Day 1470 Skunk Hunting

Posted on April 10, 2011 by admin

After the skunk incident at school,  I knew it was time to find this skunk.  There are no “Billy the Exterminators” around to come get your unwanted critter, so the hunt was on.  His hide out was under the chicken house.  The chicken house had a wooden floor about 1 foot off the ground.  I could see where his tracks led under the building.  From the looks of it this skunk has been in and out of this hole a bunch lately.  So finally one evening after the sun was well down, when my wife and I were feeding the horses they suddenly bolted and ran to the other end of the pen.  They both stood facing into the darkness snorting and pawing, so we new something was out there.  My wife grabbed the spotlight and I grabbed the shotgun.  The death sentence was about to be carried out.

Even though we are both college educated, we couldn’t help but feel a little bit like ma and pa kettle, she holding the light piercing the darkness and me waiting for the light to shine on the creature.  Even though we couldn’t see anything in the darkness other than what the spotlight illuminated, the skunk was not hard to find.  The horses were always facing where the skunk was walking, so a few misses with the shotgun and we finally dispatched the skunk.

This left me and my wife hypersensitive to the smell of skunk and it wasn’t very long after this incident that I woke to dogs barking and that smell again.  This time my wife was having no part of my covert operations.  It was about 3:00 am, we have a really good outside light that pretty much illuminates the entire yard, other than the east side of the house.  In this area it is completely dark and sure enough that is where I can hear and smell the creature.  This time it was not the horses helping me locate the animal, but our black lab Shelley.  She was whining and staring into that darkness on the east side of the house.  It is so dark that I cannot even make out the outlines of the trees or fence.  It is perfectly black darkness.  The entire time I am thinking great, I am going to round the corner here and get sprayed because the fence on that side of the house had all exits covered.  The only way out was toward me.  And without disappointment as soon as I rounded the corner I here this hissing creature bounding towards me with all of its fur pointed straight out.  Even though I am the one with the gun, I am in the flight mode of fight or flight.  The skunk is in the fight mode.   So I back pedaled right up to the point where I stepped on one of the dogs squeaky toys.  This sent a rush of adrenalin through my body I have never experienced before as I fell on my ass with a pissed off devil of a skunk raging toward me.  I don’t think the skunk would have taken me, but I made sure it did not get the chance and skunk #2 is dispatched from the Earth.  This one was living in our garage.  Thankfully it has already sprayed Shelley, and so some of here whining was the smell she couldn’t get away from.  I myself would have gotten drilled when I rounded that corner.

Shelley was given a bath every day for the next week, and it didn’t seem like we could make any ground on the smell.  She had been hit like our other dogs.  For the rest of the summer every time these dogs were given a bath or some how became wet, the skunk smell would resurface.   It was like some perverse scratch and sniff.

That was our skunk filled spring.  It must have been bad year for skunks.  I killed three that spring and a town north of us had 11 killed in just one week.  The third one I killed had distemper, rabies or something.  It was out in the middle of the day and was just running straight at me, breathing funny.  At this point I am really thinking that maybe I made the wrong decision in the move.  I had not counted on all of the skunks.

My house is still on the market.  Although, today I rented it.  That is 290 days of all outgoing expenses.  This rental will be a welcome relief.  No signs that the house will sell, but at least we will have income from it.  We have trimmed our expenses to the point that we are doing ok.

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Day 1451 Skunk Smell at School

Posted on March 22, 2011 by admin

So my kids were smelling like skunk and I was smelling like skunk. None of us were aware of this fact.  I always get to work early to help students with mathematics.  I am a teacher and had no idea that I smelled that bad.  I had students in and out all morning and none of them said a word.  I had no idea anything was amiss  until my boss walked by my door and I over heard him say that he needed to call the sheriff there is a skunk close to the school.  This is when I had to admit that it was I that smelled so putrid and my poor kids.  They had to place their coats outside the school and wait while someone came and got them to clean them up.  The smell was bad.   The lesson here is that your body is built to deal with trauma and numbs you to it.  In this case all of us were under the trauma of intense smell.  So if you ever get sprayed by a skunk make sure you treat it like an illness and take a few days away from the rest of the population.  They will appreciate it.

