Tricks? Or Treats?

How much do you like snow? I guess that makes a difference in whether you find the accumulating snow outside as a treat or a trick, keeping in mind that it was 80 a couple days ago. I was planting the last of the bulbs then, and covering them with a bottle-plus  of granulated coyote pee, "Guaranteed to scare squirrels yada yada yada."

It was colder yesterday and I took a long chill. The coyote pee didn't keep the squirrels out of the newest bulbs either. So it was off to the local hardware store for hardware cloth to spread on the ground, after cutting it in half down its entire length so it would cover both sides of the bush in the middle. After that, it was investigate the shed for pieces of lumber that "might come in handy someday." If yesterday wasn't that someday, I have no idea what was. Of course the lumber wouldn't have held the wire down without some extra weight, so the the day ended with my hauling all the rocks I could physically lift out of the east yard, one or two at a time only, since many were about gallon size and those puppies burn calories! But they covered the boards to add weight, covered the middle to add weight, and so forth. Thus the chill. There were periods of just sitting to recover, where I got the most chilled. 

Note to self: get rid of all of that as soon as the snow/ice melts in spring!

I haven't been back to see if the squirrels have attacked the bulbs anyway. I had to be out for my job at 6:30 this morning and it was raining, enough to make it not worth the extra walking, especially since it would still be dark for an hour and a  half this last week of Daylight Savings Time. Can you see little black holes in black dirt under a black sky in the rain? No, night vision goggles would be cheating!  Anyway, I don't own any.

I had to take my client to the store for some holiday shopping, plus groceries, early this morning. Extra small customer base in the store would be less risky for their health, and I could pick up a few things for the home pantry myself. It was a bit extra entertaining this morning, with a scattering of costumes on parade.

First was a pink fairy, shopping for others, pulling a two-lever wheeled platform around with large baskets to hold somebody's pick-up order. I asked her if she granted wishes, but she assured me she wasn't that kind of a fairy, a moderate disappointment to both of us.

Another notable one was a 4-year-old Super Girl with a double red frilly cape. She was helping Mom shop, going straight to the the stack of baskets, and short as she was, picking the one off the top of the stack, on her super tippy toes, of course. After getting the basket down, she got one handle up easily, but Mom had to help with the second one. I guess even superheroes need sidekicks.

My client had to wait for something to be ready at 8 AM, so we took what we'd paid for out to the car in a much heavier rain than when we arrived, and returned to the store where there were a pair of benches near the entrance. It was cold enough that refrigerated items would be just fine in the car over the wait. While my client went to get her final item, I practiced my story in case anybody asked me what my costume was: I was a customer done with my shopping and waiting for somebody else to finish theirs.  Personally, I think I was dressed the part perfectly! Borrowing the bench temporarily for my costume was genius!

After helping carry bags into my clients house, it was raining even harder than before with warnings of snow on the way, so I headed home. I decided I could leave all of my purchases in the hatch. It made a perfect fridge  for what needed it, and things like peanuts wouldn't be bothered a bit. I needed to get inside, under a blanket, and catch the morning news I'd missed.

      Just starting to accumulate, across the road...
 

                    and in the yard.

I also caught a bit of a nap once I warmed up, and when I opened my eyes just after noon, the first thing I saw was snow. Not the earlier "maybe that was a couple flakes... Nope, just small leaves. How about now? No, but now?" This time it was unmistakable. Steve had asked me to wake him around noon IF it were snowing, since he wanted to see it after all those years of missing it. (Not missing it in the I-want-to-see/play-in-it way, just in the we've-lived-in-the-heat-to-avoid-it-for-a-dozen-years kind of way.

     Maybe this will put the rhubarb patch to bed. 

The snow's been busy making it up to us big time. In 3 hours there are 3 inches of accumulation. Yes, the camera has been out. Yes, it will again, soon. I checked the anticipated low for tonight, and decided a few things had to be brought in from the car after all. Cheese does not freeze well, not if you want it to resemble slices instead of crumbs. I like my pepperjack as slices, thank you. So there was a trip to the car.

