Pbenjay's Blog

Most weekends in Ocean Grove follow a sort of pattern; there’s the opening of the house and putting away whatever we brought down. There’s the grocery shopping for two households, the Home Depot and Costco runs, the lawn care and blah blah blah you’ve heard it all before!

This weekend went a bit awry in both directions – the high road and the low road.  It was a BUSY weekend for sure and prior blogs Raise a Glass in Remembrance, Oh Dear, There’s a Deer Here reveal some of the adventures we had over the course of the three and a half days we were there.

We went to the first cook-out of the season on Saturday night.  The day was glorious and our friend Joe, celebrated his new terrace by purchasing a gas grill which Jim put together during the course of the afternoon.  Susan did the shopping,  I made a salad, Joe had weekend guests and as the preparations were underway and as other friends were casually encountered, each was invited and WOW it really was GREAT.  The Gaybors next door came laden with side dishes and grillers (sausages from the Amish market).  Monica who also lives next door arrived with wine and more food.  And the dogs…. Madison, the resident Yorkie was an accommodating host to Timmy who was a weekend guest and Monica’s Yorkie, Mickey who lives next door.

Oh yes, the Gnome came too.

One of the best ways to wind up a long weekend is to sit on a porch overlooking Wesley Lake.  Of course it’s best to be friends with Heide in order to do that.  Heide (pronounced Hi-deh) invited us to a Sunday night supper on her porch – yeah, we’re down for that! Although it was getting humid and sticky, the porch was cool as  a breeze wafted off the lake and we were in the shade.

Susan and Jim were invited as well. As dusk descended, we all went inside and had a DELICIOUS salad with chicken.  AND fresh strawberries and cream and pizelles

NOW that was ALL FUN, indeed it was BUT, BUT – on Saturday night before the cookout, after killing all the weeds with a FULL container of Weed Be Gone and as I was putting it up on the shelf in the shed, the container hit a lantern hanging from the shed ceiling which fell and hit me on the bridge of my nose -” Peter, help, I think I broke my nose, omg, omg!”  As I am yelling and trying desperately to reach over a wagon, a bike, a bird seed container while bleeding, I CANNOT reach the container of weed killer which is now pumping all over the shed floor! Oh what a mess!!! Needless to say everything had to come out of the shed.  How do you mop up a gallon of weed poison that has mixed with dirt and dust from the floor? NOT easily!  It was  a disgusting job and since the weed killer got on so many things that I rinsed off the hose, it will be interesting to see how much grass I killed in the process 😦

Back track to last Sunday when Peter got a flat tire and by the time he could drive to a place where someone could change it, he had driven through the sidewall.  The Strauss Auto Store put the spare on and gave us a quote for 4 new tires and we drove back to NYC.  THIS Saturday I noticed that the left rear tire was really soft so I drove to the first place that had an air pump and asked them to help me – the guy put air in the tire and told me I needed new tires.  I got a quote from them too.  Yesterday, we looked at the tire and again it was soft!!! Of course it’s Sunday! So we went back to the first place  and asked them to repair the tire BUT they said it was against company policy to repair a tire with so little tread – Geezzzzzz  We begged and wheedled and fibbed and said we had to get back to NYC tonight and we would back next week to possibly put 4 new tires on the car – BUT their quote was $140 more than the second place. Oy Vey

So that wraps up the weekend except for the part where I bought so much stuff at Costco that I had to put half of the frozen items in the Lilligaard’s freezer.  Amen.

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