leaf blowers, mexican food and meetings

Another busy day. Ruth's cleaning lady doesn't come very often, and we are in and out a lot, so the house needed sweeping and vacuuming. I took care of that and then started on the abundant leaves in the yard. When I was about halfway through, Lisa came back from a drive around the area with another car following behind. She told me to get cleaned up because "we're going to Sunday dinner at a Mexican restaurant with Frances and Billy." What? Who? Mexican, eh? Ok, then.

Frances trapped a baby copperhead snake with her cane and I fetched a shovel to cut its head off. My first copperhead! Evidently I blew it into the driveway when moving leaves around.

Billy used to ride racehorses. About 20 years ago, he was in a race and his horse was tripped up somehow. He was trampled by the following pack, so badly injured that he received Last Rites and was in a coma for several months. They never thought he'd walk again. He's still in rough shape, but he can walk with a cane. Frances is a friend of Lisa's from her teen years. Real nice people. Made me feel kind of old, though - Billy all hunched over from his old injuries, Frances in her mid-50's, me having trouble hearing what Billy was saying. I don't feel anything like 49 years old but my eyes and ears aren't what they used to be. It was all good, though. Nice to meet new people.

After our tasty dinner, I resumed my work, blowing leaves. I'm not one to rake or use a blower, but this is Ruth's house and what she says goes. I actually enjoyed it after a while. Rocko had a lot of fun running through the flying leaves and eventually laid down and let me blow the leaves into a big pile with him at the bottom. Only his head remained exposed, poking out of the side of the pile.

Tonight I went to a meeting in town. It was a good one. The place was packed, and I recognized a bunch of people from the last meeting a few days ago. Hard to believe that I'm coming up on four years sober; today is three years, nine months and ten days. The guy running the show looks so much like my brother Karl that if I didn't know better, I'd say he had a twin.

I should probably do the dishes tonight but all three of us are tired and will be turning in early. Ruth is watching the World Series so we are (kinda) watching it too. Then again, if I don't do the dishes Lisa will hear about it in the morning. Guess I'm gonna wash.