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My Profile
Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
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2:32 p.m. - 2011-05-13
Uf dah, the gym was tough today. My abs hate me. (As well they should, I let them laze around and go to hell for three years and now suddenly want them to shape up and go back to work.) Glutes, hams and quads are marginally on my side but remain suspicious. "Okay, lady, we'll go with it here, but don't push it too far or we'll make you pay. Big time." You guys are right, I shouldn't accept my MIL's slotting off into fussing and fretting as just a condition of age. Thanks. Should have seen it myself, but sometimes when you're too close to a thing it's difficult to step back for the bigger picture. So I invited her out for a coffee after the gym and gently tried to ease MIL into a convo about her recent anxiety spike, but she turned her blithe "I'm fine" face at me and was obviously going, "La la la. I can't hear you," in her head. I moved off topic for a while and then casually worked in about how her grandson, Jon, was coming over on Sunday to discuss herbal medicine and other what-was-old-is-now-new-again healing/wellness techniques. Stuff I learned from my Oma and expanded on over the years through trial and error and convos with other like-minded friends. I'm grateful to the New Agers and Neo-Pagans, thanks to them and the folks in the organic/slow food communities it's a hella lot easier to get my hands on a decent variety and quality of stuff from Nature's pharmacopeia. MIL was intrigued and pleased that Jon is still on his quest to learn something about everything he can. So far in the last few years he's wandered coast-to-coast spending time doing everything from building wooden ocean-going boats by hand to organic wine making in Napa to two months at a Buddhist retreat near the New Hampshire-Canada border. When Jon hit me up for lessons in my homely craft I was tickled when he said he wanted to learn from 'someone who had a reasonably scientific approach with a minimum of navel gazing'. Thatta boy. Anyway, upshot is because it's something both Jon and I are into MIL has agreed to trying some of my 'health' tea. Sure, it's healthy (tons of B vitamins) but more importantly it's got a goodly shot of some of the more common relaxers. No, I'm not secretly getting my MIL stoned. If I wanted to do that I'd bake her some hash brownies and give her a pint of Cherry Garcia. Everything in the tea is perfectly legal and safe. This, however, does NOT mean I'm going to share recipes, I am NOT a licensed anything and am absolutely not going to set myself up for a juicy lawsuit. You want a nice relaxing tea? Try Celestial Seasoning's Tension Tamer or Sleepytime. Good stuff. Available at your local grocery. It's shaping up to be a busy weekend. Today Jer is coming by to do his second round with our wayward lawn. He did the first cut two weeks ago and did a nice job. Needs to spend less time weed-whacking around the trees and more time on edging the outbuildings and along the road front, and I'd like him to set the mower blade down another notch, but this will be discussed today. Nice kid. Works hard. I hope his landscaping biz is a success. He'll certainly get enough customer recommendations from me and Mick if he keeps up the good work. Tomorrow, weather permitting, Mick will ride in the morning then the three of us are going off to a sports card and collectables show. Mick inherited his grandfather's and deceased uncle's baseball card collections. Some goodies in there. No Honus Wagner's or anything, but some decent Mantle and Maris stuff. Mick wants to price out a few of his cards and perhaps sell off a couple if the offer is good. Not a fan of team sports, Mick's feelings about the cards are strictly personally sentimental and potentially financial. Wolf will likely be bored to snores, his one involvement in franchise sports is watching the Super Bowl every year for the commercials. Me? I'm going because I can sell anything. Mick is a na�f in the marketplace and wants me to negotiate and broker any deals that might go down. Baseball cards aren't that different from buying and selling collectable books, something I did in my past life, it always comes down to condition and re-sale desirability. Since Wolf the toddler terror took out my entire collection of Steinbeck and Hemmingway 1st editions in one particularly destructive (yet spectacular) early morning rampage I've given up on bibliophilic endeavors, but I think I still can swing a good deal on the Mantle second season Topps� with sharp corners and no creases. Tell you what, when I think about my baseball card days as a kid and how I probably blew Wolf's college tuition attaching my Hank Aaron rookie cards to my bicycle spokes I still get woozy and regretful. This is where Mick's obsession with keeping things pristine and in their original packaging comes to good stead. Mick's childhood Schwinn never made cool-ass motorcycle noises as my bike did, but here in 2011 his prudence will pay off pretty darn nicely. Gracious. Covered a lot of territory in this one, eh? Gym, herbalism, MIL, lawn care, baseball cards, regrets, hopes, and angry abdominal muscles.
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