Thunder of Wade

My home computer is also my work computer when I’m “remote” and while it has served me well for many many years, it wasn’t cutting it anymore.  I would click to open a program – even something simple like Notepad – and it would grind away for a few moments before responding.  And rebooting was a chore. 

I saw ads that said both Best Buy and Dell were having “early Black Friday” sales and I checked both sites to try and compare prices. 

Which wasn’t easy – it was a struggle to find laptops that matched, even among the same general specs.  

Of the two, I figured direct from Dell would be easier and I’d be less likely to accidentally get a refurbished computer.   (I had that with my chromebook and the screen was bad.)

So, off to Dell.com and their deals. It took me a bit to narrow it down and even mostly knowing what I’m looking for didn’t help much.  I finally decided on one and added it to the cart – where I noticed that there was free priority shipping as well.

“Even better,” I thought, with a slight twinge of guilt for as I placed the order for a replacement computer on while using “old unreliable”

Except, no, even with the Free Priority Shipping box checked, I was still getting charged $55.00.  

I considered switching to regular shipping and paying less for that – but I instead took a deep breath and clicked the chat.   You never know which way that will go.

I got a response in a moment and tried to ask a question, but the automated system had half a dozen prompts before it routed me.  I finally got to a person named Joyce – or at least a near-Turing equivalent. 

I asked about the Free Priority Shipping and after a moment I was asked if I was a member of the loyalty program.

I rolled my eyes so hard that I accidentally saw what I was thinking.  And it was not pretty.

There was enough of a delay in my response that “Joyce” realized a sale was in jeopardy.  “She” popped back in with an offer for a coupon code to get free shipping. I copied the code out, thanked “her” for the code and politely stated my disinterest in a loyalty program. 

“She” understood and asked if I would fill out a survey at the end of the chat. (I guess Joyce was a human after all.)  I agreed to do so and continued on with the transaction. 

I put in my credit card number and as I hit Next the screen connected to my bank to send me a text message to confirm.  I selected my phone number, got a text a moment later, and entered the code.  

Within a few minutes, I was through the transaction and got an email confirmation of my order.  As I closed out the chat the survey popped up and I rated Joyce highly – and noted that I likely wouldn’t have made the purchase without help.    Which is true – it was starting to feel like a bait-and-switch to me and there are a lot of ways to buy a computer.

I started to get back to what I was doing and my cell phone rang with an unfamiliar, but not recognizably spam, phone number number. I answered it and got the bank’s automated fraud protection system.  It asked me to verify some info, then walked me through confirming my recent purchases – fast food, target, fast food again, and then the computer.   

Okay, I get it – it was an odd-ball purchase and the verification was good – if a little tedious.  Though, I would have thought the bank connection during the transaction would have handled that. 

I finished the call and as I hung up I noticed that I had a text message from my bank as well.  Same deal and verifying the same transactions. I followed the prompts and confirmed this again.  

And I found it a little ironic that human beings have had to build all these computer systems to protect humans from other humans using computers to steal information – while trying to buy a computer. 

The priority shipping wasn’t messing around.  This was on a Thursday and I was expecting two business days later – Monday.    I’d be working from home and would be around in the evening.  Instead, I got notices on Friday that it would be arriving that day – sometime before the end of the day.  Not knowing when that would be was a little worrying since we had plans that evening, but the computer showed up mid-afternoon before any appointments or plans.

Over the weekend I did some set up work and this past week I’ve been using both machines as I transfer my files between them. 

It’s been well over a week since I’ve gotten the computer and yesterday I got an email and a text from Dell that my computer had shipped and was out for delivery.  I had to check and make sure it wasn’t a duplicate order – but the online info confirmed it had been delivered in the past. 

Odd.

So, I’ve got a shiny new Dell laptop and my inner geek (and my outer geek as well) thinks all is right with the world – even though it took some doing to convince the computers that I’m actually who I claim to be.

[Edit: I wrote this yesterday and just now got another Dell email and a text letting me know that my computer has been delivered. Sigh.]