 

Our stairs are painted wood, so my steps out were very careful to see if they were slick. Not yet anyway.  The sidewalk hadn't yet frozen, so that part was easy. The hatch door, however, had an inch of snow on it, and refused to stay open. Now I'd already had fun with clunks on the head with it dropping once opened, no snow required since AZ seems to wreak havoc on rubber gaskets (I presume that was the issue) so I lifted it carefully about 4 times before giving up and letting it settle slowly across my shoulders while I searched the bags for the ones needing to come in, then a final lift before I backed out and let it slam down to close. 

Alright, yes, I got my hand out in time this time, as well, OK? There is still enough of a bump to remind me, just in case I got Alzheimer's in the few days post stitches or something. This time the rest of what's inside really can stay, down to and past the expected 25 degrees overnight.

                            More snow accumulating.... 

Tonight around supper time it's supposed to have stopped both raining and snowing. The goblins, witches, and superheroes will head out trick-or-treating with coats and boots, but not at our door. The management asked us all to contribute a bag of candies, which got collected daily, and at least three people signed up to manage a table along the street to hand out goodies and keep the goblins out of the hair of the rest of us. 

 Tomorrow it promises to be 45, likely not enough to keep the squirrels in their nests. I do have fond memories of how tasty their fried legs are. I wonder how much that depends on whether they're harvesting my parents' garden and apple trees many years ago, or if bulbs affect the taste.  Just saying....

 

The Journeys Of Little Bird: A Christmas Tale

 It started when we lived in Georgia, back when my youngest, Paul would have been three. My parents, way up in Minnesota, started it off. 

Instead of mailing presents, which likely would not have been anything three kids actually wanted, they sent money. Twenty dollars for each kid. But it came with rules, both for them and for us parents. None of the kids could spend even a single penny on themselves. Instead they had to go shopping, buying presents for the rest of the family. They were to buy anything they wanted so long as everybody else got something, even as small as a candy cane. If so much as a penny was left, it went to charity. There were bell ringers outside every store, after all. This task required at least two shopping trips per child, because when they shopped for Mom, Dad had to take them, and vice versa. Of course the presents had to be wrapped and opened as a surprise for everybody on Christmas Day.

The rules for the parents were simple, if sometimes hard to follow. They could not make suggestions about any present. Everything had to be the kids' ideas. They were allowed to assist with each kid's budget, letting them know how much was left after each purchase, and helping be sure nobody overspent, while nobody was overlooked.

It was an interesting challenge.

Now this was back in the days when my kids watched Sesame Street. There was Big Bird, of course. The show had also recently introduced Little Bird to the cast of characters. While I cannot for the life of me remember any of the other presents anybody gave anyone else, except remembering somebody did actually get a candy cane, I will always remember unwrapping my gift from my youngest: a Little Bird toy, all yellow and soft. Now I could have laughed at his choice for me, a grown-up, but I knew he'd picked out something he valued highly. He was properly thanked, and Little Bird was put on a shelf where he was very safe and out of mischief's way.

Presents were given at Easter in our family. When my youngest opened his present from me, out popped ... you guessed it ... Little Bird! My son enjoyed it for a while, but at the next family gifting event Little Bird traveled to another family member. Then to another. And another. It became a good-natured family joke, wondering who would unwrap him next.

I'm not sure what finally happened to Little Bird. Probably like most toys it got worn out, ragged, dirty...  and the joke had had its day. Or years if you will. The kids outgrew the toy and the joke was no longer that much fun. Little Bird finally left the house the way old toys usually do, and eventually became forgotten.

Until today, that is. I had to deposit a check from my part time job, and in the process get a twenty changed into a pair of tens for a pair of granddaughters with close upcoming birthdays, one party to celebrate for both. The fun will be the wrapping, since the youngest just loves to have her very own boxes. So the bills will be rolled up inside old pill bottles, with a bit of wrapping paper and a name on each. Together they will go inside a little box inside a larger box inside an even larger box inside a really big box. I checked with their mother and the older one won't care a bit if the younger takes possession of all the boxes after the "real" presents are found. 

I was describing this to the teller who got a kick out of it while finding new-looking tens. Her reaction tripped a long ago memory, about 45 years old now, and I shared that with her as well, since there was no waiting customer line. I think we'll be giving those granddaughters a shopping trip this December... with an old set of rules for how it gets accomplished. Maybe they'll get  some memories almost as much fun as the journeys of Little Bird.

"God Don't Make No Mistakes!"

