Broken Thing

Last night after supper the doorbell rang.  It was the renter saying that their garage door had come off the rails.  Now our garage door sticks sometime when one of the roller brackets gets loose and the roller gets wonky in the rail.  I fix that with a socket wrench and a little mild swearing.  Not the case next door.  The whole top section of it had tried to commit hara kiri and thought about taking her car with it.  At least that's what it looked like to me.  One of the rollers was on the driveway, one of the brackets was bent all out of shape, and one of the wires had acquired a twist in its pulley.  Not a good scene.  Renter called a friend who helped him open the door by hand so she could get her car out to go to work today and I called a neighbor with contacts.  He gave me a name, I called and left a message, this morning Bob called back, and by 8:30 Fred was at the door to give us an estimate to replace both doors (they're side by side; they have to match).  The number didn't give us heart attacks, didn't even make us faint, so tomorrow they're coming to put in new doors and another guy (friend of neighbor) is coming too to wrap the trim in aluminum so we/I never have to paint the trim again.  To be honest, the trim looks like small beavers have been gnawing at the bottom.  Understandable since it and the doors are original equipment, which makes them 38 years old.  This is why we save.  It might not be raining outside but it sure is raining in the checkbook.


While I was doing yoga this morning Mr. Oriole came to dip his bill into the dish of grape jelly.  Durwood figured out why they do that.  The sweet jelly attracts lots of hornets and bees.  The orioles don't like them buzzing around while they eat so he perches above and leans down while she swoops by to move the bees to one side, then she lands on the dish for a quick bite.  Ingenious.



The nasturtium is still blooming.  I am still peeved at the @$#%& chipmunks for digging up all the seeds but one.  And yesterday I found three tomatoes with holes gnawed in them.  Three!  And not the juiceless, hard-as-rocks Health Kick ones either.  No, the ones they're marauding are the juicy bush ones that are so succulent on a sandwich or eaten out of hand.  Devil rodents.

I am happy to report that Aldi has boneless pork butt roasts on sale this week.  Just when I was wishing someone would because I was sad to finish the delicious marinated pork from last weekend, the Aldi ad arrives in the newspaper today and, lo and behold!, there's pork on sale.  I zoomed right over as soon as the garage door guy left and got some.  You have to move fast to get stuff like that at Aldi, they run out fast and sometimes don't get more.  I got mine this time, mwa-ha-ha-ha.

August 31--Don B. Stevenson, Indigenous Hunter.  The canyon walls were the color of a lion's fur.  Fifteen, maybe fifty, shades of yellow ocher topped by a sky so blue it looked fake.  The man stood beneath a natural stone arch with his spear over his shoulder.  His eyes scanned the sheer wall across the thin silver creek far below.  On the wall stood a sheep looking like a fallen cloud.  The sheep bleated once and then fell silent as an eagle's cry rang out.  The man hefted his spear, balancing it, ready to throw.  His brows lowered to narrow his focus.  His weight shifted to his back foot and then to his front foot as his arm fell back and flew forward to release the spear.

I didn't knit yesterday.  I sat on the couch with ice on my ankle and read an actual paper book.  I know!  How retro of me.
--Barbara