I started my Twitter account back in 2009 and at the time I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.  There was a very strict character limit and I’m known for being…wordy.  It occurred to me that I could do something fun with this if I only tweeted in Haikus.  I had learned about that form of poetry in school and liked the concise nature of it – the syllable limit seemed a good fit for the character limit.

The challenge would be to share a story or idea and compress it down to the barest limit and still make it clear what I was trying to say. 

And I would only tweet in haikus – nothing else.  I did a few here and there – some that I’m really proud of – but not with any regularity. 

A few years ago I decided to really challenge myself as a writer.  I would write a haiku and post it on twitter every single day.

And so I did.

Some days it was difficult to come up with something unique to talk about.  Other times the story I tried to tell was too big and it was difficult to compress.  But, every day I did a haiku.

I didn’t have many twitter followers but I found a way to automatically cross-post these to Facebook.  So, in and among my regular posts, my little snippets of poetry started to appear.

And people liked them.  I started to get comments and likes from my friends and some people would write their own haikus back in response.  

It was really rewarding to be able to share, even to my small circle of friends.   And a good intellectual challenge to assess my day and find something to talk about.

Facebook changed the rules at some point and my cross-posting became manual.  Irksome, but not the end of the world.    And all the while, my archive on twitter continued to grow.  

I wrote haikus to mark the occasional milestone or important event.  And when I hit 1500 tweets, I decided to export them.  I used the twitter tools and requested a file and it was ready for download the next day.  I tucked away the zip file and kept on tweeting.

When the pandemic hit it got harder to write.  I didn’t go anywhere or do anything and I was working from home.  But I kept on writing every day – sharing my hopes and struggles. 

My twitter account continued to grow, but then recently the company was bought by a lunatic and things started to fail.  I kept an eye on the social media about the social media platform and got worried about my archive.  I had those 1500 tucked away, but had written almost 200 more since then.  If the platform failed, I would lose those.

I was within a few haikus of another milestone and early this week I wrote enough to bring me up to 1700.  I posted those on twitter and requested a new archive – hoping that the archive system wouldn’t fail before it was processed. 

As the days passed I kept checking to see if the archive would finish and manually posted the “pre-tweets” to facebook.

Yesterday, I decided I couldn’t trust that the archive would work at all.  I went to my twitter account and started to copy|paste out the tweets – scrolling through the past to find them. 

But, it only let me go back so far.   And when I looked back at the archive in the zip file, I was missing several months in 2020.    I saved what I could to a document, then headed to facebook.  

I started scrolling back to find those missing months – not looking forward to picking out the tweets from the rest of the posts – but I could only go back to mid 2021 before the page would fail and force a reload.

It was looking like I would lose some of my poetry, but then I remembered that facebook too has an export feature.  I found that, limited it to just my posts, and set a date range to slightly overlap my twitter zip file archive. 

It was processed in a few minutes and I downloaded a file.  And it was exactly what I needed.

With a literal sigh of relief, I turned my attention to a new long-term online archive where I could preserve what I had downloaded – as well as my future haikus.

And then this morning, I got an email that my twitter archive of 1700 tweets was ready to download.

Sigh.

I’m not a sentimental person, but this one really bothered me.  I guess it was a difference between deciding to toss or delete something  – on my terms and for my reasons – versus losing it because of someone else’s actions. 

And I know this is a bit silly.  Just a pile of very small poems with a lot of careful counting – doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but it mattered to me.

I’ll back up the archive to my google drive and keep this on my new computer as well.  And I’ll still keep tweeting on Twitter and posting to facebook – but I’m going to add an extra step and save them locally as well.  Just in case.

If twitter survives the lunatic, I may pull another archive a hundred Haikus from now.  

I still have more stories to tell, after all.

On Saturday, Jim and I set out on a trip to visit my family for my younger niece’s birthday. We’d only been on the highway a few minutes when we noticed a vibration and sound coming from the right front tire.  We pulled over and checked and while nothing looked wrong, it was worrying enough that we headed home and switched to Jim’s car for the trip.

When we got back I made an online appointment to get my car checked out at National Tire and Battery – just down the street from the house.

I took the car in on Monday afternoon and while I was waiting to get checked in I noticed some origami on the front desk – an open lattice cube that I’d made the last I was there.  I didn’t say anything about it then, but I had paper and did some more folding while I waited in the waiting room in the back.