Ignoring the appalling  grammar of that statement, and the double negative, both often present in those I hear this from, how often have you heard that stated? I never hear anybody argue with that idea. God the All Powerful, God the Creator, the Omniscient, Ever Present, Omnipotent, and definitely a "He". No mistakes. Everything has a purpose, whether or not we mere humans, wicked from birth, can understand it.

Seriously?

I mean really, do you take that seriously? No mistakes... really? 

Mistakes happen in nature all the time. That there are two-headed snakes or calves is well known,  or animals with too many legs, or many other deformed creatures who usually live very short, likely very confused lives.

Ever seen or heard of birth defects? Who's God punishing if he planned those? Is an anencephalic baby to blame for the absence of a brain? How about cleft palates? Perhaps you've heard of conjoined twins, even seen pictures of them through fairly recent history since cameras have been invented. I can assure you they are not the recent  product of AI, since they've been known through history. Until recently we called them Siamese twins despite no evidence they happen more in that part of the globe instead of others. They often earned their living, if they survived, as freaks in sideshows. A lot of "mistakes" did. How about the bearded lady or the person with hair all over their body?  If they weren't mistakes, did God make them for our amusement because we didn't have enough entertainment, or needed a reason to feel better about our own minor imperfections and somebody else to feel superior to?

Less well known are malformed genitalia. Doctors occasionally couldn't identify clearly a baby's gender and assigned one at birth. Some times men have an extra testicle, or people can have multiple sets of nipples. Ears can be malformed. Almost any part of our bodies can. So ask yourselves, if none of those are mistakes, why do so many of us ostracize them, punish them, hate them as evil, especially if they were declared one gender and they grew up knowing themselves to be the other? Ever stop to think that we're the mistakes, with all that hate and fear?

How about evil tyrants, are they mistakes? Was Hitler a mistake? If you believe God makes no mistakes and we just don't understand why he allowed Hitler to live and kill millions and millions of people, what could the purpose possibly have been? It my be popular among certain hateful people to claim the Jews earned it because they killed Jesus. Despite knowing the Romans did it, and despite knowing Jesus was a Jew, if you blame Jews, which one of those six million murdered ones did it? How did they manage to live for 2,000 years afterwards? Why did what you think of as a proper punishment fall on the heads of 6 million of them? And why add the Roman Catholics to it? Or the Romany? Or any other human deemed imperfect, like those with Down's syndrome? 

What could your version of a mistake-free God, creator of everything,  have been thinking?

What kind of a horrible, cruel, fickle, arbitrary creator do you worship?

Weird Ads Online

You see a lot of weird ads in between paragraphs of what's posted that you really wanted to read. They just jump out at you. It might be bright colors, or some improbable description of that you might want to look at. For a while they all seemed to be revealing big secrets about celebrities, because who doesn't want to know the dirt dished on somebody famous?

I mean, other than me, because I just don't care. If I had to support whatever is driving those, they'd go bankrupt. Oh, I did try one or two, but there were problems. What was promised never quite made it before the whole thing ended. An arrow would lead off to... nothing. A link wouldn't. Link, that is. The promised thing never made it in. The story was left hanging. Two or three times of that, and I have no interest in who has or was the most beautiful baby. Somebody married cojoined twins and was ready to dish. I'm not interested, but wish them well, whatever it is.

Then there were the medical ones. One secret food to make you thin/younger/healthy/happy/whatever. Or the one meat to never feed your dog. Why to never eat blueberries for breakfast. Even if my curiosity might be peaked, I have the patience for about three words in answer to the  question they raised. It would be a video, maybe half an hour long. I never lasted that long. They just weren't that good. Twenty minutes trying to prove they had some kind of special research, or education, or knew more than my doctor, or listened to this ancient wise.....  If they were a bit speedier in their presentation I might hear they had been miserable before....

Click! Off. 

Why couldn't they ever just say avoid meat X when you fed your dog, plus a sentence about why? Nope, 45 minutes... or more, I never lasted... to permanent unfulfillment. I love blueberries for breakfast, and if you truly have a reason to discourage something harmful, why not just blurt it out? I will continue to add them to pancake batter or cottage cheese or yogurt, because you are just too damn slow off the mark. Obviously you do not care about my health. My dogs through the years have eaten about everything and none dropped dead.  Heck, they even eat the shit off baby diapers, and if that didn't do it....

