board on the road. That includes a bike with training wheels for Andy, a repaired tire in Jack’s bike, cleaning wheel bearings for Natty's skateboard, Natty’s bike repaired, my bike tires repaired and then while putting it back together the patch on the front wheel went out and there went my bike repair. The hole is right by the stem and that is not the easiest one to make. I will have to pick up some tubes at some point. They can be my birthday surprise.

Well, great day. Now it is time to sleep. Big day tomorrow. New ward to attend. Looking forward to it.