It’s Baaack!

Posted on 14/12/2013 by Grumpa Joe

This morning I awoke and peeked out he window at the 2013 Monet Vision. It looked the best it did all year-long. Bathed in white it looked better than the white theme I tried to make this year. For the past twenty years I have commented on the pussy winters we have had, but this year promises to become the winter I know and hate, . . er I mean love. When you live in Illinois you have to love winter or you are not worthy of living here.

This week we experienced the joy of breathing below zero temps and decided that Arizona looks pretty good. Then it snowed three times counting today. The first was a shoveler. That’s a powdery snow fall that is less than two inches deep and it is not worthy of wasting gas in the snow blower, so shovel I did.  The next day, it snowed again. Another powdery one inch not worthy of a blow job. In fact, because I had a doctor appointment early, it didn’t even get a shovel job. This morning when I opened the garage door there was nine inches of powdery snow in front of me: Hear that all you guys who moved to Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Florida? This was definitely worth a blow job. Except, my blower was not ready. I had it serviced, I had fresh gas, but I removed the blower-chute when I stuffed the machine into the trunk to take it for service. The winters have been so pussy, that I kept gambling on not needing to get it completely functional. It took fifteen minutes to install the chute and three pulls to get it going strong

Lucky for me the Frankfort snowplow had not yet come by to fill the driveway with a block worth of snow moving at forty miles per hour. My trusty Honda, inherited from my son who moved to snow-less Houston, moved right through the powdery stuff. The temp measured 31.4 degrees F at my front porch.

I had about 90% of the driveway completed when I noticed the snow was no longer flying out the chute. Instead, it packed into the chute and didn’t clean very well at all. The temperature was now above 32 degrees and the snow was, as we used to say as kids, “good packing.” That meant it is perfect for making snowballs and snow men.

It took about an hour to finish the drive and the walk in front of my house and the walks in front of the neighbors on each side of me. A few years ago, this would have taken me less than forty minutes and I would have had a great workout. This time, it took much longer and it tired me out completely. That is Nature’s way of telling me that the old bod’ ain’t what it was a few years ago. I guess it is the result of too many glasses of Cabernet and endless hours in front of the computer doing absolutely nothing.

After clearing the front, I tackled the patio to gain access to the bird feeders. There wasn’t a single dove, cardinal, or sparrow in sight. Must be the snow, I thought, until I heard the screeching call of a hawk. He sat in a tree observing the action around the feeders. I reveled at the sound of his call as he obstinately stayed perched and screeching high above me. I was shoveling a path around the post feeder and the hanging feeder at the window when I spotted Grandma Peggy peering out keeping the hawk under surveillance. Now that’s neat, a predator observing his prey while being observed by a constable protecting the prey. The look on Peggy’s face was enough to scare any hawk from the area.

I took some pictures with my phone and declared the 2013 Monet Vision had finally achieved a state of  beauty worthy of talking about. Remember, Churchill said, “never, never, never, never give up.” I’m glad I didn’t because the garden finally looks good.

IMG_0954

2013 Monet Vision in December looking at the waterlessfall

IMG_0955

The Hawk keeps surveilance

IMG_0956

Snow Angel

IMG_0953

2013 Monet Vision in December looking at the bird tower

IMG_0960

Grandma Peggy keeps her eye on the hawk

IMG_0947

Front Drive

IMG_0948

Walkways

IMG_0951

My flag Flies Everyday

IMG_0949 IMG_0950 IMG_0952 IMG_0957 IMG_0958 IMG_0959

IMG_0851

2013 Monet Vision September reference

Related articles

Filed under: Birds, family, Garden, Pond | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Fluffy White Stuff

Posted on 13/02/2012 by Grumpa Joe

Very often I begin to feel sorry for myself. My kids don’t call, the sun isn’t shining, I feel lousy, my waistline is growing, all I ever do is eat, nobody reads my Blog, you know the stuff that will get anyone into a frazzled downer. Then I get a photograph like the one below, and life changes. I get invigorated, I feel lucky, my joints don’t ache anymore, life is good again. What is it that makes me feel so good, well for one thing, I love to look at pretty snow scenes, but when I have to shovel I hate snow. When all I have to do is look at it I love it.