There's the one about THE REAL exercise that can keep women of a certain age from having incontinence. They show a woman around 35 - so not the "certain age" they claimed to target- on the floor with her legs straight up but spread in a "V". OK, do you just hold that pose? How long? If not, how do you move in and out of it? If it works, why? I mean, I just might need to know this stuff some day, right?  After 20 minutes of telling me everything doctors have told you is wrong, and all the exercises you've ever done (you have done exercises, right?) are exactly wrong... the phone rings and I find I don't give a shit about any of what they haven't gotten around to selling. If it's a simple exercise, why the hell not just show it for 10 seconds?

There's supposed to be a way to infuriate your doctors by pushing on the side of your face near your ears to stop tinitis. Do you press hard or lightly? Do you tap? Wiggle your finger? Hold it there for two months? Who knows? Who has the patience to find out? If I get tinitis, my fingers will be plugged inside my ears to close out all sounds and whatever you wanted to sell will be too late.

Do I need a financial planner? Hmmm, let me see how big my fortune is.... Nope. I don't.

Then there are a set of recent ones about how to retire comfortably on 7 Million. Dollars, I presume. I'm retired comfortably, aside from the consequences of old age that no millions are going to fix. That's just as well, since I don't have 7 million, nor hopes of acquiring 7 million, and cannot figure out for the life of me why anybody thinks they need 7 million at retirement to be comfortable. Is "comfortably" some new code word the uber wealthy use to convince themselves if they have to downsize to 7 million that they can still manage to survive? And if so, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? I have a place to live, enough food and entertainment to not want for it, things to keep me busy, friendly people in my life, affordable health insurance to deal with whatever comes along that's fixable. My brain stays busy... though often wondering about silly things like who thinks 7 million is a hardship?

A (Yummy?) Tip For Saving Tools

A couple decades ago I had a neighbor whose non-work life consisted of family and gardening. He taught me a lot, and I've slightly expanded on what he taught, out of desperation and cheapness.

In his back yard, inside his shed, he had a plastic pan like the kind one washes dishes in. However this one was filled with dirty looking sand. I asked about it when I saw him running this tools through it either before or after using his yard tools. I can't recall which since I've seen him use it both ends of a job. He happily explained that the sand looked so dirty because it was, with old car oil. (Apparently he was a handy auto mechanic too, at least with the small stuff.) Running his shovel, hoe, or whatever through it before he started kept the dirt from collecting on his tools, and afterwards replenished the coating so they wouldn't rust in normal months of Minnesota humidity and severe temperature changes while they just sat. Occasionally he had to replace a wood handle. But the metal stayed whole and strong.

So why do I call this a yummy tip? Obviously not for the old 10-30 or whatever his vehicle needed. In my case, I've been spending a lot of time pruning a couple bushes ignored for years and badly in need of some sharp-edged TLC. Branches crossed, rubbed, tangled,  overgrew, and choked each other out. All that was even before they tried to invade the house and windows whenever the wind blew, or blocked the sidewalk or the lawn mower.

Said bushes are limelight hydrangeas. Their sap, even this late in the fall when leaves are dropping, is very sticky. Pruners, whether hand held or lopping shears, both of which are required for the job, operate on a pivot around a nut and bolt. Or at least they do until the sticky sap stops them in their tracks.  What is already a challenge, though satisfying and fun, now becomes hard labor. What is open stays open. What is closed stays closed. All the muscles which I'm developing this planting/pruning season then struggle with the tools, and that's even without taking arthritis into the equation.

No, I don't do my own oil changes and I do not save nor harvest used car oil. I tried something different, something which I have in abundance in the house. The refrigerator, to be precise.

I use margarine. The soft spreadable kind.

With the tool as open as I can force it, I smear it all over the rubbing sides of the blades. I had no interest in trying to force the bolt off and greasing that area, then trying to reassemble it tightly enough it would stay together with use. No worries with my muscle power about getting it too tight, but others might. So I smeared it as close to the joint as I could get as well as along the whole touching sides of the blades. Force it closed/open a couple times, and set it aside on a paper towel or something overnight. 

The first time, the hand held ones needed a second day to move easily again. The second time overnight did the job. I was surprised to find that the loppers, which even combined full arm and leg strength had trouble moving yesterday, were silky smooth this morning. Something in the margarine almost oozes up inside the joint while it just sits on the counter, or across a cardboard box, or wherever it sits. Even better it takes a lot more cutting to make the hinge freeze up again after its first treatment.

