May 29th

At some point, Keith's brother's family will arrive and I will have to cut this short. It's a lovely cool and dry morning, when I took the girls out, the sky to the east was white with haze burning off. There are wild grape vines every where, and white daisies and these bright yellow flowers that look like golden rods but softer.

I went blog hunting and found this quote on another army wife's blog:

"I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer..." — Rainer Maria Rilke

I don't know who Rainer Maria Rilke is, but I like it.

We bought a bunch of those frozen pops the last time we went shopping and Keith is addicted to them. It's not quite eleven in the morning and he's on his third one, a lurid purple color. The previous one was neon blue. This does mean that there is more ice cream for me though, since he's forgotten all about that.

Yesterday Keith took the Ranger into the shop for what he thought would be a quick trip to fix a leak. Five hours later, I was making an emergency trip in with much needed supplies; two sloppy Joe sandwiches, BBQ chips and a Gatorade. He worked another three hours and had to leave the truck in the bay over night.

The bolts in the head are rusted completely into the manifold and three of them broke off, so he has to drill them out now, very carefully, with a left hand drill bit. Or something. He spent all yesterday evening researching where he could find the right drill and the right techniques.

I guess it's a touchy job and if he does it even slightly wrong, it means he has to pull the engine and at that point will want to buy a whole new engine.

I told him I saw our profit margin disappearing and "the bank" was cutting off any further funds. I also explained that any future projects would be very closely inspected for unseen risks and that "the bank" would be very cautious in the future about extending him any loans next time. I also told him that there was no way in hell he was buying a whole new engine.

When I talk like this to him, it just makes him laugh helplessly.

"What if I pay you in kisses?" he offered.

"The bank is no longer accepting kisses as legal tender," I said sternly, which of course made him laugh harder. "And don't you give me any BS speech about how you need to buy the tools instead of rent them."

At that point he was pretty much incapacitated. And they came, I have to go.