By the time they finally came to give me an update, I had filled a table with small paper creations.  I got the bad news on the amount and the timing – they couldn’t get parts and it wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow – and then headed back to the lobby with a small solid cube in hand. 

I picked up the open cube in my hand and popped the smaller cube into it – explaining to the guy at the counter that I had made that the last time I was in. 

He got very excited and told me that folks notice this all the time new employees ask about it – but they didn’t know who made it.    I told him I’d left a bunch of new things behind in the waiting room – then left to walk home.

The next day I got the call that my car was done and Jim was able to drop me off.   I walked in and saw that most of what I had made the day before had been added to the front desk.  When a different employee from the day before came up I said I was picking up my Civic.  She grabbed a chart off the wall and asked, “Todd?”

“Anthony,” I replied and she lit up.  

“You’re the guy that made all these!” she exclaimed and we chatted about origami while she rang me up.

No discount, alas, but still a nice encounter.  Something a little out of the ordinary really caught their attention and I was glad to share.

—-

Today, I drove my newly repaired car (hydraulic lines, calipers, and brake pads) into work and went to McDonald’s for lunch.  I went through the drive through and the same woman from before was working at the window.  She recognized me again as she handed me my order and told me that she had saved some of the things I had made from before.  

I told her that I thought it was really cool that she had recognized me last week from the origami and that I made her something.

I handed her an octahedron that I had made from blue scrapbook paper and she took it reverently in both hands.  

“I will treasure this for always,” she said and I smiled behind my mask and told her I was glad she liked it.  I wished her a good day and then I was on my way.

Such a simple hobby and the unexpected delight is a wonderful reward. 

And not a bad thing to be known for.

It’s been a week and it’s only Wednesday.   Terribly busy and utterly devoid of fun. But there has been one bright spot so far.

Back in the pre-pandemic days, I used to occasionally take myself to the McDonald’s near campus.  I’d go in and order the “impossible to screw up” chicken nuggets meal  – along with a diet coke and sometimes a chocolate shake if I was having a bad day.

While I was waiting, I would pull out some paper from my pocket and fold some cranes or dragons – or if there was a long wait, a more time-consuming person or a cube.  When my order was ready, I would leave the “creative litter” behind and be on my way.

I’m not on campus for work as much anymore and my trips to McDonald’s are even less frequent.  Today, though, I made my way there and went through the drive-thru.  

The shake machine was, unsurprisingly, not working and it took longer for the nuggets to materialize, but something delightful happened.

The woman at the pick up window asked me, “Are you the man that did all those little folding things?”

I said yes and she reached out to touch my arm through the window.

“I miss seeing those,” she said and then handed me my food and sent me on my way.

I was wearing a mask and the context was different  – though the food order was the same since I’m a creature of habit.  Maybe she recognized my voice – or my haircut – but it was remarkable nonetheless.

I forget, sometimes, the wonder these little paper creations bring.  For me, just a square of paper and half a thought – mostly muscle memory anymore – and there’s a crane to leave behind.  I rarely give much thought to what happens to them afterwards, but sometimes I am surprised by their fate.

So, I’m going to make something complicated and interesting and keep it in the glove box of my car for my next trip to that McDonald’s.  If she’s at the window that day, I’ll have a surprise to share.  

I hope it brightens her day as well. 

So, it was a bad day. Not terrible, but bad.  Stupid people with stupid ideas demanding stupid things.  A bad day.

I got home, dealt with some horrible bureaucracy by phone, and decided to go get dinner.  It wouldn’t be ready for an hour, so there was time to stop at the drugstore on the way.  Jim needed some aspirin, I wanted to get some tweezers – nothing major or complicated.

I stopped at the drugstore with plenty of time to get these small items and still be at the restaurant to pick up food on time.  This is very important to me.

I found the aspirin and the tweezers and also decided on a bottle of soda and a candy bar.  I had a bad day, as I may have mentioned.

I get in line and there’s a guy ahead of me and a woman at the cash register about to pay.    Her cart is full of bagged items and the cashier announces the total – $114.27

The woman then opens her purse and pulls out a card to use.