At this point I really do not care how long my house has been on the market.  Pretty much tired of thinking about it.  1451 days . . .  pretty sure I just should have given it back to the bank on day one.  I would already be better off.  Maybe letting the bank have it is the correct decision, just too old school to let that happen.  Grew up with the ability to tell right from wrong, and the easy path is usually the wrong one.

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Day 1446 Skunk in the Spring Air

Posted on March 17, 2011 by admin

The morning started like any other.  I woke up at 5:30 am checked the sheets to make sure there was no more mouse poop left on our bed while we were sleeping, let the dogs outside (two yorkies), and proceeded to the shower. While in the shower washing off the drowsiness of the evening, I here all hell break loose outside of the bathroom.  I hear kids screaming, dogs yelping, doors slamming, and my bathroom door being swung open. . .

I should back up here and tell some back story.  For the last two weeks my family had been smelling a skunk.  We knew it was in the area, but had no idea just how close this skunk was living to us.  We were ever vigilant constantly on the lookout for the source of the aroma that was easy to catch a whiff of.

Back to my morning . . .  the smell almost made me puke in the shower as my wife throws a dog in with me, its face covered in an amber fluid.  It turns out that at the same time I let the dogs out our local skunk decided to visit our front porch.  My yorkies who were raised in town had never experienced a skunk before and so must have thought that when this cat like creature seemed to be trying to run away it would be a great time to nip it in the ass.  After all it was just standing there with its tail in the air.  So here I was in a shower washing the one dog off and gaging the entire time.  Things were happening so fast that I did not even think about the location of the second dog.  The other dog had apparently gotten away from my wife and ran up to roll in the clothes and coats of my sleeping children.

At this point your sense of smell starts to become numb, and I think wow I am pretty sure we got the smell off of these dogs, because I was no longer smelling the intense smell.  Also my wife and kids could not smell it anymore either.   So we pulled the sheets off of beds and throw soiled clothes in the washing machine, figuring that the worst is behind us.  The kids get dressed jump on the waiting bus and head to school.  I also work at this school and so I get dressed and head to school. . . . we should have all called in sick.

1446 days since I placed my house on the market and 275 days since it last had anyone living in it.  The next time I type I will tell you the story of my children and what happened to all of us at the school as a result of the skunk fallout.  Until then I am pretty sure that God is providing for me.  I hope that he sells this house soon as I am tired of making that second payment plus the taxes insurance and utilities.  And honestly just tired, but I made another payment yesterday, and that takes another 300 off the principle of the loan. Every month I get closer to paying it off.

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1443 Days Moving in to Farm House

Posted on March 14, 2011 by admin

I knew I would find a picture that showed our first rental.

So at first I told you that my wife and kids moved in with my parents while my wife worked and found a place to live and I finished up things in Orchard.  We have horses and so my wife and I were looking for a place close to my new job, but out in the country so we could keep horses.  Our original plan was to build and live on my family farm, but until our house sold in Orchard we figured it would be no problem to find a place to rent for a while until the house did sell which we were confident would be at any moment so this would only be temporary.  With a house payment at Orchard running in the $700 per month range if you counted insurance and all the other crap that goes along with “owning” your own home (slavery comes to mind when you talk rural home ownership) we had to find something cheap, and incredibly my wife found such a farm house.  It was a “nice” little three bedroom, one bath 10 miles north of town.

When we first moved in I think I cried.  It was summer.  The renters before us had abandon the house with their dogs locked inside.  It was horrible.  Imagine moving your family into a kennel.  That was pretty much what it was like.  We hauled off three truck loads of destroyed and soiled household items. Dogs had survived the abandonment.   It was enough to make me sick.  I also tore out the kitchen floor and placed those cheap sticky tiles down.  I kind of like those.  Easy . . .  and they look as good or better than linoleum.

