Big sister tells me that cousin Ernie's barn burned down, and the insurance company wouldn't pay off. He went to see the lawyer in town.

"You had a policy on the barn?" the lawyer asked, and Ernie said he did. "Premiums up to date?" Yep, Ernie said. "How much coverage did you have?" Ernie said it was $250,000. "And what kind of coverage did you get?" Ernie told him it was a fire and accident policy. "Aha!" said the lawyer, "There's your problem."

Ernie asked him why that was the problem. "You should have gotten a fire OR accident policy."

I'm Dating Again

Ah, I told my sister. Little things make a difference. "Yes, they do," my sister agreed. "Oh, by the way, did I tell you that I have a new boyfriend?" Little things make a difference.

We finally applied for Blondie's Social Security Disability. It was difficult to do so, not because the forms were complicated or anything like that, but because the forms basically demand that you admit that you're a useless human being, not worth the oxygen that you breathe. That's not an admission Blondie wanted to make.

Frankly, it's been going on two decades for me, and I'm still not wanting to admit that it's true about me. I keep hoping that tomorrow morning, I'll wake up and I'll be rip-roaring ready to go, capable of working a 40-hour week, or even a 5-hour day. The evidence is overwhelming that it's not going to happen, but hope springs eternal in an idiot.

Lawyers On The Boob Tube

There are ads running on TV all the time from attorneys telling us that Social Security disability is impossible to qualify for. I've been talking to online friends, people who Are In A Position To Know, and they tell me that it's not really all that hard.

The secret, they tell me, is following the instructions carefully. Duh. I used to prepare income taxes for farmers, professionals and small businesses. The same rule worked there, too. Do you suppose that's because bureaucrats aren't really out to get you, they just want to do their job?

The thing is, between my agoraphobia, my depression, and my bum hip, it's pretty hard to sit myself down and gather the information I need and fill out a form. And with Blondie's vascular dementia, she isn't in any position to provide much help. It has taken great fortitude to stay on task long enough to fill out a form.

There Are So Many Professionals

Uncle Bill was in the army, and the sergeant said, "All you sons-of-bitches line up over here." Everybody but his friend Sid jumped up and stood in line. The sergeant walked over to Sid, put his fists on his hips, and said, "Well" and Sid said, "There sure are a lot of them, aren't there?"

We have a lot of professionals to be seen. Blondie has appointments the next three days in a row, and because she can't drive any more, I have to take her. Add to that, the fact that I have a specialist to see on Tuesday as well, and that's a lot to deal with. Before Blondie admitted to being senile, I didn't go out more than once or maybe twice a week, and never two days in a row. How am I going to handle four appointments in three days?

I don't know. I don't have a choice. I have to do it. Someone send the knacker by on Thursday with a winch, to pick up my body for the rendering factory. I expect to collapse by then.

Lacking The Tools

And the thing is, I haven't had the tools I need to do the job. I need a printer, and there may be one arriving tomorrow, from the website I ordered it from.

There's nothing wrong with my old printer, except that it takes a serial or parallel port, and my new computer has neither. When I got my new computer, I jury-rigged it up with my new computer talking to my old computer, which talks to the printer. The reason why my new computer was needed, however, was because my old computer wasn't reliable any more, and it gave out six weeks ago. I found a new B/W laser printer that was only $20 more than a new toner cartridge, though, and it runs off a USB port so it should be OK.

And if I can get all the Ts dotted, and the Is crossed, maybe we'll start getting Social Security for Blondie before our house is foreclosed. But getting them dotted and crossed is pretty important.

Lucy And Dean

All this reminds me of an old "Lucy Show" episode. I tried to google for the story, and it seems that episode has just been released on DVD, and that show is now on YouTube. In that episode, Lucy McGillicuddy has a blind date with Dean Martin's double, only his double is called away and Lucy ends up dating Deano himself, not realizing it.

She offers him a martini, and Dean accepts it. He makes a face. How did you make that martini, he asks her. Oh, well, I didn't have any vermouth, she says, so she used lemon juice. And she didn't have any gin, so she used white cooking wine, a sweet sauterne. And these things in the martini, he asks her? Oh, those are real olives!

These days, they have martini bars in restaurants, and they make all kinds of martinis, and nobody knows what a martini is. Back in the 1950s, a martini was 3 parts gin, 1 part dry vermouth, and an olive. Then they came along with "extra dry" martinis, which meant that they used more gin, less vermouth.

Shaken, Not Stirred

And then Ian Fleming that came along with "shaken, not stirred." The effect of "shaken, not stirred" is that you break the ice up, and you get more melting. Your martini ends up all watery. James Bond pretends to be a snob, when he's actually ordering a rather crappy martini.

These days, though, restaurants will sell you a chocolate martini, which consists of vodka, not gin, creme de cacao instead of dry vermouth, and a Hershey's milk chocolate kiss instead of an olive. They've omitted 100% of the ingredients of a martini, lock, stock, and barrel, and they still want to call it a martini. And they think Blondie is suffering from dementia?