Up to this point, everything is fine.  We all know our place in the universe and what is expected of us.  My job is to wait a few moments, hers is to pay for her purchases.

And then…

“I’m not sure this card will work,” she says, “I don’t think it’s activated,”

And then she tries the card anyway.

Now, it’s 2022 in Akron, Ohio.   There is no earthly way someone can know how to use a credit card, know that they have to be activated, know that it’s not activated, and STILL think trying the card will work.   It is simply and utterly impossible. 

The card, unsurprisingly, fails. 

Now it’s back to the purse to look for another form of payment.  I don’t know if she’s trying to run some “confused little old lady” scam thinking they’ll just let roll out with a free cart of items if she’s just a silly-billy long enough – or if she’s bored and is “playing” at not knowing how things work, but no one was going along with it.  

No one.  

While she digs through her purse and I stand there feeling myself age, the cashier shows us mercy and calls for backup.  She also tells us that we can use the self-checkout if we want.

The guy in front of me hesitates .000437 nano-seconds and I assume that he’s going to wait for back up.  I make a beeline for the self-checkout and scan my first item – the bottle of aspirin – and toss it in the waiting bag.   25% done already.

Except, the bag is hung-up and not fully deployed.  The bottle isn’t heavy enough to pull down far enough to trip the “thing is in the bag” sensor and I get an error:

“Please place the item in the bagging area,”

I remove the bottle, adjust the bag, and hurl the bottle in again.  This time, the bottle hits the bottom sensor and registers.  

The bottle of soda follows easily as does the candy bar.  Heavy enough to not require hurling.

I scan the tweezers and toss them in the bag.  Not heavy enough.

“Please place the item in the bagging area, dumbass,”

I try again, with more force.   Nothing.

There’s a button on the screen that suggests I can skip bagging.  Perfect!   I mean, why does it care where I put the item once I’ve scanned it?  Bagging area, up my sleeve, up my nose, whatever, right?

I hit that button with triumph – which turns to ashes.

“Help is on the way!”  the screen tells me.

I make the following sound, recreated and saved here for posterity.

The backup cashier, finally having made her way to the front of the store, sees my plight and takes pity on my poor and wretched soul.

She sidles up to the self-checkout, swipes her badge on the scanner like a benediction, and the screen clears.  

Card.

Buttons.

Receipt. 

Out the door. 

I assume the woman is still at the register, perhaps having shifted into some Dante-esque purgatory where she digs out card after card only to be declined over and over.  

Forever.

I, though, have acquired my food.  And her fate is no longer my concern. 

I work to the sound of sirens.

And thunder and lightning.  The siren was a tornado/severe weather warning and it was pouring down rain as I put on my glasses and peered out the window.  The dogs were already awake but I woke up Jim and we grabbed our phones and headed to the basement.

The dogs are not normally allowed in the basement and it was a challenge to convince them it was okay, even after we took down the gate.  The cat, who normally spends a lot of time in the basement, needed to be bribed and then carried down – then shut in the bathroom down there for his own good. 

We unfolded a couple of chairs, tried to settle the dogs, and opened up competing weather apps on our phones.  Mine had static radar images, but also included lightning strike distances.  Jim’s had animated radar on a loop, but was not as easy to read.   Both agreed that the alert was supposed to end at 2 am, so we had about a half hour to wait it out. 

Between storm tracking and settling the dogs, it occured to me how amazing it was that we could sit safely in our basement – tracking a storm with technology that would have seemed like science fiction when I was a kid.   I doubt even Mr. Spock’s tricorder could have been so informative. 

We sat quietly till the alert expired, checked the position of the storm on the maps, then crept back upstairs. I put away the flashlight and lantern I had brought with us – forgetting that the generator would have restored power if we’d lost it.  Jim let the dogs out to use the bathroom because it seemed like the thing to do and then it was time to turn in – again – and try to get some sleep before the new day began. 

It wasn’t that long ago that a tornado warning sent me to the basement alone – except for my cat – and how anxious I’d been.  This was just something to be done and then it was over and everything was fine.   Best case scenario instead of an imagined worst.