This scene in Saint Joseph, Michigan from Sunday, 10 February 2012, is what a lake effect snow looks like when Mother Nature dumps twenty-four inches of fluffy white stuff. I love it because it is there, if it were in my yard, I’d hate it.

This is what twenty-four inches of snow looks like. It's beautiful isn't it?

Related articles

Filed under: family, Garden, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Simple Amusements

Posted on 28/01/2012 by Grumpa Joe

During the cold winter months it is nice to stay indoors and reminisce about the “good old days.”  I decided to share some stories about my childhood growing up in the nineteen fifties before TV, electronic games, computers, and all the stuff we spend our time with in the year twenty-twelve. Here is a typical activity that kept us amused so many years ago.

ICE SLIDE

          A popular winter activity at school was an ice slide.  When a layer of fresh snow-covered the sidewalk, the conditions were right for sliding.  At recess, before the janitor could shovel, the boys rushed out to start sliding. The new snow was slippery.  After a few runs, the fresh snow turned into ice. Everyone lined up for a chance to take a running start and to hit the ice standing up.  As more kids did it, the slide kept getting longer and longer. The activity became a contest. Each of us wanted to slide past the end to make it longer.  Soon, we overcrowded the slide and  a long line formed so we didn’t get to slide often.  It wasn’t long before we  made a second and a third slide.  Occasionally, someone hit a dry spot, and fell. The slider went rolling in the snow, but never got hurt. Whenever we got out of school, the sliding began, recess, lunch, and after school. Running to hit the ice standing up was fun. We slid on the flats of our feet to the end of the ice. By the next day the janitor spread salt on the sidewalk to make it safe to walk on. The sliding stopped until the next snow.

Related articles

Filed under: Biography, family, Memories | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Oh My God, Did I Just Jinx Myself?

Posted on 02/02/2011 by Grumpa Joe

I am proud to announce that out of six record-setting blizzard snowstorms that dropped over twelve inches of snow on the Chicago area, I  shoveled out of four of them.

The worst was in nineteen sixty-seven. Everyone who was alive at the time remembers that one. Many of my friends who worked downtown took three to seven days to get home. Stories about people helping people abound. Stories about the adventure of leaving a car stuck in the snow somewhere were plentiful. I got lucky on that storm. My job was in the city on forty-eighth and Halstead. Normally, it was a fifty minute drive. That Thursday morning it was snowing. There was a drift in front of my garage door that tapered out to the street sixty feet away. The drift was pretty high, so I decided to call in and tell my boss that I’d be a little late because I was going to wait a couple of hours before I began shoveling my car out. It kept snowing, and it kept snowing, and it never stopped until the next day. By early afternoon there was a nine-inch accumulation around the city. People left work early to get home. Many of them did not make it home that night. Some didn’t make it home for several days. I sat in a nice warm house watching it happen.

My neighbor, Kevin Caulfield, didn’t get home until Monday. He abandoned his car along the Outer Drive. The following Saturday, five of us armed with snow shovels, piled into a car and wove our way through the city streets to look for Kevin’s Ford. The streets were barely passible. Many places were still one lane wide. We managed to find Archer Avenue and headed toward the loop. I think we took Twenty-second street out to the Drive. The Outer Drive, Chicago’s showpiece road, was a war zone. The fire department and garbage collectors had worked feverishly to open two lanes. They cleared a section of road up to a car,  yanked the car off to the side into the clear spot,  and moved forward to the next car. There was no place to put the snow, so they piled it onto the cars they just moved. One week of labor and they had cleared a path to move in.