While I was doing that my wife had rented a carpet steamer and we proceeded to clean carpets.  This was the scary part.  My wife went over the carpets 40 times and still did not get all of the piss and dog shit out of the carpet.  We sat our mattress on its side in the bedroom when we were done cleaning, while we were moving in, it wicked up a ton of nasty fluid from the almost clean carpet.  All I remember is that the side that was setting on the floor has this nasty brown-yellow stain the entire length of the bed and 1/4 of the way to the middle (that is the side I still sleep on).  We have this really nice king bed, that we couldn’t even set up.  I remember it well, we just laid the mattress on the box springs and that is how we left it the entire time in that house.  Still we had to jump into bed.  There was no room to walk around it.

The first night there was great . . . we were so exhausted sleep came quickly and nothing disturbed us until morning.  When we woke up I notice large amounts of mouse poop on my sheets.  Sheets that had only been on the bed for that night.  So my wife and I marveled at the fact that mice were crawling over our bed while we slept.  Did I say my wife and I are still married.  I am either a really great guy or my wife is a saint, but at any rate she stuck with me and we are still married.  I know plenty of women that would have packed up and went down the road after a day and a night of those kind of horrors.

This is a rocky start and I have not gotten to the good part yet.  Winter is quickly approaching, we have no way to heat this house yet, the sewer is not working correctly and there is this horrible smell coming from one of the outbuildings.  And I know this smell is unrelated to the sewer.  It is it’s own form of nastiness.

1443 days since I placed my house on the market and 272 days since my home was last rented.  I have decided that God is trying to purge my system of something because I have reached a point that I really don’t care what happens to me financially.  I will do what I can as long as I can.  Once I cannot do that anymore I will do something else, but I feel he is guiding me at every turn.  Already I think my wife could be on to something with her new business and all of this is coming out of my move.  Next will be corn stove and then maybe skunks and spring in the air.

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1434 days Crazy Deer Collision Part 2

Posted on March 5, 2011 by admin

The Back Door of the Tahoe

So after several hours of surgery and waiting, at about 4:00 am the doctors came in and told us the good news.  Her surgery went fine and she was in recovery.  At this point she was still not out of the woods, but things were starting to improve.  We went home and went to bed.  There was nothing else we could do.  The next several days were amazing, each time we went back to the hospital to visit her improvement was nothing short of a miracle.  Normal color came back to her face, and although she had a broken nose and cheek, no further surgeries were necessary.

Gory Cargo

Today just a couple of months after the surgery her recovery is almost complete.  She is back to work and I know a miracle occurred in all of our lives.   Thank goodness we lived this close.  My wife was able to help over the next several weeks.

The Cargo Compartment and the Glasses She was Wearing

Sorry for the gory story, but it is all part of the move and why I think we were meant to be here.     1434 days since we placed our house on the market and 263 days since it was last rented.  The next post will be about our first rental and spring is in the air.  We all know what that means in rural Nebraska.  Thats right . . . . skunks.

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Day 1422 Crazy Deer Collision

Posted on February 25, 2011 by admin

My wife and I were heading to bed.  It is just before Christmas vacation and we are exhausted from the routine day at work and looking forward to a break.  But before we head to bed, my wife’s dad calls.  ”Susan has hit a deer, they are in route to Kearney, to the ER”  We knew it was serious because when you are sent to the Kearney Hospital that means that the injuries are severe enough that the local doctor is ill equipped to help you.  But still it was a deer collision.  I have hit and killed four deer in my life and even the worst collision was not that big of a deal, so we are under the assumption that things are well under control.  Maybe we are just so exhausted that it just hasn’t hit us yet.

My mother-in-law's Tahoe after the deer came through the Window.

At any rate we sent the kids to my parents and headed to Kearney to add what ever support we could offer.