Friday before last, our “house-call” lawyer came back to finish up the paperwork for our wills and powers of attorneys. Our retired neighbor was happy to be on call as a witness and his part only took a few minutes.  The rest of the time was in re-reading all the documents – looking for key phrases like “immortal soul” or “all your base are belong to us” – and then signing.  Felt like all the paperwork when we closed on our house, but uncomfortable.  I’m generally not too bogged down by mortality – figuring that when I’m gone, my worries are over – but it was a little different to see it spelled out.   I was particularly hung up on the “vegitative state – sounded pretty terrible.

But, it was the right thing to do and I’m glad we did it. 

The lawyer left the signed copies with us and I got them scanned and sent back digital copies to him to file.    Our copies go in the safe and we’re a bit more “politically secure” than we were before.

Our city, though, is less so.  A young black man was killed by police recently and Akron has seen protests over the killing, vandalism in the downtown area, and a curfew.    The University of Akron is right in the middle of this area and we’ve been instructed to work remotely on key days when it might not be safe to go onto campus.   I support the protesters and the right to protest  – though I’ve never understood the vandalism that some folks choose to do.  It’s added another layer of tension to an already terrible situation and it may be a while – if ever – before we find out the truth of what happened.

That, along with the continuing mass shooting around the country, has me a little more wary that I normally would be.

Jim and I had decided to go to an Arts and Crafts festival today at a nearby park and while we were looking forward to going, there was an undercurrent for me that I didn’t mention.

Was this where the next shooting would be?  As we browsed through the pottery and stained glass, were we going to be targets?

These were just idle thoughts.  Not enough to prevent us from going and enjoying the day.  It’s just felt like for all the faults of Akron, I never expected anything really bad would happen here.   I mean, we’re basically a pop-culture trivia question.    Once Buffy closed the Hellmouth in Sunnydale, her friends remind her there’s another one in Akron.  The Deep from the TV show “the Boys” gets sent to beautiful Sandusky – “not like that shithole Akron”.    And the folks in South Park get Qannon messages from Dave Harris in Akron. 

We should be too ridiculous to have anything bad and real happen here – but in that park today, I kept my eyes open.

And yet…

There were deer in our yard yesterday evening.  And I bought some really great handmade soap today.  Our retired neighbor – our witness – played the cello with open windows while Jim and I worked in the yard.   And our friend Jenny came over to watch Stranger Things with us.

And those things are normal and okay and just…reasonable. 

My heart weeps for the family of the young man that was killed.  And I worry about how kids all over the country get through their days when a gunman might target their school.   Our rights are in danger to create political turmoil and there are wars being waged on distant shores tonight.

We cling to the normal like a life raft in a sea of uncertainty.  Worried that the terrible problems in the world might end up at our doorstep. 

It seems selfish to be happy.  To sleep safe and secure each night.  When the problems of the day are late emails and a shortage of pop tarts. 

We keep those we care about close.  And we wave to anyone that drives down the street to remind them that things are okay here. 

And we hope. 

Even when hope feels like defiance. 

Jim and I had been dating a few years when the subject of marriage came up.  Sort of a casual “hey, we should do that,” but not a sense of urgency.  Things were good, we were good, and it seemed a bit like a formality to what we already knew was going to be a long term relationship – as the saying goes.   Also, I don’t think either of us knew who was supposed to do the asking.  

And we talked a few times that if the supreme court ever started getting stupid – i.e. full of people that liked to take other people’s rights away – that we would get married to get this “on the books”.  And then plan a fancier ceremony later on. 

The reasoning being that it is much harder to take something away from someone than it is to keep them from having it in the first place. 

So, in November of 2020, as the high court was being stacked, Jim and I decided the writing was on the wall.    We got our license, got married, and we were official.   And felt a little more secure in the political validity of our relationship.

Fast forward a bit to two weeks ago.  Jim needed to have a document reviewed by a lawyer and he thought it would be a good time to update his will.  I didn’t have one yet and we decided we could get both of those done – along with powers of attorney and all that.

