SNAGLEY snagley SNAGLEY or (TRI SNAG)

I was recently asked to name some of my favorite songs.
I am not really a music fan. I can’t listen to it in the car it muddles my mind and I cant think. Or it makes me think of stuff I don’t want to think about.
But there are some songs that I like to hear.

Jimmy Buffett. He went to Paris.
I used to listen to this when I was in college and think this will never happen to me. I will actually save the world and, I will not get distracted by French wines and cheeses I will stick to my guns and make this a better place. I guess I blew that one. I have become distracted by the things that I never thought I would. I swore I would never work in an office. And here I sit with my butt grown to the chair. I always thought I would live in a far off country making life and eternity better for whatever tribe or people group I was around. Guess I blew that one too. (This might be a good time for that mid-life crisis)

Jimmy Buffett. A Pirate Looks at 40.
“Yes I am a pirate, born 200 years to late. The cannons don’t thunder there’s nothing to plunder I’m an over 40 victim of fate, arriving too late, arriving too late”.

Aaaarrrrrrr.

Johnny Cash. I Walk the Line
As sure as night is dark and day is light

I keep you on my mind both day and night

And happiness I've known proves that it's right

Because you're mine, I walk the line

Cool song.

4. Brick House, The Commodores
Do I have to explain?

5. Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy. Big and Rich
It just cracks me up. If I was 16 I doubt if I would listen to anything but this song. Luckily I am not 16.

I purposely left out Happy Birthday , whenever I mention this is my favorite song people start emailing me telling me how pitifully i am

Snagley out

As some of you gentle readers know my parents live with us.
Dad is 86 and mom is 82.
They live in a garage apartment beside our home seem to like it.
If they did not live there they would be in assisted living somewhere.

I am writing this to put my words in front of me.

Dad is not in his right mind all the time. It is not horrible like dementia or anything.
Some times he is fine, like the man I grew up with.
Sometimes he is not in his right mind.
He will let small things get in his head and cannot let them go.
For instance I had a tree grow up in a drainage ditch in the pasture.
I cut it down and dug up the roots, I drug the stump and the tree to the back of the pasture and put it on the brush pile. For weeks after I did this he was convinced that he needed to hire someone to get the tree out of the drainage.
He called the county and had them come look at the ditch. They of course told him it was fine, this got him all riled up.
I put him in my truck and drove him to the ditch and showed him. I then drove him to the brush pile and showed him again.
It took two weeks of reminding him till he finally stopped trying to hire the job done.

I know that for an 86-year-old man this is ok. It is hard, however, to see this man, who has always been so strong and with it mentally go through this. I also know that it ain’t gonna get any better, ever.

I believe it is my responsibility to take care of my parents as they age. I also know at some point he will die and I will have to deal with this and then somehow support my mother through it all.

Mom is fine mentally. She goes swimming every morning and eats right. She gets out and runs the weed eater. And works in the garden some. But she gets worn down listening to Dad ramble about things some times.

I am not going to do anything about this. There is nothing to be done. I just listen to him and try to make him comfortable. I try to enjoy him as much as possible. I listen to his World War II stories and wish I could have known him back in those days. He was 46 when I was born.

Getting old sucks there is no doubt about it. But in most cases it beats the alternative.

Snagley out

My wife just called.
She is canning tomatoes today. She has two buckets of tomatoes to can today.
She has put up 47 quarts of green beans and is just starting to can salsa.
She made some peach salsa, which is excellent.
I love her a lot, I would love her if she couldn’t do all that cool stuff,
The baby who is now 8 months old is pulling up on the furniture now.
She is teaching him sign language. He has learned how to say thank you, which is pretty good for an 8 month old.

My oldest boy is into pushups and sit-ups now. He does 110 push-ups and 110 sit-ups each evening. I am teaching him how to do them where you put your feet on something like a bench and do them with your legs elevated. He likes a challenge. I was unloading some Chicken feed the other day and had to stop to tend to something else and he carried a 50pound bag 70 yards to my workshop before I could get back. He doesn’t need to be carrying stuff like that but I was impressed. He is 9 years old and weighs about 75 pounds.

My middle boy is saving aluminum cans. His grand father collects them for his church. He is paying my boy a penny apiece for each can. My son gives the money to an orphanage. He saw a video about the orphans and how they need some money so he is doing this now. Several communities are not saving cans for him to sell to his grandfather, people get motivated by the selfless act of a 7 year old child.. Now I know he could get more for them if he sold them to the recycle center but this way several people are blessed. My middle son came up with this on his own neither I or his mother prompted him.

My daughter is learning to read now. She is doing really well. She is involved in the summer reading program at the library. If I read to her or if she reads something on her own she gets to log the pages and gets a prize of a free book or some kind of toy. She is having a good time.

The chickens are well. I get about 6 eggs a day, which is not too bad considering the heat and the drought. The rooster is driving the hens crazy. He is breeding with them to distraction.

