It's been another one of those weeks. Well, it's definitely been another week. Seven days, seven nights, 21 meals and another pile of firewood have passed.

I think the native American population used to judge the passage of time by the phases of the moon. I'd say that would be as good an indicator as anything else, with the added bonus of being a lot easier to carry than adding a calendar to one's extra pair of moccasins and buckskin briefs for a big buffalo hunt.

I don't know why I might have mentioned that, but I still figure I'd better keep using standard weeks, days and hours. It's hard to follow up when you agree to call someone, "When the sun is high in the sky." Hours should be precise enough for me, since I've given up on minutes and seconds, nothing seems to happen that fast anyway. Well, unless you count kids growing up, burning lunch, wrinkles forming and hair falling out.

The only thing that passes slower than time in the winter is the speed at which I manage to complete construction projects. The sad part is that I always have an abundance of such projects to do and a dearth of things that I can point to and proclaim them finished.

Part of the problem might be that things keep tearing up nearly as fast as I can get them fixed. Or so it seems. I was going to cut wood on Saturday, so I started up the pickup and pulled down to the house to load some wood on the porch first. After I finished unloading, I got back in the truck and turned the key. "Click," was the response, not the whirring sound of an electric starter turning over a diesel engine.

Since I didn't get the desired response, I tried twice more. "Click, click" said the truck.

This is beginning to read like a children's book, isn't it?

Well, after I crawled around under the truck, pecked on the starter with my saw tool and looked under the hood for a few minutes as if I could actually fix something, I then got back in the truck and tried again. The result was the same. Not sure what else to do, I removed the starter fuse, checked the battery cables and then got someone else to turn the key. It just so happened that a friend stopped by who was planning to work with me that day. As he turned the key, the engine said..."click."

Luckily, I had parked the truck diagonally across the driveway to load the wood on the porch, so I had managed to block all access to the house by any other vehicle until this problem was solved. I said luckily at the beginning of the last sentence because the fact that I had blocked access to the house made me more determined to get the truck started. A wiser man would have stopped trying when he ran out of options, but sometimes a determined man can do things that a wise man cannot.

So, when I got back in the truck again a few minutes later and wiggled the key back and forth, the starter finally decided to engage and the truck started.

I then pulled it back up the hill and parked it beside the building to await the necessary repairs. Even if it were to start every time, the bad ‘mojo' of one day's improper actions would require that I have it looked at by someone who does more than just look under the hood with an important air. Then again, it apparently worked for me, since the truck started.

I stopped by a local parts store to check on the price of a rebuilt starter and found out that it is more than $200. That might not sound too bad if that were all the bills that I had to worry about and my friend the mechanic could get on the job right away.

Sadly, he is a bit tied up right now. You see, he has the family sedan in for repairs, trying to fix the parts that were damaged by the trip through a fence that it took a little while back.

But we won't go into that, since my life and happiness might be adversely affected by such an admission. Needless to say, I wasn't driving at the time. You see, I've already said more than I should have.

Anyway, given the fact that these car repairs come on the heels of an earlier sewer system failure at my mother's house, the purchase of a washer and dryer and several other such unpleasant surprises, I'm glad that it's almost time for a tax refund. At least I hope to get a tax refund.

If it were to end up like one of those Monopoly cards with the guy slapping his head while hearing, "You owe taxes," I don't think I could take it.

Anyway, after figuring up all my financial information, I figure we'll all do fine again this year, but we'll be fine quicker if a rich family adopts us and then leaves us in the will. I really don't want to hope someone dies, so maybe I'll just try for the lottery. I'm sure I'll have a great chance of winning that.

That reminds me of a story about a fellow who prayed to win the lottery for several weeks but saw no results. When he talked with his pastor about it, he was told, "If you want to win, you at least have to have enough faith to buy a ticket."
 

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