That's a good thing since cooler temperatures are moving in and my time per cutting session will be shrinking accordingly, so I don't chill. 

A final note while writing this: our view from this room is out the window facing the street. We can see neighbors pass even though the blinds keep them from seeing us. Everybody reacts to the new look, which is admittedly VERY bare. Some sticks didn't fit into the garbage can last night, but it's empty again so they'll go in as soon as it's warm enough for me to head back out. A few neighbors frown, even though anybody who bothered to stop for a chat while it was in process got the 15 second tutorial on what was needed and why, and knows what to expect next spring. After all, once upon a time I did this for a living. I know the whys and the wheres of each needed cut, though I didn't bother to explain that. Who needs to know?

And thanks to a long ago neighbor, I know how to keep the tools going for the job. 

It's so much cheaper that way.

Stitches... Gone.

I was supposed to have my stitches gone this morning. That's not exactly how it worked out.

I could see the incision was well healed days ago. The stitches were what were now causing issues. They pulled the skin on the back of my hand up into a high lump.  I could have said painful, but so long as I didn't use the hand it wasn't much of an issue. 

Yeah, right. Have you ever tried not using your main hand? Especially since I'm so strongly left handed. I took a quiz decades ago, asking which hand was placed where on a broom, and how often, for example, to help you figure out how strongly left or right handed you were. I was top of the chart, lefty leading everything. It's such a habit that I'd kept bandaging the hand for several days after I needed to just to remind me - sort of - not to use it yet.

It did manage to keep the hand dry, and let's please not discuss sanitation, eh? I did manage not to poison myself, and let's just let it go there. There are workarounds if one really tries.

But I was still using the hand for nearly everything, just because after three quarters of a century, one does what one has always done. I did put gloves on for some heavy pruning of a bush (not completed) which managed to dig the glove into the back of my hand just below the stitches, accentuating the bulge. Yes, of curse it hurt, enough to nag me for days. I'll get back to the bush... some time. Technically next early spring will be fine, though now is better. Right now planting takes precedence.

With the skin still pulled tight from the stitches and general swelling, there was one advantage - if I were vain. (Personally I find it amusing.) When I compare my hands side by side, the undamaged one has about 140% more wrinkles! Look, if wrinkles on geezer hands bother you, I do NOT recommend this solution. Particularly because what was also happening was the stitches on the back side were disappearing into the skin. When they first went in they made a solid black line on that side. Now they were three dots, and not even in a very straight line at that, as if that mattered. I'm not criticizing my surgeon on her sewing skills like she was putting together an heirloom quilt. I'm not that old yet! Come check if I'm an heirloom in another 25 years!

The stitches were starting to bother me more than the hand issues before surgery had. It was time to see about getting them out. There was this morning's appointment. It turns out there was also one last Wednesday, and somebody called me from the office to push my Friday appointment forward, also to Wednesday but late in the afternoon. Hmmm, one appointment per stitch? 

Yeah, I don't think so. How could they charge the insurance company for three visits, for starters?

Fortunately I got the usual (thank goodness!) pre-appointment reminder call (please confirm you are coming, or not) for both Wednesday appointments, and called back to take the earliest one and let them know to cancel the other two for the same thing. I hadn't even known about the first one, just the Friday one.

I was a little nervous walking in. I'd gotten a do-it-yourself stitches pulling kit from the surgeon, but once those stitches started digging in, lost all interest in doing it myself, especially since I'd need to use my "wrong" hand. Just a bit pain-averse, you see. With all I've gone through, it seems a bit silly, but even so. I was actually hoping for a local to numb it, but while they didn't actually laugh, it just wasn't done. "Overkill" was the word they used. As it turned out, they were right. The person pulling them out was skilled and gentle. No pain, just the relief that the pulling from them staying in was gone.

There was one tiny issue, however, The black lines on the back of my hand? Still there!  I pointed them out, and she pointed out that the stitches removed were wholly intact, let me use my fingernail to try to remove what turned out to only be a discoloration in the skin. Dye transfer? We're not sure. But the lump is slowly going down, I'm back busy digging in the dirt trying to take advantage of a warm fall to get my bulbs and seeds all planted, and while I get tired and achey after - heck, WHILE I'd doing it! - it's getting done. The rest of me aches of course, but that's normal. The hand is fine.

