as april brakes to a grinding halt i find myself exhausted. i smile a little that i survived my birthday, yet the pope didn't. it's a victory to still be here. to. do some lawn work. to breathe the stiff midwestern wind bringing the warm weather back and blowing the flowers around.
it is, in fact, quite green out. with a new mind to tending to lawns, i look at them wondering if they need someone to cut them. my wife is determined to let ours grow, at least for the month of may, as in no-mow-may, which is done to let everything pollinate and ultimately give a more energetic ecosystem. so at my own home i watch growling a little as i am really more into tending them, not so much for the neighbor's approval, but just because i have a lawn and can make it look however i want.
now that i do a few lawns as a business, i might get sensitive about how my own looks, but there are many areas where i've had to just say, well, that's my wife's department, not really mine. if she wants to let it grow, it's better to let it grow even while i try to get a lawn-mowing business going that will give work to a group of well-meaning but precarious kids with scant means of support. i've decided, on that front, it's all about money - i need to find out how to put money into their pockets, or else ultimately it will come out of mine anyway. they have no way to feed themselves; i can't watch them starve; the last effort i could make, as we ourselves go hurtling into bankruptcy, is to provide them with the basics so that they can get through these times without committing crimes and going to jail.
on that score, every dollar i put in their pocket, every meal i feed them, is one more day of victory, because they don't go out and commit crimes just for the heck of it. they would, if they had to, but so far, they've been lucky, and have found people like me to feed them. i sat in my car watching one kid mowing this guy's lawn. money in his pocket, and i feel like i've made the world a little lighter.
we are fostering a seven-year-old, now eight, and. it seems like temporary is turning into permanent. thus these septagenarians (?) could be fostering this young lady for ten years, since nobody else is stepping up to the plate. She's very lively and assertive. we've enjoyed it and are also enjoying, in general, the changes it has brought to our lives. the other day she was dancing in our kitchen, and i couldn't help it, i danced too. which brings me to the other thing i've been saying: i'm a little like elon, i have somewhere north of twelve kids, depending on how you count, yet the family is still a bit dysfunctional. the difference is mine aren't all biological, and, i'm not a geek going around putting a wrecking ball to the government.
my last shift is to deal with night-meds and a twenty-year-old who has a somewhat out-of-whack sleep schedule, not sure if he's even awake, and my deadline (9:30-10) approaches. will somehow have to take those out to him one way or the other.
and it's very much spring out there. i drive around with windows open, smelling the new grasses and listening to the sounds of the night. a lot of it is along that one road that connects knoxville and galesburg. in knoxville they call it the galesburg road. not sure what we call it, maybe just one-fifty.
got sent out on a dash to the railroad's "hump yard" which though only three miles from town is still in a world of its own. dusty gravel, crossings, even its own tunnel, but i got stuck at a train which had to be at least four miles long, and wasn't going very fast. it was going, though, and that's not always true, so i guess i was lucky. got to see a wide range of graffiti all up and down the line, and saw it up close slow motion, quite a show.
the dash set me back, though. in the dash world if you lose thirty minutes of lunch-hour traffic you lose everything, even though as i was on time-pay they paid me for that time. the good thing about time-pay of course is that it is insurance for those times when this happens, when some slow train just simply prevents you from getting where you're going. though it was bad from the dash perspective, it was good in that i've been considering making a movie out of train graffiti and galesburg, so i had some time to think about it. way out there, there wasn't any way i could have gone around it anyway. i was either going to give that poor railroad guy his lunch, or i wasn't. i just did it. i'm a little miffed now, of course. but it'll all work out.
it is, in fact, quite green out. with a new mind to tending to lawns, i look at them wondering if they need someone to cut them. my wife is determined to let ours grow, at least for the month of may, as in no-mow-may, which is done to let everything pollinate and ultimately give a more energetic ecosystem. so at my own home i watch growling a little as i am really more into tending them, not so much for the neighbor's approval, but just because i have a lawn and can make it look however i want.
now that i do a few lawns as a business, i might get sensitive about how my own looks, but there are many areas where i've had to just say, well, that's my wife's department, not really mine. if she wants to let it grow, it's better to let it grow even while i try to get a lawn-mowing business going that will give work to a group of well-meaning but precarious kids with scant means of support. i've decided, on that front, it's all about money - i need to find out how to put money into their pockets, or else ultimately it will come out of mine anyway. they have no way to feed themselves; i can't watch them starve; the last effort i could make, as we ourselves go hurtling into bankruptcy, is to provide them with the basics so that they can get through these times without committing crimes and going to jail.
on that score, every dollar i put in their pocket, every meal i feed them, is one more day of victory, because they don't go out and commit crimes just for the heck of it. they would, if they had to, but so far, they've been lucky, and have found people like me to feed them. i sat in my car watching one kid mowing this guy's lawn. money in his pocket, and i feel like i've made the world a little lighter.
we are fostering a seven-year-old, now eight, and. it seems like temporary is turning into permanent. thus these septagenarians (?) could be fostering this young lady for ten years, since nobody else is stepping up to the plate. She's very lively and assertive. we've enjoyed it and are also enjoying, in general, the changes it has brought to our lives. the other day she was dancing in our kitchen, and i couldn't help it, i danced too. which brings me to the other thing i've been saying: i'm a little like elon, i have somewhere north of twelve kids, depending on how you count, yet the family is still a bit dysfunctional. the difference is mine aren't all biological, and, i'm not a geek going around putting a wrecking ball to the government.
my last shift is to deal with night-meds and a twenty-year-old who has a somewhat out-of-whack sleep schedule, not sure if he's even awake, and my deadline (9:30-10) approaches. will somehow have to take those out to him one way or the other.
and it's very much spring out there. i drive around with windows open, smelling the new grasses and listening to the sounds of the night. a lot of it is along that one road that connects knoxville and galesburg. in knoxville they call it the galesburg road. not sure what we call it, maybe just one-fifty.
got sent out on a dash to the railroad's "hump yard" which though only three miles from town is still in a world of its own. dusty gravel, crossings, even its own tunnel, but i got stuck at a train which had to be at least four miles long, and wasn't going very fast. it was going, though, and that's not always true, so i guess i was lucky. got to see a wide range of graffiti all up and down the line, and saw it up close slow motion, quite a show.
the dash set me back, though. in the dash world if you lose thirty minutes of lunch-hour traffic you lose everything, even though as i was on time-pay they paid me for that time. the good thing about time-pay of course is that it is insurance for those times when this happens, when some slow train just simply prevents you from getting where you're going. though it was bad from the dash perspective, it was good in that i've been considering making a movie out of train graffiti and galesburg, so i had some time to think about it. way out there, there wasn't any way i could have gone around it anyway. i was either going to give that poor railroad guy his lunch, or i wasn't. i just did it. i'm a little miffed now, of course. but it'll all work out.
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