In the ER we were sent in to wait.  I did not expect to be allowed access, but sure enough after about 1o minutes they came out to the waiting room and escorted us in.  When I walked into that ER my heart sank deep into my chest and the hair stood up on the back of my neck.  This was not just any deer accident.  My mother in law looked like she had been shot out of a cannon and into the guts of a deer.  The smell was unreal.  It smelled like a locker plant full of butchered deer.  Blood . . .  I have never in my life seen that much.  Here entire body was covered in blood, deer hair, bone fragments, and glass.  In fact her hair had so much deer hair, deer blood, and glass on it that you couldn’t tell if she had hair of her own.

The drivers seat. Notice the still fresh deer lung material in the seat.

Her face was so swollen that where her eyes should be there were just two purple swollen slits.  Her nose and face were badly broken.  Her right hand and arm was broken so severely with a compound fracture that doctors could not find all of the bone pieces in order to put her arm completely back together.  To top it off because of her broken face and nose she had been swallowing her own blood from the time she left Alma to Kearney.  Shortly after we walked into the room her body and stomach decided to reject all of that blood.  She is completely conscious and is talking to her husband, myself, and my wife.   Suddenly she starts puking blood.  Luckily she has enough strength to set up to keep from choking on her own vomit.  It looks like liters of blood to me, splattering everywhere in all directions. I think I backed away, mainly from shock.  I had no idea there could be this much blood and I also new that another friend and family member was close to death.

The set of middle seats. Notice the blood, deer hair and glass. When you touched it it felt like sand paper from all of the glass.

At this point my eyes were focused on my wife.  There was not much I could do for Susan, but I new my wife must have been in anguish.  She could not even clean up her own vomit . . . let alone all of this.  But she was a rock.  She stuck by her mom during all of this and held her and brushed the hair, blood and glass from her face gently.   She cleaned up some of the vomit and then doctors and nurses rushed us out.  The doctors had arrived and so It was time to reconstruct  that broken arm.  So to another waiting room we rushed.

Bed time. It has actually been 1427 days since I placed my house on the market and 256 days since I rented it.  But I am glad we moved simply for the fact that we can be helpful.  None of the stories I share would have been possible at my previous location.  I know I can sum it up to three things:  bad financial decisions, a declining rural population, and poor market timing.

More picture and the rest of the deer story later in the week.  Thanks for reading

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Day 1415 Albany New York and My Guardian Angel

Posted on February 13, 2011 by admin

The morning I about lost it at the I90 Turnpike in Albany, NY

Albany, New York was a 10 second lesson that will live in my memory forever.  At 10:00 AM I started south to the I-90 turn pike.  Little did I know that traffic would be crazy!!!!  I was feeling pretty good because it was daylight, but traffic was thick.  I had truckers bitching at me because I was a little on the slow side.  My nerves were on edge and then I had professionals bitching at the dumb trucker behind the wheel of the green cabover.  This fluffed my pride and told me to speed up and stay with traffic.  I was pretty comfortable at 60, but I bumped it up to 70+ just to keep up with traffic and stop the ridicule on the radio.  The Tom Tom was warning me about a coming turn, but traffic was a comfortable 70+ and so I stayed with the flow.  Up ahead was a big gradual curve.  I can remember it perfectly.  It was like I was trying to look around a corner (did I tell you that it was raining?).  This big 1/4 mile curve on the road, traffic moving smoothly . . . . . . . . When I rounded that curve I looked ahead at traffic.   In front of me I saw an endless sea of vehicles stopped! My green Freight Liner was still traveling 70 miles per hour. . . . .  traffic ahead 1/4 mile or less was stopped!!!!!! Luckily,  the right lane was open . . . and really I don’t know if it was open or not.  I had no choice.  I had to get that rig into open lane ASAP or slam into stopped traffic ahead of me.  Most of this occurred in seconds. What little intuition I had took over.  All I remember is that I was still moving 50+  and cars on the drivers side where motionless.  They whizzed by in a blur.  The black car in front of me was about to have a green Freight Liner turn it and about 20 other cars into an accordion of twisted metal.    I pushed so hard on the break pedal that I felt the wheels lock up.  The truck started to jack-knife. . .   I made two quick motions on the steering wheel, let off the breaks, and that black car disappeared beside me to the left and suddenly I was looking at another 300 feet of open road in front of me instead of a black car.  Some how that gave me enough room to slow the truck down to a stop. . . .