Weird looking. But fine.  

A bit tender if one pushes on the lumpy part, which I'm the only one who does, but, really, fine. Honest!

Still fewer wrinkles than the other one though. But all the liver spots are intact. Lucky me. You know, just in case I was worried somebody switched hands while I wasn't looking, or something else Halloweenish, eh?

Getting The Car... Fixed?

It was time for an oil change. I'd been putting it off, opting for just refilling oil every so often. It got even more complicated with the new job, knowing I had to make an appointment and not knowing the changeable schedule sometimes more than hours in advance.

I got a very pointed reminder yesterday morning, however. I was warming up the car to take off for the job. It was a chilly morning, but the weather people - and I do check several - said the nearest frost was about 80 miles away. Need I say they lied? A very solid layer of frost was glued to every car window.

Luckily I keep a tool in the car, the same one from back before we moved to Arizona, that has a window squeegee on one side of the end of a short handle and a hard plastic scraper on the other side of the same end. It was definitely a scraper morning.  A short handle to reach across a full windshield is not a perfect solution, especially with my shoulders. It was fine on all the other windows, and fit the side mirror surfaces.

I know you're about to say just use the washer fluid and get rid of the ice.  This is where our years in Arizona  said "Not so fast!" My last oil change happened there, and in the Phoenix area washer fluid is called "water". No anti-icer. After all, why? When would it be needed? Fortunately I'd bought a gallon jug of the stuff about a month earlier, and still kept it in the car. Not in the fluid tank, but back in the hatch. Before you get all superior about how stupid that is, it's been warm, and the washer fluid tank was still full. I've been squirting it out way more than dust and dirt required, but still, there's been no place to put in enough washer fluid to make a difference. Since I had it, though, I just opened it and splooshed it across the outside of the windshield straight from the jug. Instant melt!

I still had just water in the tank this morning, and was making sure to get rid of it as fast as possible, barring just letting it run while idling on the driveway. It was another frosty morning, and I left the house so early that I couldn't see across the local lakes for all the fog rising off them, enough to block lights across the way. They were just black.

But as soon as I finished my short job duties this morning, I headed over to a close Walmart where I'd scheduled an appointment the day before. Yes, it would provide clean oil, and a full washer fluid tank instead of a water tank. But that reminder I'd mentioned? Yesterday being the first near to sub freezing morning since we moved into the area, I also suddenly had my low tire pressure light come on. I don't mess with those. I made my appointment, knowing they would at my direction pay special attention to tire pressure, and I'd find out how serious it was. We all hoped the problem stemmed from the fact that the last air fill in 4 brand new tires was the day before leaving AZ for good. It was spring. It was warm. Perhaps the air pressure had lowered with air  temperature 50 degrees lower, first cold of this season for the car. One could at least hope, right? Air is free, the cheapest fix of any potential issue tripping the warning light.

An hour and a half after sitting in the waiting room my car was ready. While paying for the oil change I asked if they had made a note of what they'd found. They had. After checking the air pressure in all four tires, (in their warm bay), they pronounced all four tires properly filled. I had a bad tire sensor.

So it was going to keep registering low pressure? I wouldn't know when it lied, or I needed it replaced, or even which sensor it was? 

Yep.

Well, that could get to be really nerve wracking. I started to plan a trip to the metro dealership for a big bill. I need to go there anyway after getting yet another recall notice. I'd fixed all the previous ones, but the irregularity of the job has kept me from making that appointment. Now, however, I at least know one day off I have each week. The next one of those will be devoted to getting stitches removed from my hand before they totally disappear under my skin. So maybe the following week? I'll have to call them.

By this time all those musings had brought me to my car. I sat down, turned the key, and... no tire pressure light. Seriously? Is it just warm enough still that it's all it took to flip it off? If so why didn't they catch that while it was in the nice warm bay? Did they top up the tires enough to get them back to normal pressure?  Did they somehow turn the light off completely after determining it was faulty? All I can say for sure is it registered perfect, i.e., no light, all the rest of my errands this morning. I guess I won't know until tomorrow morning when I start it, if, of course, the morning temps are as cold as the last couple of mornings.  Or maybe not until I get a flat tire, which of course will be at the most inconvenient time possible, since life just works that way.