Our garden is doing well; it has provided everything for the salsa including the basil and other herbs. She only had to by salt and sugar this time. We are thinking of installing more raised beds for next year they have worked out excellently. I think if I add two more then we can plant all of our beans and onions and maybe peas in the raised beds then have more garden space for things like corn, and tomatoes.

In other news; I am thinking of trying to buy an older car or truck and let the boys clean it up and have it painted ect and then sell it. I want to get the boys started in their own businesses as early as possible so that they can start making some real money. There is nothing quite as rewarding as having a 7 and 9 year old making some serious coin selling cars with their dad.
Got to go

Please leave me a comment if you have time. It gets lonely out here.

Snagley out.

for now the sale is saved.

but i am now also busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest.

speaking of which in a butt kicking contest i think that if Chuck will provide the butt i will provide the foot.

more latter

Snagley out

Labels: beware the ides of march

i will be out of town next week maybe the week after that too.
the largest sale of my companys life is trying to fall apart.
SO. i am going to try to hold it together.

In the mean time i will throw out a conversation starter please everyone comment on it for me, I will read it when i am out of town and may be able to post.

1. Paris Hilton's mama never spanked her. (pure speculation on my part)

for those of you who by personality leanings are forbidden from speaking of Paris Hilton.

2. I shot a three shot group the other day at 100 yards with my .308 that i can cover with a quarter.

and lastly

3. Burlap toilet paper


Snagley out

Today is my birthday.
The big 40
Wish me well
Snagley out

I have a cousin, Buck, that is as equally dumb as he is worthless.
He is 36 years old and lives in his mother’s basement. He still has Van-Halen posters on his wall and has his high school football trophies on a shelf above his bed. He works for a construction company framing houses and stays fired more that he works. He will work for a while then show up drunk and cuss out the boss, get fired then sober up and come back begging for his job. He is a piece of work.

Aside from all the obvious he is not a bad sort, he loves my kids, and he loves fireworks. Every year he borrows against his car title and buys enough fireworks to stage a reenactment of the writing of the star spangled banner. He comes over to my house to set them off, so he can hear my kids laugh and scream.
This year is no different. He showed up with a pick up truckload of fireworks.
He had everything from snap-pops that you throw at the ground to anti aircraft batteries large as sewer pipes, and a cooler of beer that he sneaks in every year thinking we don’t know he has it.

He has that unbridled enthusiasm that only comes with 20 years of being 16 years old.
Annually the family gathers at my house for a day of fun and frivolity, which culminates mightily with Cousin Buck firing off his display. He sets up a table in the pasture and sneaks his Milwaukee’s Best all afternoon.

Well he set up yesterday and was having a grand old time prepping his fireworks. Most of my family will have nothing to do with alcohol of any type. So he kept to his self in the pasture under the guise of setting up the evening’s displays. He had this one that he carried around with him all afternoon. It was called hells bells. It was a giant tube. It looked like a basketball could have fit down into it without touching the edges. He said it was the finale. He said it cost him 92 dollars. He also said he planed to plant tomatoes in it after he fires it. I suspect that he plans to plant something in it but I doubt its tomatoes.

After everyone is fed and dusk begins to fall on quiet, historic Snagley Acres, Buck gets wild. He starts firing off small fire cracks by the hundreds. All we can see is smoke and flashing lights as they pop in the night. Occasionally we can see a glowing lighting stick. Buck is now firing off huge skyrockets they are lighting up the sky. He is about half lit himself at this point.

It was about that time that I noticed that the span between explosions started to grow. I then noticed that the light stick was shaking more that it should. So I walked down to see what was happening. Buck was not half lit as I had supposed he was completely lit. He could not keep the lighting stick still enough to light the fuse on the fireworks. He would stab the glowing stick at the fuse and by process of time and fate eventually light the fuse. I asked him if he would like some help and he said no, and then ran me off as a 36 year drunk teenager would be prone to do.

He fumbled through the rest till it came to hells bells. He stood on the table and announced its greatly anticipated arrival. The elder members of the delegation watching the display did not realize that Buck was drunk and cheered along with him. Buck then fell off the table, got up and pulled out his Zippo lighter. He lit the fuse to hells bells staggered backwards knocked the enormous firework over and promptly passed out cold.

This normally would not be a problem but hells bells was pointed directly at the Snagley delegation which could not see this new twist in the events of our fair country’s birthday.

Hells bells went off with the first of its warheads.
Dad latter exclaimed that it was much like being shelled by the Germans. We saw the flash then a quick red arch toward us. Then, well I can only describe it as being inside of a bomb. Fire streaked in all directions in a multitude of colors, then there came a deafening boom that caused my jaw teeth to rattle this was followed by deafness and blindness. There was a smell of burning rubber, I latter found out this smell was from the rubber pads being burned off of the bottom of 4 different walkers as they streaked for safety. Unfortunately there were 19 more warheads to follow.

When the smoke cleared and I found a flashlight, I also found
1. Buck drunk oblivious to the entire fiasco
2. 3 kids hiding under my bed.
3. 4 badly damaged walkers and 7 angry senior citizens

As I look back on number 231, all in all I would say it was a pretty good 4th of July.