Riverbend Journal

A.I. Generated I have written some about my recently deceased neighbor over the years but thought I would dedicate a post to her. When we were looking to move to this community, long story short, we purchased a small run down house next to a beautiful sprawling brick home in a fairly nice neighborhood. Our house was truly the worst house by far on the block. We didn't know who the owners were of the brick home and never met them before we moved into the house on a hot sunny day.  But soon after we moved in, our neighbor brought over a plate of chocolate chip cookies for us and introduced herself. As it turned out, her husband had died the month before. She met our oldest daughter, (our youngest not yet born) and liked her enough to invite her over to pet her cats anytime she liked. Our oldest wasn't a big fan of cats back then so never really took her up on it other than petting them on her doorstep with me standing there talking to my neighbor. Later we reciprocated by bringin...

  We continue to get warm spring days in the middle of February which leaves me a bit confused as to what to do. I don't want to start a huge outside project with snow and cold still very much possible. Starting an inside project with spring possibly around the corner doesn't make a lot of sense either. So I cast my eyes around and decided to tackle this corner of our property beneath the deck out back. Long term I want to remove the concrete and the deck above and pour a larger patio with a somewhat enclosed 3 season room above. But that is probably still a ways off. Until then though, I would like to neaten this area up.  The hose real and hoses are from the farm. I would like to replace the always flat rubber tires on it with solid rubber tires and then use that for our garden since the only spigot I have outside is on the far side of the house as the garden. Behind that is a temporary cabinet I built to hold our gas cooktop while we were remodeling the kitchen 5 years ago....

  A.I. Generated Image On a sunny and warm day in the middle of winter February, I was raking up sticks under the oak tree in front of our house. It has an oak gall problem which causes it to shed lots the tips of it's branches, especially when helped with the 16" of wet dense snow we received earlier. It creates a matt of twigs that need to be disposed before mowing season comes around. As I was pausing my efforts, I happened to notice my neighbor's house where there was a trailer backed up to the garage, a SUV backed up to the house, and another car parked in the driveway. She is a kind older widow lady who over the years has brought us lots of chocolate chip cookies in exchange for fresh farm produce from our garden. Then a couple years ago, her youngest daughter died unexpectantly at home and we found out that our neighbor had severe dementia. We had suspected she might over the years but hadn't realized it had worsened considerably in recent years. Since then, sh...

  For the last 14 or so years, whenever Valentines Day rolled around, I would scrounge around the house for a box that one of my daughters could use to hold their class Valentine card swap, cut a slot in it and let them paint it. It was always a simple box out of plain cardboard or sometimes we covered it in white printer paper and scotch tape so it could be decorated more easily. So imagine my surprise when I came home from working a charity event and saw this green dinosaur sitting on our kitchen table drying from it's paint job. My youngest made this for her final year of the Valentine card swap (next year will be middle school where it is no longer practiced as a class) without any prompting from me. Inside the mouth, is another hole leading down the "throat" for her classmates Valentines to go. I was very proud of her effort though not terribly surprised. She has always had a penchant for art. Even before she went to school as a Kindergartner, she was drawing people ...

  A.I. generated image and no, my daughter doesn't really have three arms. When our eldest graduated from the small Catholic school she attended and was headed to the public Middle School halfway across town, we decided it was time for her to have her first phone. We bought her a small flip phone and it came in handy during her time there. When she headed to the high school, we upgraded her phone to a smart one using some promotional deal and saved her from all the embarrassment she claimed to be getting. Four years later, she is heading off to college soon and we decided she really needed a better phone and so upgraded it this past Christmas.  Between the old smart phone and the old flip phone, I hoped to get one to work for our youngest who is graduating from the same Catholic School and heading to Middle School, this time in a different building on the way far side of town. I headed to the phone shop with my collection of phones and was soon informed that the battery life o...

A.I. Interpretation of the saying, "trying to stuff 10 lb of (stuff) into a 5 lb bag." I ordered a gel infused memory foam mattress topper for our bed from Amazon and it arrived in a shrink wrapped bag in a box.  I opened it and watched it inflate to ten times its former size like a wiggling anaconda trying to wrap up it's prey on my bed. It was too small despite having ordered the correct size. I was told I can return it free of charge.... just put it back in the box and apply the free shipping label. Were they going to send me a vacuum press too? Um... no. Solutions? I was forced to use my "one time no return exclusion" from Amazon to get my money back and to keep the wrong sized mattress topper. I ordered another one.... from a different company. It too was sporty to unwrap but at least was the correct size. I tried to leave a review on the first one to warm others who might order this product and be shipped the wrong one at no fault of their own. Denied. My ...

