Trying to stay ahead

The wind. It’s driving me crazy! Just when I thought our ruined fence couldn’t get much worse…it did. The wind picked it up from its reclining position and broke it into two ruined fences. I had it leaning and braced; thinking that the weight alone would hold it in place until the fencing contractor showed up. Wrong.

OK, the good/bad news is that the garage door is working once again, but I don’t get a brand-new door with windows in it. The repair guy started off by telling me that he had never seen anything like it before. That’s not a good beginning. He spent about 10 minutes studying the situation from all angles before he began. Two hours later, the door operates better than it ever did!

So far, we’re ahead on this insurance plan from American Home Shield. The seller of the house had provided it for the first year and we picked up the cost in the following years. We were hesitant at first; it seemed like a lot of money and for what? But history has proven us correct (or lucky). It cost us $55 for the repair yesterday and it was the same last year for the heater repair. And the year before that for the AC repairs. And we have two 20 year old water heaters in this house; covered by insurance. With any luck at all they will fail this year. That’s good!

We were driving into town yesterday and listening to NPR when we heard a couple of politicians talking about the reasoning behind the new ‘Term Limits’ law being proposed for California. They both went on at great length explaining that a new legislator is far too inexperienced to do much for his constituents. That it would take years before he or she was really experienced enough and so it was simply wrong to place limits on how long they could serve. And I thought to myself; were these not the same people who told me, during their campaigns, “Elect me to make a change in how things are done in the legislature!”? I guess I didn’t read the fine print in their campaign literature and they didn’t point out the fact that it might take 20 or 30 years. Shame on me.

And the loudest whiner of the politicians was Willie Brown. Remember him? He’s convinced that the original term limits bill was written just for him; a personal vendetta by the voters of the state. And he’s right. (Applause!)