Saturday, May 17, 2025 - Day 277

Saturday, May 17, 2025

Good Morning, everyone!

📣 LIVE EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT 🌻 Season’s Sunflower Hour — Special ALS Episode.

In just 3 days, we’ve got something real to share. 🗓 Tuesday, May 20th
🕖 7:00 PM CST
📍 LIVE on YouTube

Join me and the family for a candid conversation about life with ALS — or as we’ve come to call it, that shitty disease.We’ll talk about the hard stuff, the funny moments, and even those questions people haven’t had the nerve to ask out loud.

💬 Got questions? Bring them.
🎥 Tune in live, interact in real time, and be part of the story. 
🔗 Click here to watch on YouTube —————————————————————

Spring cleaning continues, which in our house means unearthing ancient relics from the garage and saying emotional goodbyes to things like half-used cans of paint and a disturbing number of car solvents. Cindy and I tackled it yesterday—me cruising around in my wheelchair like the world’s least effective foreman, and Cindy doing the heavy lifting (literally) as she crawled under shelves, pulling out rusty car parts that had been hiding since…well…too long!

I’ll admit, it was a little embarrassing. I’ve clearly been the curator of a questionable museum of auto parts, pesticides, and mystery fluids. In my defense, it was just last summer I replaced the oil sensor gauge on the Yukon. This job required the removal of the engine manifold, no small job, must be why labor of $900 to replace a $75 part. That counts for something, right?

I came to grease-monkey life later than most, but thanks to Ron D.—my farm mentor and the Jedi Master of engine rebuilding—I learned a lot. Rebuilding an engine is dirty work, but there’s a magic in hearing it fire up after being completely torn down. That sound? Pure satisfaction.

Of course, those days are behind me now. We’ll be taking the cars in for service from here on out. No more marathon YouTube repair sessions or trying to wedge my hand into an engine bay built for toddlers. And no more anxiety about whether I actually reconnected everything I took apart. But hey, I saved a lot on labor, collected used car parts rather than add them to the landfill and got a lot of satisfaction from doing it myself.

Meanwhile, Mike H. stopped by to help install the five security cameras we bought a few weeks ago. He climbed ladders, adjusted angles, and made the whole thing look easy, while I supervised from my wheelchair with a phone in hand, squinting at the feed and offering helpful guidance like, “A little more to the left!” Now the entire property’s covered. We’ve had zero issues in 20 years—but why wait? At worst, we get to watch deer and raccoons on camera, and at best, we catch any future reprobates before they cause trouble. (And if any fawns commit a crime, we’ll have video evidence.) Thanks Mike!!

Travis, one of the Tax-Aide counselors, stopped by to pick up some Andy’s Army bracelets and help spot check the camera install. Always helpful to have another pair of eyes. Thanks for supporting the cause Travis…it was good to see you.

After all that activity—well, after supervising it—I was wiped out by 2:00 p.m. and went inside for a rest. Cindy, trooper that she is, kept going. By the time she finished putting everything away, it was after 3:00, and she barely had time to clean up before dinner.

We met Barb, Mark, and Vic (Mark’s brother, visiting from Virginia) for deep dish at Georgio’s, because of course we did. We ate too much, laughed a lot, and caught up on Vic’s life—and he even picked up the tab. Thanks, Vic!

Always good to end the day with pizza and someone else’s credit card. And Barb, I think next time we have deep dish pizza, I’ll take you up on cutting mine into bite size pieces. The tendons controlling my fingers locked up a few too many times. More acceptance needed by me to not fight the ALS progression.

We were home by 7:30 p.m., and in a rare show of wild living, stayed up until 9:00 p.m. I must have been feeling the effects, because I didn’t wake up until the lazy hour of 4:10 a.m., crazy, right?

Today’s schedule? Blessedly empty. Hopefully no garage work. At least not until my wheelchair gets a recharge.

Have a great Saturday.

Love you guys! ❤️