A.I. Generated Image I've been hearing/reading about others who use Audible as a resource to listen to books when they ordinarily wouldn't be able to such as driving, outside or simply doing some other task. Ahead of my flooring project, I thought I would give it a try and listened to the latest Harrison Scott Key book which I learned about through one of my fellow bloggers.  Signing up was simply clicking a button for a free trial offer for a month and entering a credit card number. I was assured I could cancel at any time. I explored the app for a few minutes and found it fairly easy to use and I was soon listening to my first book. Overall, I enjoyed listening to the book while working on the floor or working outside, times I normally couldn't be reading. But I found just sitting in a chair at home while listening to be a bit awkward. I mean it was easy to sit and listen but for some reason, my mind would begin to wander, I guess because it felt I should be doing somethi...

  A.I. Generated Image I think we've all heard the famous Benjamin Franklin quote, or at least the latter part of it where he said: " Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." I'm beginning to think there won't be anything certain about taxes until my death. Every year, I go into the tax season thinking that it should be relatively simple since nothing has changed but soon realize that nothing is the same because things have changed. While it doesn't necessarily make it harder to do the taxes, it does make it harder to compare this year with the previous year to make sure that something isn't off. I guess with the flooring project being completed, I decided to start on my taxes a bit earlier this year than normal. My parents had fraudulent  taxes filed on their behalf once and had lots of ramifications so I try to get my filed as ear...

  2014 When I took this picture, I was focused more on the new concrete driveway than I was the vegetation on the left side but it is the first picture I can find that shows what I am going to write about. We had purchased this house three years prior and removed a giant large dead oak tree near the corner of the garage where the pad jogs to the left. We also did three other large dead trees on the far side of the house at the same time. All would have smashed our house to pieces had they fallen the wrong way.  Seven more years would go by and then on a warm spring day in 2021, while standing in the garage with my two girls, waiting for the school bus to come, the entire top half of the tree on the very left of the photo broke off and fell into our driveway completely blocking it. I have seen plenty of trees succumb to gravity due to chainsaw cuts, but this is the first spontaneous break in half of a tree I have ever seen. Fortunately, none of us were hurt and the kids on the ...

Before Christmas, a man whom I had only met personally once before, showed up at my door step and gave me a gift to give to my daughters containing a number of valuable coins, arrow heads, a brass mortar and pestle along with some exquisite shell bracelets. I wrote about all that HERE along with some pondering about the why of the matter.  I have an answer. Bob entered hospice a week ago for congestive heart failure and passed away yesterday morning. Among other things that Bob did around town and won civic awards for, was taking care of the grounds of hospice and helping as a civilian to make the final days of the patients lives as best as possible. So I find it fitting that the other people of hospice were able to return the favor.  Predictably enough, on his death bed, he still told my wife to stop by his house and have his wife show us all of his collection of antiques. Perhaps after the funeral, we shall at last honor Bob's wishes. A word of note on the picture above. It...

  While running an errand not long ago, I came across this scene. It was extremely foggy and was forecasted to rain off and on all day long, and yet there was a crew of men on the gas station in the background tearing up the roof from the looks of things. It captured my attention anyway. A few years ago, we suffered from a derecho that knocked down a couple trees in our yard creating a huge among of debris. One of those trees, closer to my burn pit and mowed part of our yard, I cut up and it is mostly in a pile of pieces suitable for burning outside in the firepit. The small stuff went into one brush pile. The second tree was on the far knob and on a very steep portion. I cut up the top part and piled all the smaller stuff where it fell. My thought is that I would burn both piles when there was snow on the ground so that I didn't have to worry about the fire getting away in the taller grasses of this unmowed portion and burning down my house or worse, a neighbor's house.  Afte...

  After Christmas, I caught a common cold and after a typical week of symptoms, thought I was about through with it. But then I either caught something else or just haven't been able to shake an unproductive cough for nearly a month. I'm not alone according to news reports but that brings little comfort. Fortunately other than a cough which I can treat with various medicines and remedies, it has had little other symptoms to go along with it. I have felt fine other than when I work up a head of steam and then stop, a coughing attack usually goes along with it. Thus the flooring of our downstairs "family room" took a lot longer than I had hoped. Partly due to the ailment but also in large part that I really had no place for the furniture and so had to shift it this way and that as I tore up the existing floor and installed the new flooring. I'm still not done as there are a few trim pieces and a threshold that I need to fasten down with an industrial glue, including...