A "Dad" joke and a day full of miscellaneous activity

I went to my dentist for my semi-annual cleaning and I heard a joke.

Did you hear about the dentist who invented licorice-flavored toothpaste?

It was a horrible flop in the market-place.

Apparently, all of the on-line reviews said it tasted like anise.

The joys of truck ownership

I was volunteered to help somebody move.

It was somebody that I have a hard time saying "No" to. Family, dontchya know.

The new apartment is on the third floor. There are no elevators. The toughest thing to move was the very-floppy, king-size mattress in the polyethylene mattress bag. It was like wrestling a greasy, passed-out-drunk walrus up a hill.

But...we got it done. We got it done about 8" at a time. I was the man-on-top and the dead-lifting exercises I have been doing came in handy.

The maintenance guy showed up to address various issues and he was a bit stand-offish at the start. I learned that he loved fishing and was limiting out on bluegills (they are on their beds) and he was interested in the bullheads hitting in the channel that runs beside the Subway in Eaton Rapids. I learned that he drinks Diet Mountain Dew. By the end of the day he was letting us borrow his Allen wrenches to take the legs off the table, for instance.

That led to a side conversation between my kid and me. "Are psychopaths better at reading people?" Psychopaths have to STUDY people to figure out how they tick. They don't have the props of empathy and intuition. I am not a psychopath but my basic opinion of people who I don't know is that they are diapers. Some are clean. Some are wet. Some are full of fecal material. You can't always tell in advance. It is in your best interest to be able to handle all types of diapers with skill and poise and class. A diaper changed quickly and without drama, regardless of its contents, is the very best outcome.

The humidity was very low by Michigan standards. There weren't even popcorn clouds at mid-afternoon. Four-and-a-half hours of humping loads of "stuff" up two flights of stairs and only one bottle of water was not a recipe for a peppy, old man.

I did score some modular shelving out of the deal, so that is a bonus.

Irregular hours

Southern Belle, who we helped move from Miami to Michigan 13 months ago, is jetting down to Miami on this evening for a weekend-long commitment she made a year earlier. That stretches out our child-care hours because Handsome Hombre is working 10 hours a day with an hour commute on each end.

Garden frustrations

Something is pulling up my tree seedlings and/or eating the first, primitive leaves.

I brought the tray of persimmon seedlings into the house and put it under lights and on top of a warming mat. They were the hardest hit. At one point it looked like I might net 50 seedlings this year but optimism faded and I might only get 10.

I put the other trays inside of a dog-crate (cage) and whatever beast that does it is small enough to slip through the mesh and I am continuing to lose seedlings.

At a different location, the property I am managing has a small orchard. Scratch that, it has three small orchards: an old one, a young one and a dead one. The young orchard has a lot of gaps. 40% of the trees are dead. I have a lot of extra tomato plants.

I didn't do anything crazy. I planted eight plants. Two of the neighbors are the best people you could ever hope to meet. One is pretty decent. Two are...well...the kind of people my mama taught me to not say anything about.

The three good neighbors will probably enjoy the tomatoes and it cost me nothing but a few minutes of my time.

BOLO Calves

Apparently, there are still three, 300-pound Angus-cross calves on the lam in Eaton Rapids.

If you happen to know where they are, and if you are willing to share that, leave a comment and I will forward it to a sad cowboy.