Dain Bramage

It's been a long time since I wrote anything in this blog. No real reason other having discovered youtube and how to play spider solitaire on the computer. I am helping my brother paint his house and yes I know it's almost November. The house is covered in white slate pieces that I'm sure had a life time guarantee that never needed painting. I suspect no one thought it would last this long. There is a historical record of a trading post in our area that no one has ever found the remains of. I often think the bottom floor bedroom is that old post and the house was just built around it. Anyway, the county sent him a letter telling him he had to paint the house or else. It has to be done by November 10th. The saga begins with me trying to find paint, sprayers, power washers and such this time of year. Everyone I talk too looks at me like I've lost my mind and tell me you can't paint this time of year. It's too cold and wet so the paint will just peel off. Well tell that to the county! Note to the wise; the county recycled paint programs are closed for the winter. sigh.
Another brother and I are trying to help him get the painting done but we know there's no way to have it in on time. I've been calling the county daily for the last 2 weeks to get an extension. (the people at the paint program told me to do this) Only problem is no one returns my calls during the normal hours so I still haven't talked to them.
The house is a 2 story structure with lots of built on's from the previous owners. Sometimes I think we'd get lucky if it got hit by lightening so he could collect insurance. The front of it is pretty much done. We painted it dark chocolate brown with beige trim. Looks pretty good if I do say so myself. Both of these brothers have really bad backs. I decided to take the top part of the house and work my way down. That would keep them off the ladders which I thought would be less stressful. The opposite was true. They could have climbed the ladders and left me on the ground to tote around all the heavy stuff. My knees are in revolt and walking is painful. I had hoped to get some work done today as the weather is nice, but the brothers aren't able. One has to work and the other is lying in bed groaning inbetween back spasms while waiting for the muscle relaxer to kick in. I wish I had gone ahead and at least tried to power wash the side of the house so it would be dry and ready to go by tomorrow. Oh well, I'll just have to do twice as much to make up for today. Darn county. This is really the first salvo fired by a disgruntled neighbor. The brother says it stops here, with him. He is not going to retaliate or try to get even. He's just going to try to meet the counties demands and leave it at that. I'm proud of him. It would be easy to get angry and reciprocate. He's a braver man than I am Gunga Din.

Having Neighbors

The weatherman has been forecasting gloom and doom for the last 2 weeks. It's going to snow, no it's going to miss us, snow 4 to 6 inches, no ice only. Well it finally snowed, albeit 10 hours later than they said it would.
I watched my neighbors out snow-blowing their front driveway for a while. David, the son, bundled up like Nanook the Eskimo was pushing their blower around and occasionally dislodging chunks of ice with a stick. What I didn't see was this same David taking his snow-blower around the corner of our house to clear our driveway. My Mom tells me he's done this with every snow fall this year. She said she wishes she knew his phone number so she could call him and thank him. I think I'll make cookies instead. But it occurred to me how blessed we are to have these people in our lives. Nick and Phyllis are country folks right out of the Arkansas hills. They keep us company, share electricity in storms, they take my Mom out to lunch when I'm not around, they used to bring her lunch when she couldn't get out. They cut grass, shovel snow, dig up stumps. David has been known to show up and climb onto our roof to fix storm damage. He comes over when we gather for work like roofing the house. He doesn't ask for anything other than your company. How do you value something like that. The 3 of them truly are in the old fashioned sense, neighbors. Nick and David bailed me out of trouble when I was trying to repair the plumbing in this house. All I'd managed to do was poke a hole through a water pipe. It's hard to explain here but it's not about the things they do, despite my having listed some of them. But it's about who they are. What they believe in, how they live. I'm scatter brained, we all know that, I wish I had a way to tell them how much we appreciate them. In the way of neighbors, they are the KaChing in our live. We hit the jackpot.