I have to mention that black car again.  I actually at one point lost sight of it.  My truck was headed to the right lane, but since my trailer was still in the process of jack-knifing the trailer wheels were in the left lane for longer than they should have been.  How the back of that trailer missed the black car or the cars in the left lane, I will never know.  There couldn’t have been more than a few feet of clearance(maybe even inches).  How my fire truck staid on, I will never know.  How my life and the lives of everyone commuting to work that day was spared, I will never know.  If you ever feel like you are in control of your life, that is when God laughs and shows you how little control you have.

This is a lesson best experienced.  In a truck you have to scan ahead miles rather than seconds.  And when you cannot scan ahead it is best to slow down!!!  This lesson worked well when I traveled to Buffalo and Chicago next.

Still not sure why God has kept my house on the market 1415 days and has kept it unrented for 244 days, but am still sure that he wants me to be here in Arapahoe.  I am here to do something.  Maybe not something special . . . But something.

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Day 1411 Thank You Vermont- Midnight Ride

Posted on February 10, 2011 by admin

What Do You Mean a 60 Foot Tractor Trailer is Not Meant for a Round About?

While I was cleaning out the truck at Enousberg Falls and getting ready for bed, my uncle calls me and says,”Get as much distance between Burlington, VT and that truck as you can get in two days.   Your dad will be released tomorrow or the next day and you had better be almost home, because your father is already talking about driving that truck home.”

It was about 10:00 PM, so I showered at the Enousberg fire station, jumped in the truck and started south.  I set the Tom Tom to Albany NY and started following the 4 inch screen home.

I talked to several truckers in the area and they almost had me convinced to drive north and go through Canada to get around Lake Champlain.  But not wanting to mess with boarder crossings, I opted for south and good old USA open road.  I just know that one government makes things almost impossible.  When two are involved at a boarder . . . . OMG.  It would take something beyond super human to get across that boarder twice.  Especially for someone without a passport, and no over the road driving experience.  (My dad lost a really nice Case knife to the Canadian boarder sentries)  I was having nightmares of my dad’s truck being impounded and then I am cuffed and stuffed in a Canadian jail for the weekend.  That would have made a fun story.

Since I am a conservative Christian, I opted to play it safe and move south, following the Tom Tom’s directions.  Little did I know that out east road work is done between Midnight and 6 am.  Each town I moved into seemed like it was under construction.  Slowly I was seeing why those seasoned professionals were telling me to go through Canada.  The roads were winding, slow, and full of stop and go construction traffic.  Each town I went through made me wish it was daylight.  I can’t wait to be back in Vermont to spend some time exploring.  I hope I can do it before my family is gone.

Some how as I was heading south on highway 4 I missed my turn to 149 at Ft. Ann.  With all the stops and construction areas I was ready to throw my Tom Tom out the window.  The romantic vision of truck on the open road is gone.  In it’s place is a pissed off school teacher that just wants to park the truck and fly home.  I am thinking it is close to 2:30 am when I miss my turn.  Things are about to get nasty.

I ended up in Hudson Falls and then had to backtrack to Glennis Falls.  Glennis Falls ended up being the icing on the cake.  The picture here is the view I had out of the cab of the truck at 3:00 AM only in this case the round about was under

Can a 60 ft tractor trailer make it around this round about?

construction and so some of the road was in the process of being formed.    All I know is that there was no way I was going to make it around this round about.  With traffic behind me and a police officer coming in from the north I started in because at this point I have no choice. Backing a 60 foot trailer with traffic backed up behind you is probably a good way to be shot at 3:00 am.  I was frantically watching all mirrors.   I did not want to wipe out some fancy crap on this million + round about.  I remember at one point I jumped out of the truck because I was about to run over a trash can and I was in the process of moving that trash can when the police officer approached me.

