RAISING RILEY AND OTHER CHORES
Riley Crosley from Crofton, NB is our grandson, and he has Monday off from school this week. The plan is for him to stay overnight on Sunday and to be home by Tuesday. That means I had better brush up on my sports. The kid is like a sponge, soaking up all of this information about baseball and football, and believe me, there is a ton of information out there. Maybe I’ll just let him overwhelm me with the facts while I just nod my head, and then by Tuesday I can just let it all fade away like it will anyway. I tell you, I used to be able to name about every baseball player in the Major Leagues. Now I can name Joe Mauer for the Twins, and that’s about it. Just wake me up for the World Series and the Super Bowl, and maybe for the Masters Golf Tournament and I’ll get by okay.
The members of Dawson Creek Golf Club play Parkston every September for possession of a trophy that stays with the winning club for the next year. I think Parkston leads the series 7 – 2, as they won again last Saturday on our home course. I haven’t figured out why they are so dominant. They win when it’s wet or dry, calm or windy, and sunny or cloudy. I haven’t played in the Ryder Cup for a few years, but I bet we lose when we start trying too hard and trying to do too much.
The following is more for just the golfers our there. The Tri-Del golf course has artificial greens, and we play them every year also, but no more for this year. Someone’s cattle got out and onto the course and really raised the dickens with those greens, and the sad part is that they just replaced most of them, and they are really expensive. Thank goodness for insurance.
I dropped a hymnal in church this morning. “No big deal,” you say and normally I would agree. The bad thing is, it happened during a hushed and fairly quiet moment, and worse, it has been happening more and more often. Between Roger Wiltz and me writing about our ailments, some first year med-student can almost get a free education. My hymnal dropping problem is because of diabetic neuropathy, and I’m not sure they can help me but I am going to go to Sanford or the VA in the next few weeks to see if they can at least help me a little.
And, boy do I need help. I hopped on the golf cart the other day and drove the fifty yards or so to empty my rain gauge. The gauge is a three-parter and it takes some doing to dump it and put it back together. While I was working on that, I heard what sounded like a little kitty crying in the rhubarb patch nearby. “All right, hold your horses, little kitty, I’ll find you in a minute,” I grumbled. That cat was one of those deals that when I held my breath so I could really listen, he would be quiet. As soon as I started breathing again, he would start mewing. Sadly, it took me about five minutes to figure out that the mewing sound was coming from Me! I had some kind of stuffiness that made my breath whistle and sound like a kitty.
Marianne thinks I should tell about getting caught in the rain the other day. I was heading for the golf course when she hollered, “Phil Shreck says the rain will start pretty soon.”
“You can’t believe those weathermen” I stated. Of course I was on the farthest corner of the golf course when the rain started pouring down and did I get wet.
We are at the time of year when you start the days work with a jacket and wind up wearing short sleeves by evening. That’s how it will be for the next week or so. Mornings will start out cool, but by afternoon, we’ll have short sleeve weather with highs in the seventies and maybe eighty. Nights will be cool with readings dropping into the forties and probably no rain for a while.