We made an appointment with a lawyer who didn’t mind a house-call – and met with him the Friday before last.   I was ready with my checkbook and pen, but this was just a planning meeting – he would need time to prep the documents.    

So, we planned for another meeting this past Friday and asked our retired neighbor to be a witness.  While we were waiting for the lawyer to arrive, we saw the news about Roe vs. Wade being stuck down – and how the reason behind doing so could also open the door for other rights – including gay marriage – to be struck down as well. 

We were glad again we’d made the decision to get married when we did and also glad we were making the decision on the wills and other documents to support that.    Things we’d maybe started to take for granted now seemed a little less certain.

And then the lawyer was late.  Then very late.  Jim texted him and the guy had a family emergency and forgot us.  He didn’t have the paperwork with him and it just wasn’t going to work out.  So, we rescheduled for this coming Friday.

Jim and I were both anxious yesterday evening and neither of us slept well.

We’ve made good and smart long term decisions for us and the wills are just to reinforce what our marriage provides.  And the odds are against some ruling coming down in a week to nullify that before we can get our wills done.  And the odds are also against anything happening to either of us in the next week before things are signed.

And yet… best laid plans.

——-

Years ago, on two differnt occasions, I knew young women who had abortions.  They were difficult decisions, painful decisions, but the right decisions for these women at that time in their lives.   For one, I drove her to the provider and waited for her in the waiting room.    I was self-conscious as I sat there – like I needed to tell the other men there that I wasn’t responsible.  Not my finest moment – even just in my head.   

For the other, I checked on her afterwards when her boyfriend brought her back from the appointment – and then gave her the privacy she needed.   Feeling a little helpless that I didn’t know how to make a difficult situation any better. 

Now, the rights those women exercised over their own bodies are in jeopardy.  In some states, I could be arrested for what I had done by helping them – even just by driving or not “reporting”.

Would I have had the courage to still support them?

——

I sit here in the room that my husband and I have labeled “the conservatory” in our castle.  The sun is shining in our quiet neighborhood and I have good wifi and a strong cup of tea.  I have a good job, a good car and a good home.   I have good neighbors and a family that loves me. I am as lucky and safe as I can be. 

But I’m still anxious.  With all that is bad in the world, people in power seem determined to make things worse for everyone else.   And writing about it isn’t helping make much sense of it this time. 

No wisdom today.  No clever answers or observations. 

I think about those women and what they went through all those years ago.  Difficult decisions then, now perhaps impossible ones.   

And I worry for my husband and I  – and what comes next for us.

Everyone has a story.

But some of those stories are quite stupid.

Let me set the scene…

Jim and I decided to try a different pizza place this evening for dinner.  He called the order in and I went to get it – arriving 1 minute, 30 seconds ahead of the estimated completion time.  

That time isn’t really relevant – other than to note that, as usual, I have my shit together.

The woman that walks in just ahead of me holds the door open for me – which is nice.  We’ll call her Woman One.   The two of us wait in the very small lobby for a moment while the clerk takes a lengthy to-go order on the phone.  While we stand there, another woman walks in – we’ll call her Woman Two and she’s talking on her phone.

But not just talking on her phone.  She’s got the phone on speaker and she’s holding it up to her face horizontally – like she’s having a conversation with a saucer about what happened to her tea cup. 

(For clarity, people that do this are MONSTERS and deserve whatever horrible fate that befalls them.)

This conversation, though, is about a business deal that a family member wants her to get involved in.  More on that in a moment…

The clerk is still working on the phone order and before she gets done, Woman One leaves the lobby and goes outside.  No pizza, no jo-jos, no cheese-sticks.  She just leaves.  When I later go to the parking lot I’ll discover that she has left completely.  For now, though, my place in line has bumped up.  

Woman Two has continued her conversation.  The amount the family member needs is $20,000 and of course she could get that – obviously – but isn’t sure she should.  The person on the other end of the conversation isn’t sure she should do that either.

The clerk finishes and I give her the name for the order.  She disappears into the back for approximately 9,000 years. 

Woman Two now relates that she was instructed to go to the bank to get help with the paperwork and that she has $20,000 in equity in her home.  

Which, gentle reader, one should note is not the same as having $20,000 readily available. 

