Two Americas

A colleague recently sent me this.  It's written by a woman with a unique, inside perspective as it seeks to explain/expose the economic divide in this great nation.  Worth the read no matter what your political bent it.

Delayed Gratification

Waiting can be difficult if you have patience issues like I do (or at least my family tells me I do). It's hard, let's admit, to wait for something we really want.  But the wait can also be wonderfully satisfying when it's over.  Believe me.  I recently experienced such a joy.

Case in point - that annoying magnolia tree in my front yard.  Why annoying?  Two things.  First, the trunk could not be more centered over my sewer pipe from my house to the road.  It's as if the person planting the tree said 'hey, where's the sewer pipe?  let's plant this baby right on top of it so that it can mess that puppy up!".  Secondly, magnolia trees drop their big, stiff leaves year round.  Ugh.  It's like planting work.

I've been trying for the last few years to get Julie to agree to let me take this sucker down.  This year she finally relented.  So, the weekend before dump week I called a friend with a chainsaw and scheduled its demise.

I had a third of the tree cut down before my friend arrived - simply using a hand-held tree saw.  Like I said - I have patience issues and he was 30 minutes late arriving;  I wasn't gonna just stand around and wait! When the big guns showed up - we made short work of it.

It took less than half an hour to (carefully) put an end to my never ended days of cleaning up magnolia leaves.  A blessed half hour that was :)

And, it being dump week (a time when Santa Clara will come and pick up pretty much anything you put at your curb!) all we had to do was cut it into smaller pieces and stack it at our curb! (that took 2 hours!)

Ahhhh... and just as a reminder.. while I waited to schedule the stump grinding... I did a little decorating.