I was pretty sure he could see the look of pain on my face as I told him my story in under 30 second.  I am sure I mentioned damned TOM TOM about four times.  I did not mention the missed turn at Ft. Ann, although I knew he was thinking it.  But this man in blue was a true gentleman and set me straight.  He showed me where to go in order to make it to I-87 south and on I went with all trash cans out of my way and 3:00 am traffic stacked up and honking behind me.

I have never felt relief like I felt when I turned onto that onramp for 87.  It was like a cool blast of fresh spring air.  Finally I wasn’t being choked down by the congestion of small towns and construction.  I felt so good in fact that I found a rest area and stopped to sleep the rest of the night away.

I don’t know what it was . . . but something about a strange rest area on I-87 made me get behind the wheel one more time and head south.  I promised myself that I would stop at the first truck stop with lights I came close to.  Now I was in New York State and edging closer to Albany,  so finding a place to stop and fuel up was not a problem just outside of Albany, NY.  Here my guardian angel decided that I needed to stick around on the planet a little longer. Although I paid dearly for the stop later on by my father.  He still bitched that I picked the highest price fuel in the nation that night.

1411 days since I placed my house on the market.  No word yet from my real estate agent, but I do enjoy telling this story.  The place has not been rented for more than 6 months.  Pretty sure God is laughing his ass off at my expense.  Him and I are going to have a great laugh when it is my time to check out.

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Day 1407 Thank You Vermont -Enousberg Falls

Posted on February 7, 2011 by admin

Enousberg Falls

My dad had his pacemaker in and my Uncle was worried that my father would feel good enough to climb back into that truck and drive home, so as soon as we new my father was going to be ok my Uncle drove me up to St Albans, and I started my trip home.  At the time I was going to just jump in the truck and drive home empty, but my father insisted that I go to Enousberg Falls, pick up the fire truck and deliver it to Oklahoma, so off to Enousberg I went after talking to the desk clerk at the Econo Lodge who saved my father ( I wish I would have wrote down her name).  I went over to the first responders unit to thank them, but they were out on a call and I had to get going.  My Uncle gave me one last hand shake and said, “It was good knowing you school teacher.”  He knew I had never been over the road, and was about to roll on the ground laughing at the fear that must have shown in my eyes.

Up highway 105 I went and across the country side of Vermont.  I wish the circumstances would have been different and I could of taken my time because I was in shock at the shear beauty of that country side.  I fell in love with it.  The hills, forest, and pasture all mixed together in one.  I also noticed that they did not have center pivot irrigation like we did back home.  I wanted to turn off on one of those back roads and just explore, but not a good idea with a 60 foot trailer.  Who knows if I would get turned around again. (Google is incredible.  Now with the new map view I was able to drag that little yellow guy across 105 and see that country again, just like I remembered it.)  Also at this time I had my first run in with east coast drivers.  At one point along 105 a car trailed  so close to my empty drop deck that I lost site of the front half of the car.  With no where to pull over, I just kept her moving forward and eventually they passed me.  One old time trucker told me that he kept a hand full of ball bearing to throw out the window when cars followed that close.  I had never experienced it myself until this day.  But it was close enough that even if I was a veteran driver my butt would have puckered.

My first over the road payload.

Finally in Enousberg Falls, I found the fire station and we loaded the truck.  I have been around my dad and road along with him all the time as a kid, but we always loaded hay.  Never had I tied down a vehicle before.  I tried not to let the firemen helping me know that I was a complete idiot, and so I went to work tying down the load like I knew what I was doing.  Once I was done and thought I had things secure, one of the firemen came up to me and asked why I hadn’t cross tied the load.  Never thought of it, but the load looked secure so I left it and went down town for a bite to eat at Lynn’s cafe.

