More Delights and Disdains . . .

of a diminutive nature of late . . . Number 32

Disdains:

Humming that old Tom T. Hall song about old dogs and watermelon wine as I look after my dachshund who has thrown his back out. He is 13 and has long thought that he is a cat having once climbed on top of a bookcase without a well thought out exit plan. I managed to rescue him without calling the fire department. He also leaps from couch to chairs in my sitting room. He has also made himself at home on the dining room table at times. According to his x-rays, he has compressed discs from all of the jumping. The veterinarian prescribed him gabapentin and that has helped. What is a dash hound without the dash?

Learning that the RED Menace (and by RED I don’t mean communists but real estate developers) has threatened 90 acres of undeveloped woodlands that for the past 20 years has been leased to a local horse farm. I met the owner of the stables when I was in office after a spate of horse stabbings had occurred. Her stables provide horse therapy services, a horse refuge along with standard training for riders. At one point I thought about organizing some form of animal therapy for Parkinson’s patients but then thought better of it. All of that twitching might spook the horses. The 90 acres is in the middle of suburban Greer and is the nearest horse farm to the city.

Shaking my head at the total dumbassery of our county council who recently voted down a five year countywide development plan designed to preserve what little green space we have left. I suspect that the council members who are harping about the loss of freedom to do what you want with your real estate are really in the pockets of the above mentioned REDs. Their righteous defense of liberty is nothing more than a smoke screen and while they go back to the drawing board, developers continue to build out our future filled with overpopulation, congestion, and eventual ghettoization of their sparkly new subdivisions. The reality is that our county council runs off of property taxes. With every farm that is subdivided into housing developments, the council benefits from the collection of rollback taxes (a type of delayed property tax) created by the state to stop county council’s from gouging property owners (especially farmers) who pass their land to their children. In addition, after collecting years of delayed rollback taxes, the county then benefits from the taxes collected on each of the subdivided lots - every single year into the future.

Waiting on repairs to my car and my lawnmower - both items that I have too often taken for granted. The grass will soon be so high that it will hide my car. If we include the repairs needed on my dog, these things do come in threes.

Delights:

Attending the fifth birthday celebration of my youngest grand nephew from my sister’s side of the family and the 11th birthday of another grand nephew from my oldest brother’s side of the family. I have a total of five grand nieces and nephews which is almost half the number of the original set of nieces and nephews who are their parents. I know, it is confusing but it speaks to the many good memories that I have of celebrating the birthdays of both generations.

Celebrating my son’s 20th birthday with Bundt cakes and all of the love that I can give him. I wrote him a congratulatory letter urging him to struggle to keep free from mundanity among other such profundities. To turn 20 is be almost . . . ?

Helping him move into his new college apartment that is much like his old college apartment even down to the same roommates as last year. This is the 4th time he has moved since he started college so we have the procedure down like the Normandy invasion.