As my sister says, little things make a difference. And with any luck, she might even end up with a boyfriend whose difference isn't quite so little.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
agoraphobia - army - Dean Martin - Ian Fleming - insurance - laser printer - lawyers - Lucille Ball - martini - social security

May is a time for disking.

The typical disk harrow has an X-shaped frame, and on each of the four arms, there's an axle with concave steel disks - think of 12" dinner plates - clamped to the axle at 4" or 5" intervals. The front two arms dice up the soil about 3" or 4" deep, and pull it slightly to the center, and the back two arms dice up the soil again, and push it back out again.

It depends on your soil how you till your soil. The land where I grew up had a really heavy, really wet clay, and you could only plow the soil in the fall, because plowing would make it clump into really hard lumps. Over the winter, the freeze/thaw would break up the clumps, and in the spring, all you could do is disk the land to prepare the seed bed. Those with sandy soil could get away with spring plowing.

Plowing Is Evil

Of course, we know now that plowing is an evil thing. In fact, disking is somewhat evil as well. It takes a lot of power to break up and move around that soil, which means a heavy tractor, which compresses the soil, which is A Bad Thing. These days, smart farmers know that plowing destroys the structure of the soil, and bring weed seeds from prior years to the surface. Farmers try to do minimal tillage, so that the soil remains looser, and easier for roots to penetrate. And they try to spend less for tractors and for fuel.

Half a century ago, though, I'd rush to the fields as soon as school was out, so I could disk. The ground is often wet in the morning because of dew, so there wasn't much time lost. On Saturday, we'd work from 1 PM until 9 or 10 PM, so if I didn't get started until 3 PM on weekdays instead of 1 PM, it wasn't a really big loss.

Ambivalence

I was always ambivalent about disking. It was nice to be of value to the family, doing a man's job, but on the other hand, disking is rather boring. I kept trying to figure out a way to sneak a book onto the tractor, so I could disk with one eye and read with the other, but I couldn't manage that.

Instead, I spent a lot of time watching clouds. You can look at the sky, and think that there's nothing going on, but if you stare for very long, you realize that the winds at altitude are fairly swift. I made the same observation today, while waiting for Blondie.

I Drove Her To... Dentistry

I took her to an appointment with the dentist. She needed me to drive her, since she no longer drives, and she wanted me around in case they would ask questions she couldn't answer or they explained things she couldn't grasp. They bounced me from the room when it was time to take her X-rays, though, and when I went to the waiting room, a rude jerk cleaning the fish tank told me that I couldn't sit in his half of the waiting room, because he needed all the space, and the other half of the waiting room had people stacked up like cordwood. I gave my cell number to a girl at the counter, and told her to have my wife call me when she needed me.

I comment about my bad hip every so often, but there's also a problem with my right ankle. When I drive a lot, my ankle gets too much exercise, and it feels like my ankle has been stabbed with a steak knife. I came to the conclusion that if I tilted back the seat as far as possible, I could support my right ankle atop my left ankle, and the pain would mostly disappear. So I sat there in the driver's seat for an hour, listening to WSOX and watching the sky.

Not Entirely

Well, not entirely watching the sky. I was doing some people-watching as well, although I was watching the sky enough that it brought back memories of disking. The dentist's office had a sign on the door saing "This is a non-smoking facility" which in this case meant "There's no place set aside for smokers indoors, so you get to run a gauntlet of toxic fumes if you want to enter or exit the building".

And it was funny to see the expressions of people as they realized that they had to endure that smoke. Not funny ha-ha, more funny-wierd, in a "they must be proud of themselves for annoying the hell out of smokers and non-smokers in one fell swoop." There was a nice-looking lady who smoked a Newport, then as she was putting it out, someone new came by and lit up, only to have her ride appear just as her cigarette ended, and as the transient smoker left, another Newport was fired up. Again, she no more than discarded her butt than someone else showed up 30 second later, lighting up a Marlboro. A guy showed up and went inside with her while her cigarette still had an inch to go, so she took a really deep drag, and threw away her butt. Thirty seconds after she disappeared, the Newport lady fired up a third cigarette.

My Imagination?

Is it my imagination, or are most smoking done by females these days? Once in a while, I see a guy with a fag, but not often; usually, it's a woman. And if you look at people's faces, you can see the deep radial wrinkles around the lips of someone who smokes a lot. It ages them a lot. You'd think that women would be vain enough to want to look young and wholesome, rather than looking haggard and used-up.

Eventually, Blondie was done. We arrived for her 12 PM appointment at 11:45 AM, and she came out of the building at 3:25 PM. As you can imagine, I was clouded-out. She, on the other hand, was quite impressed with the dentist's professionalism. It was almost 2 PM before they took her X-rays, and the time-management practices of the office didn't impress me as highly professional, but I didn't say a word. It's not the duty of a husband to rain on his wife's parade, and it's damned near his duty to avoid it on those few occasions when he realizes that's what his natural inclination would do.

We Hadn't Eaten

Meanwhile, it was late afternoon, and we hadn't eaten breakfast yet, because Blondie was afraid that if she did, she might belch in the dentist's face. That's kind of her, but my blood sugar was approximating that of a corpse 20 years in the grave. I shouldn't be driving very far in that condition.

