They’re here. All the pretty blossomy things that make most people sneeze, their nose drip, and their eyes leak. Just to get things going, just imagine being here …

Kinda gets you grasping for a kleenex box, doesn’t it? Or, how would you like to have this guy as your neighbor, and you live downwind?

I may have mentioned earlier that I have this neighbor. His yard doesn’t look like this, yet, but is will unless I keep mowing it. Right now it’s just full of pretty little yellow flowers that, given a chance, will blossom into these puff balls. You have to wonder what God was thinking when he added these to the mix. Mosquitoes, too.

Did I mention that Jeran, Jennifer and Daniel’s youngest, is taking piano lessons? He started a few weeks ago and is already ready for his first recital. Nothing complicated. It’s a duet with his teacher.

The lessons were Diane’s and my gift to him for his 13th birthday. In order to take advantage of the lessons the family needed a piano so he could practice. We have on in the basement, but it’s a big honker and would be horrible to move, so we started looking around. An electronic keyboard made sense, to save space, but an 88 key version isn’t cheap, which is what we are. Cheap.

As luck would have it, we decided to go garage saling a few weeks ago and guess what! They had a piano! We accepted the first price, $50, and got him to throw in the bench. Then I went home and tried to start my truck. It hasn’t been started since some time last summer and it rejected all my efforts to fire it up. So, I checked with George, our neighbor, to see if he would rent me his truck. He wouldn’t do that, but he let me borrow it, so I was good to go.

It was kind of scary because his truck, which is far newer than mine, has 360,000 miles on it. So, I was very careful when I drove it to get the piano.

While I was getting the transportation, Diane went in search of man power to help load it because there was no way I could do it. I can’t even help because every time I lift my right arm I re-injure whatever’s wrong with it between my shoulder and elbow. I’ll have to get that looked at one of these days. I don’t think about it when I go to the doctor. Besides, they’ll just want me to go to physical therapy.

When I arrived, the crew was waiting. The seller and his sons also pitched in to get the piano into the truck. They even let us keep most of the spiders that call the piano home. We draped a rope across it with the hopes a pacing policeman would think it was tied in, and away I went. Very slowly. Thankfully, it was a short trip – about 1/2 mile. All back streets. At the destination we had Daniel, Cedric, Lydia, Jeran, and two of Cedric’s friends to help unload it. I stood back and watched most of it, pitching in at the end just to say I helped.

Getting it into the house was fairly simple with all that manpower. Once done, Jeran sat right down and started picking out little tunes. It was a good thing for him because he’s not a sports type person – never was. This is something unique for him and we’re pretty sure he’s going to be pretty good at it.

I actually took piano lessons between the ages of 7 and 12 and still know how to read music. Once they hammer that stuff into your head, it never goes away. My piano teach used to pick me up at school and take me to her house on the hill above ours. She had an old Model A with a rumble seat. Like this one …

That would be me in the back, except I’d be smaller, and I’d have a shirt on. I don’t have any memory of ever riding inside, but lots of them riding in that rumble seat. Make the car maroon, too.

After my lesson Mom would be there to walk me home. It was only about half a mile from our house so it wasn’t a big deal for me because it was all downhill. Mom walked a long ways for me.

One of these days I’ll play a duet with Jeran. I’m going to like that.

This morning I had to get up early so I could have coffee with the guys at the Kozy Korner. We do that every Thursday morning. Well, everyone who remembers, or can get there, has coffee with each other. Today it was Larry, Larry, and Larry’s niece, Lisa. As we do every week, we solved all the problems in the world then went our merry ways.

On the way home I went by the church to patch up some of the holes in the plaster caused by the leak that I fixed a couple of months ago. The fix is lasting, and the holes are dry, so it was time to plug them. That, and I had fair warning that it had better “get done pretty damn soon or there would be hell to pay!” No one really told me that. I just put the parenthesis around that for fun. I did, however, receive less veiled suggestions designed to motivate me.

When I got home I worked on the windows for our bedroom. They got two coats of white paint on the outside a few days ago, so today I did some sanding and put clear polyurethane on the inside surfaces. I’ll do that again tomorrow, then Saturday I’ll see if I can get the glass in without breaking them.

I’ll let you know how that goes.