saturday

Well, there’s still nothing happening on the job front.  There’s a tiny little ripple… we’ll see.

Scott and I had a great time at his family reunion last week.  I had hoped to blog about it while there but really there wasn’t much time.  The Hays Family Reunion differs from my own family reunions in that at the HFR, a room is reserved, generally a meeting type space, for everyone to gather.  And about 7:30 a.m. that’s just what the family does… they gather in the room, drink coffee, and chat.  They get caught up with each others lives.  About noon, we all mosey on up to the hotel’s restaurant for lunch, then afterwards stroll back down to the meeting room.

Little units drift off to one of the attractions Branson has to offer, but the core family stays in the meeting room, little circles forming at this table or that.  Conversation continues over a game of dominoes… or wahoo… or a puzzle… or a card game.  Or any of a number of different games.  We sit and chat.

Then around 5 different groups break off and go find dinner somewhere.  By 6:30 or 7 we’re all back together, chatting.  Playing.  This goes on for 2 days.  Towards the end of Saturday, we do pictures.  Pictures of each family.

The Hays Family Reunion is made up of the descendants of Merle & Ethel (Drumgoole) Hays.  There are 8 siblings remaining, children of Merle & Ethel.  These 8 siblings, along with their children and grand-children… and yes great grand-children are who make up the HFR.

So, on Saturday night, we take 9 pictures.  One picture of the 8 siblings, and one each of the families of each of the 8 children.  Did I say 9 pictures?  Well, what really happens is a bank of cameras take pictures.  So you generally have to sit for a photo while up to 20 photographers each take 3 or 4 pictures!  This year, Scott’s mother, Louise… Barb… (her name is Barbara Louise, and you’ll find folks at the reunion calling her either of those names) or Mudder as most of her family call her, asked me to join in the family picture.  Yay!  She said there were two reasons… one was that she’d looked back at all the pictures from the previous 10 years and realized I wasn’t in any of the pictures, and she figured it was wrong.  And the second reason?  Well… just as she was about to tell me, someone came along and interrupted, and I never did learn what it was!

On Sundays, family units start heading home.  The morning gathering has bout 2/3s of the family… then, little by little, the number goes down.  We have lunch, more people leave.  By mid-afternoon, there’s maybe 3 of the siblings, and their families still gathered.  By night, it was Scott and I, Mudder & Pops, Terry, Eleanor and Bethany, and oh-oh… Virgil and Alice, that’s right.

Terry’s a strange creature… she’s Bruce’s wife.  She was driver for Mudder & Pops and the girls.  At midnight we all went to bed.  At 2 a.m., she loaded up her charges and they all headed for Alamogordo.  Scott and I slept until 6, then loaded up and headed home.

I started off this post to tell what I’ve been doing this week, not about the reunion!  Frankly, the reunion is more interesting.

Just before leaving for the reunion, I bought a new trimmer for the yard.  So this week, I mowed the front yard.  Then I ran the trimmer around it.  It’s an electric trimmer, battery powered.  Came with two batteries.  One charger.

All the basic trimming got done Tuesday.  But, I’ve been putting in 2 hours a day of work on the front yard… that’s how long it takes to deplete the power in the two batteries, and in me.  Those who have seen my house may… or may not… remember that my driveway and front sidewalk has cracks in them.  And through those cracks grow weeds.  Pulling those weeds can be a daunting job… Scott and I once spent nearly 10 hours pulling them, and by the end of the day my fingers and his were raw and bleeding from abrading against the concrete.  Consequently, we don’t do it often… a mistake, I know.

So this week, for two hours a day, I’ve hacked away at those weeds with the trimmer until the batteries are too feeble to do anything but blow the leaves of the weeds around.  I have one stretch of sidewalk left to do… about 8 feet in all.  One 2 hour day’s work.  And then what?

I’ll do it again.  But first, we’ll be applying poison to the cracks.  And when stuff is dead, we’ll seal those cracks with tar.  Or something.  And then what?

It’ll be time for the back yard…. screeeeeeeech!  wait, I forgot!

After this weekend, I’ll be taking on the scraping of the front of the house… well, the trim anyhow.  I want to repaint the trim on the front of the house this coming week… it badly needs it.

Actually the whole house needs a paint job.  Just before they put it on the market, the previous owners spray painted the house a dusty blue.  I loved the color.  But, they used cheap paint.  Over the decade we’ve owned the house, the paint has faded, and washed away a bit, and now the house is dusty blue with the white underlayer showing through in many places.  But they ain’t no muny to buy house paint, so it’ll have to wait.  But the trim just can’t!

Dad wants to come over and help.  So, after an emergency dentist visit on Monday, I think that may just be what we do!

Toodles, all!