I considered stopping at Burger King, but I didn't want to eat in the car, and the last time I went in, BK was raucous, and filthy, and the staff was discourteous to everyone who entered. It's bad enough when people are rude to me, but when they are rude to everyone, I want to play Donald Trump, walking up to them and screaming "You're fired!"

Instead, we went to Friendly's, where we hadn't been for years. The waitress was a tall trim black woman, I'm guessing in her late 20s or in her 30s, who was both friendly and efficient. Boy, that's nice. Our food arrived quickly, and I was once again impressed with it, in general.

Great French Fries

The french fries pretty much meet my idea of what french fries should be, and if the bacon cheeseburger could be better, it'd only be by using August tomatoes on it instead of May tomatoes. On the other hand, I asked for unsweet tea, and it should have come with a warning from the FDA - it was obviously made from a powder, with a lot of lemon. It is so easy to make good iced tea; why would any restaurant serve crap to their customers if they were bothering to serve well-cooked food?

It's now about 2 AM and my right ankle is still aching. Blondie was just up to go to the john, and I asked her about upcoming appointments. She said the rest of the week is free, and suggested maybe staying off the ankle tomorrow would go a long way to make me feel better. Boy, am I glad that I didn't criticize the dentist. She knows my ankle hurts, and she knows why it hurts.

She rubbed it earlier this evening, while telling me how much she appreciated what I do for her. That's not always the case. She is sorely aggrieved that she can no longer drive, and life seems terribly unfair to her. And it is, to all of us. But lately, she seems to think I'm part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

A Great Massage

Until recently, she constantly harped at me, telling me that I was taking the wrong routes to go places. I try to avoid downtown because I constantly have to move my foot from gas pedal to brake pedal. Between my hip and my ankle, that hurts, and I worry about becoming an unsafe driver if I do a lot of that - so I don't do a lot of that.

Finally, she seems to understand. When's the last time a husband said to you, "My wife understands me"?

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
Burger King - clouds - dentist - disk harrow - Friendly's - no-till - school - skeletal pain - smoking

Yesterday, Blondie was asking me what Osama Bin Laden's motivation was. I told her that he's a religious wacko, a fundamentalist, and such people are generally dangerous.

Last night, though, I found myself on a site where someone was talking about birth order. They were mostly talking about first-born, last-born, and middle child. Such studies have largely become obsolete in recent years, as couples have chosen to have one or zero children.

Osama was the 17th-born of 54 children. I think you'll find that there are very few emotionally-stable 17th-born children. Why, I doubt you will find even one child in a thousand that meets that description.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
birth order - Osama Bin Laden - religious fundamentalist

Under 18 USC 2441, the federal war crimes statute, it lists certain conduct which is prohibited. That includes

(D) Murder.— The act of a person who intentionally kills, or conspires or attempts to kill, or kills whether intentionally or unintentionally in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.

It's not just distasteful to kill an unarmed man in the conduct of a war, it's illegal, both a violation of US law, and of international law.

I'm not shedding any tears for Osama Bin Laden. On the other hand, what does it say about us that we celebrate such actions? Are we turning into Nazi Germany?

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Nazi Germany - Osama Bin Laden - war crimes

Jackie Cooper died Tuesday, at 88, and on MSNBC, they described him as editor Perry White in the Superman movies.

Ouch! That's sorta like describing Jimmy Carter as brother of the guy Billy Beer was named for.

Until 13-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes was nominated for Best Actress in 2004, he was the only actor to earn a Best Actor/Actress nomination for an Academy Award before his/her 18th birthday. That was for the movie "Skippy". I think his best movie, though, was "Mr. Roberts".

Tears From Skippy

In 1931, Cooper was being directed in "Skippy" by his uncle, Norman Taurog. He couldn't get Cooper to give him the emotion he wanted, and he said the dog was a nuisance, and he was going to call the pound to come take it away. Cooper got upset and wouldn't cooperate AT ALL. Taurog threatened Cooper, saying that if he didn't do as Taurog said, he'd have the policeman shoot the dog. The tears flowed.

Cooper called his autobiography "Please Don't Shoot My Dog."

In 1976, he said, "Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll hear a voice that sounds familiar... my wife has fallen asleep with the tube on, and I'll finally start recognizing the dialogue, look up, and Jesus Christ, it's me at 14, or 12, or 9, or whatever. Sometimes I'll sit there and watch it and I can tell myself what's coming next... I remember the dialogue, the scene and the set very well, and then there'll be a part of the picture I never remembered at all. Because there were times as a kid, as a teenager especially, when I'd be terribly occupied with what I was doing--with my boat, or on a circuit of rodeos and horseshoes, or with my car--very often on some of this stuff when I'd have to go to work. I'd just give the script a cursory glance. I had no training, and I was a quick study, so nobody knew how involved or not involved I was. But I look at that stuff now and I can see I wasn't involved, and I wasn't very good."

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
dog - Habitat For Humanity - Jackie Cooper - Jimmy Carter - Keisha Castle-Hughes - Mr. Roberts - Norman Taurog - Perry White - Skippy - Superman