On my walk down town sirens started flashing and a helicopter was circling over head.  It turns out a young man robbed the bank while we were loading the firetruck.  It must not have been such a big deal.  I stopped and talked to some of the locals setting out on their porch watching the event and they said the young man was already in custody.   Talking to the waitress at Lynn’s Cafe while I waited for my chicken fried steak to be grilled, it turns out that there seemed to be a large population of troubled youth in the town. Enousberg Falls was suffering some of the same issues all small communities suffer.  Lack of jobs with excess cheap housing.  In these communities it is possible to live comfortably ( and I am sure I just offended a bunch of people) on government assistance without work because the housing is cheap.  I don’t think the situation is quit as bad as I have seen it in some small towns in Nebraska, but the issue is there.  And in this particular town they blame New York City for the drugs and gangs, but I hated to tell them that Nebraska small towns deal with much the same.  Maybe not the gangs yet, but for sure the drugs.  Meth amphetamines  is a big problem and with tight budgets law enforcement is the first thing to be cut in a “safe town”  That is the case in the town where my house will not sell.  I joke with my wife that at least it is a business that produces some kind of revenue.

The most interesting observation of Vermont thus far is that it must be where the idea of a haunted house came from.  Here is a building beside highway 105 that just screams haunted mansion and I know there were others.   I just didn’t have a camera with me at the time and this was all that I could find on google maps.

A uniques architectural style

Thanks for reading.  1407 days since my house went on the market and 236 days since it last rented.  I may also place in here the last time I heard from my real estate agent.  Pretty sure that was 30 days ago.  Maybe longer.  If homeownership is the American dream please wake me up from this nightmare.  I have to go to posting every other day.  I am already one day behind.

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Day 1406 Thank You Vermont IV Fletcher Allen Hospital

Posted on February 5, 2011 by admin

Fletcher Allen – Possibly One of the Greatest Hospitals in the US

Ok if not the best, then located in possibly the most picturesque location of the United States.

The University of Vermont From the 5th Floor of Fletcher Allen. New York in the Distance.

When we arrived at the hospital we were led straight to the ICU where my father was located.  It was good to see him and give him a hug.  I could tell he was in a lot of pain, but for everything that happened to him he was in pretty good shape.   They said they were keeping him in ICU for the evening and then would decide on the pace maker in the morning.

That evening we found a hotel and crashed.  I am pretty sure I have only been that tired one other time in my life.  The next morning they implanted the pacemaker and by mid afternoon we were playing cards in the observation deck of the cardiac wing of the hospital.  It was awesome to play Pettee (not sure how to spell it, but it is a pitch game where the 5 is worth 5 points for game high, low, jack, game, and the 5 of trump) with my father again.  And looking out over the University of Vermont and Lake Champlain was unbelievable for a poor country boy from Nebraska.  I will visit that area of the country again when I have more time.  When you’re there you can almost here the green mountain boys calling out, “Come out and explore the lake and the woods.”  When I was a boy, one of the first books I ever read for fun was “The Green Mountain Boys”  Ethan Allen was my hero as a kid and I always wanted to visit Ft. Ticonderoga.  I like visiting places of great American history.  They always send chills up my spine when I am there.  The first time I actually stood by the Potomac River in Washington DC, Glamorous Glennis that Chuck Yeager flew, and the Enola Gay was probably close to the feeling a teenager gets when they shake hands with Justin Bieber.   Call me a weirdo, but that kind of stuff is what I love.  And to think my fathers heart attack meant that I might get to see a place  I only read about before.

But first I need to find a math teacher

Thanks for reading 1406 days since I placed my house on the market and 235 days since it was last rented.  But still pretty sure the move was a good one.  After all I was able to see the great state of Vermont and will be back again.

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