Weekend, with Car Repairs, weighty conversations, and deer

It’s, in theory, Autumn, although the weather has been very up and down lately. We’re getting 10-degree shifts for a day at a time, 3 days at a time, and then dropping back a little bit lower and lower every time it drops.

This weekend, on a pleasant day, I drove up to Rochester (about 2 hour drive, half Thruway and half 2-lane roads) to visit my parents, and to have my dad help me fix (replace) my rear wheel bearing.

This, it turns out, is not exactly more complicated than fixing/replacing brakes, but it does involve a lot more swearing, a tool called a slide hammer that looks like a ShakeWeight’s more obscene older cousin, and a lot of Thrust (or some other lubricant, but hey, there’s a theme here).

It also involved puppy kisses from my two “kid brothers” the lab-mix doggies, a vegan “Reuben” sandwich (with homemade bread! also homemade vegan “cheese” and homemade sauerkraut!) from my mom, and a couple uncomfortable conversations.

All I’m going to say about the political discussion is: we managed not to have a fight. I’ll take it.

The other conversations were harder — talking to my dad about things I’d been holding on to, talking to both parents about end-of-life plans. I don’t want to know, I didn’t want to confront Dad…

…but I’d rather do it in the garage where I can hug them both and move on than do it later, in a hospital, or be shouting at a gravestone some day.

On the way home, feeling thoughtful and pensive and a little bit pleased, a little weight-lifted, I saw about a dozen deer in the Seneca Army Depot (but no white ones! Sad)… and then, in my front yard, two deer snacking on our apple tree.

They don’t symbolize anything, the deer, but they’re there, because it’s November and they’re always there, and it’s not like we needed all the apples, anyway.

Oh, and there was a supermoon. Which was just about gorgeous hanging over the Finger Lakes.

Little disjointed today, but that was my weekend. Hugs to you all.

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