Now the conversation goes back to the merits of the business venture and if she is willing to put her house on the line for it.  The consensus between Woman Two, her caller, (and mysel)f is generally “no”, but still open for debate. 

The clerk comes back with my order and while I’m navigating the payment screen someone asks Woman Two what order she’s there for.  She dramatically sighs at having her conversation interrupted, then pauses the conversation long enough to give them two orders – the second of which she’s uncertain of the pronunciation. 

No sooner has she uttered the names, she too leaves the restaurant. 

The other clerk tries to get confirmation on the names, but she’s gone.  I finish paying, get a receipt and take a moment to wonder:

“Does no one know how this works?”

1. You walk in.
2.  Give them your name.
3.  They give you food.
4.  You pay for the food.
5.  AND THEN you leave.  

If you don’t follow that simple sequence, it doesn’t work. 

As I walk out, thankful for my food and my wits, I see Woman Two heading back towards the restaurant – carrying her DoorDash bags to pick up the orders. 

I am not a financial expert, but I think perhaps that Woman Two should consider very carefully her options before investing in a business venture with a family member.  Though, given the way she was talking on the phone, who am I to say?

Woman One, as I mentioned, was nowhere to be found. I hope she figured out her error with steps 2 through 4 and eventually came back for her order.

And the pizza?

It was okay – if maybe a little pricey.

Back in April, I wrote about how our house didn’t explode – but that the yard got a little torn up when the gas company did some digging and replaced part of the line.  This was also around the time that several heavy trucks had driven through the grass at the edge of the street.  The yard was a bit of a mess near the street all along the property and worse right at the mailbox, but we had been assured that “someone would come back” and resolve that. 

Who that would be and when they would show up were left up in the air.

Our next door neighbors also had their yard damaged and they didn’t wait.  As soon as the threat of frost was done, they were out there with dirt, grass seed and straw.  I took my cue from them and bought some dirt, grass seed (two kinds) and a bail of straw.   

Which turned out to be ⅞ of a bail too much straw.

I spread the dirt and raked it, spread the grass seed and watered it well.  Spread the straw over that and watered again.  And then I watered any day that it didn’t rain until the grass started coming up.

I cleared away the straw and kept an eye on the new growth.  It wasn’t 100% coverage, but it looked like I had put some effort into it and figured it would fill in eventually.

Fast forward to today when a truck pulled up while I was fixing my lunch.  I was done with my yardwork for the morning and watched from the window to see how the pros would handle this.  

Would they use a special fast growing seed?  Straw, mulch or some other material?  I didn’t see a water tank – would that be up to me or was the seed coated in a water retaining gel?

The guy got out of the truck and got a bucket from the back.  He reached into the bucket and then tossed some grass seed on the patch near the mailbox.  He did this a couple more times, then put the bucket back in the trunk, then got in and picked up a clipboard.  I saw him check off something on the clipboard as they drove off.

And that was it. 

3 months of waiting for a couple handfuls of grass seed.

I left my lunch in the microwave and headed back outside with straw…

(Seriously, does anyone need some straw?  I’ve still got 3/4 of a bail.)

…and a watering can.  I covered the small patch of very ordinary looking grass seed where it hadn’t quite filled in with some straw and watered it well.  Then I went back inside to eat my lunch.

There are two possibilities.  

1. I had already done such an amazing job that all they felt they needed to do was help things along with a little grass seed. 

“Good job, Anthony! You did great with your yard and the neighbors would be proud of you.”

2. Since they didn’t have straw, fancy water-retaining grass seed, or any way to water it – this was all they could have done.  No one came to the door to let me know it was done so the birds would likely have wiped out the seed if I hadn’t seen them come and go – and gone out to finish things up. 

What would have been more helpful would have been a pamphlet with some guidance on what to do to restore the yard when the gas company left. 

Instead, we got the standard – substandard – treatment.   I could be cross about it, but it was just a classic example of bruacruary.   We were told someone would come out and someone did – and they worked on the yard that had been torn up when our house didn’t explode.

And it still hasn’t exploded.  So, I’ll tend to the bonus grass seed and wait for the re-greening of the yard.