A few accomplishments

So another week flies too swiftly by. It's Sunday night, and I'm forcing myself to take a few minutes to write an update. Early this week I got an email from Tom Cutter, he of the world famous rubber chicken racing garage, saying he had a cancellation and I could bring in my bike for a Thursday tune-up. I had been waiting for an opening since last summer. So Val and I tooled the 70 miles to Yardley, PA the night before and dropped off the bike, then went out for dinner to wait out the Philadelphia rush hour. That's a long ways to go just to have your motorcycle looked at, but Tom, for all his crustiness, is a top-notch airhead mechanic, and I just plain trust him with my bike more than I trust myself and whatever dealers might be within a hundred-mile circle (that's radius, for those of you who can do math—those of you who can't, 70 miles is outside a circle with a hundred-mile diameter.). Anyway, Saturday morning we returned, I gave the man a check, and rode home on a bike whose alternator, valves, and carburetors worked as they should. I now feel willing to go for a ride longer than ten miles! The weekend, as usual was not uneventful. It rained, but the weather had the courtesy to wait until I got home. We sat out half an inch of rain with sound effects (thunder) then I dug up and transplanted half a dozen serviceberry trees. The trees were suckers hiding under the (rather wet) tree in our south garden, and they had managed to work their way up through the parent's foliage, so they had very straight trunks for about three feet, then twisted several weird directions. Val says it looks like they're doing the hula. I'll have to post a picture. By the time I was finished, we had about three-fourths of an inch of rain. But I'm not made of sugar, so I didn't melt. We gave up on the goose eggs. I cleaned out the nest when one of the remaining four eggs burst, and we moved the geese out into the pasture. If they want to try hatching eggs again, they are welcome to do so—I even made them a small sheltered hay pile under the old goat feeding trough. The chicks now have the run of the whole coop. They are pretty well feathered out, by now, and beginning to like to perch. I moved the rest of the ferns from the front door area onto the island, except for a couple into the woods south of the house, which is pretty bare —except for trees. We uncovered the pool today. The water under the cover was nice and clear. We went with salt water last summer, and it's working well for us. You hang this two-foot long electrical thing in the pool, and pour in a large amount of salt, and it makes the chlorine. The water has less salt in it than in yor tears, proportionally. Haven't had a book review for a while. Val and I are in a project to do some more reading about relationship building, and we have begun to read The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. The premise is that people have one of five ways that love can be expressed to them most meaningfully. The trick (well, it's a good idea to learn all five ways to express love) is to develop proficiency in expressing love the way that is most meaningful to your spouse, regardless of which way is most meaningful to you. This rule applies to both of you—learn to speak the other person's language. The first chapter is background, but significant: Most marriages start out with being "in love," which is inherently temporary (about two years) and instinctual, and works to get things going, shall we say; but the real relationship is the volitional (not instinctual) one when you decide to love the other person, and it takes work. Part of this work is learning to speak the other partner's language. No doubt you're dying to hear what these five ways are, and I'll describe the first one or two next time.