We scoured the area that Kevin remembered leaving his car. Eventually, he spotted the ugly green fender showing through a mountain of snow. It was his Ford. The five us worked quickly to  uncover the car. The front bumper was hanging. The snow crew yanked it off while moving it out-of-the-way. Again, the five of us managed to bend it upward so the car was drivable. We extricated the car and Kevin got it running. We followed him home to make sure he got there.

I’ve seen pictures of yesterday’s snow on the Outer Drive. They remind me of nineteen sixty-seven.

This morning, I dreaded going out to shovel (sno-blow). I procrastinated at my desk. I watched the birds play hide and seek in the evergreen shrub outside my window. Then, Mary, my neighbor across the street came out to snow-blow her drive. “Hey Peg,” I yelled. Grandma Peggy  came to see what I wanted. “Look what some wives do for their husband.”

“She’s less than half my age,” she said.

“Well, I guess it’s up to me,” I said out loud. Ten minutes later, I went at it with a vengeance. Three non-stop hours later, I had cleared a lane from the garage to the street.

I came in exhausted and very hungry. Something smelled good. I wonder what she is cooking for me. Grandma Peggy, was clearly upset. The smell turned out to be a pot of turkey soup that burned. She had been defrosting the frozen soup on a low heat and forgot about it until all the liquid had boiled out and the turkey was frying itself to the pan.

The doorbell rang. It was my son Mike and my grandson Dan. “Now you show up,” I kidded him, “It’s all done.”

“I just finished my own drive for the second time Dad, if you want , I’ll do the other half of yours.”

“Go for it,” I told him. Mike and Dan made very short work of the remaining half. They finished in forty-five minutes. Ah, to be young again. The boys didn’t stay long because they were going to his father-in-law’s house to clear another drive. I ate a sandwich and crashed. I’m beginning to feel the love all through my body. I think the muscles are sending me a message, “Don’t you DARE do that again.”

If the pattern stays on course it will be twenty years before we see another twenty-inch snow.

Oh my God, did I just jinx myself?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Related Articles

Filed under: Biography, Birds, Cooking, family, Memories, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Bah Humbug Blahs

Posted on 23/12/2008 by Grumpa Joe
Winter Bear

Winter Bear

As good as I felt last Sunday after our Lion Club food basket distribution, I am in a Bah Hum Bug mood today. It’s two days before Christmas, and I have the blahs. Maybe its light affective disorder, or something like that. It has to be a hormone gone wild to make a person feel so down. I can’t explain it. It couldn’t be that for the last twelve months I’ve been brainwashed by the messiah speaking about failed economic policies, and  another preacher damning America, or that the entire banking system came tumbling down by some social engineering. The weather isn’t helping me out either. It’s way too cold, it’s snowing and blowing. My joints all ache, and my muscles long for a walk, but I’m too lazy to go out .  Maybe I feel blue because I just wrote to my Senator telling him not to give himself a raise, and I expect him to give me the finger instead. Watching my 401K vanish  hasn’t added any light into my life either.

For many years, people referred to me as Scrooge. I created that personae in order to survive my job. We always had ‘performance appraisals’ right before Christmas. Often,  the news I gave my staff was not what they wanted to hear, therefore, the “Scrooge,” moniker. A negativity overtook me like the devil. I became negative the year around. Then one day, I heard a motivational speaker, and he changed my life. His name is Bernie,  he’s a medical doctor, and he changed my life with his speech. I learned that “positive” works much more effectively than “negative.”

It took me several years to break out of the negativity habit, but I did it. I  became a positive person. That is why these blahs are affecting me so. My mind wants to revert to negative, yet I know its the wrong way to go.  I see myself  being tempted by Darth Vader.  I hear him calling me to the “dark side.”

Several times today, I had to stop what I was doing to  find a positive moment to reflect upon. It has kept me going. I have to make alist of everything positive happening in my life today. It will help me bury the blahs.

Filed under: Election, family, Funk, grief, Lions Club, Motivation, Uncategorized, Writer | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

« Previous Page