Foggy grayish day

went out to the country a little bit today. We were going to help grandpa cut and load wood but it was too wet outside for him, he's 76 and the weather effects his joints to the point of to much pain. He cut wood all day yesterday with one of his boys, today he wasn't going out. I think we surprised him when me and both my kids came out to help. Hell I was surprised that they both came with hardly any coaxing. On the way there I did my best impression of a depression era oldster talking about austerity programs and the need to conserve energy etc blah blah blah.
when you have a captive audience you can blather on about such things. I also tried to tell them the reason for helping grandpa put up wood, as we won't be taking his toil without offering ours in return. Making the pile bigger for all of us so we can take a small piece with out feeling like just "takers". I think they understood that concept. One is 17 one is 13 they better be able to grasp a simple thing like that.
we get out there after a short drive and go by the lake I grew up near spending a million hours in spring and summer fishing on, and a million hours in winter shoveling and skating on. We stopped so I could snap a picture , the lake was just so glass smooth and beautiful fall quiet. Very fookun coolio.
we loaded the truck all three of us chatting with grandpa he had a huge smile on his face that we came out to see him. Loaded the truck and headed to my dads house their other grandpa, just down the road a mile. He was just toddling about the house cleaning his desk and file system. He had just come back from a jaunt to "town' for a paper and coffee. Haven't seen my dad in a few months, and I'm amazed at how old hex getting by the look. There was a time I could not see a relative like that and when I did they hadn't changed all that much, nothing really discernible. Now though with each passing month everybody seems to change dramatically. Maybe its more than passing months, its the passing years.
chatted with him for an hour then took off for home. Before we left the confines of the county park he lives in we stopped in the dirt parking lot near the highway to go for a small trek out into the woods.
its deer season opener today, and my kids were very reluctant to go wandering in the woods with every nutcase in the land out with a shotgun. I assured them this is all county park land and the only way we get shot is if we sneak about on all fours lil lil deers and don't make noise are mistaken for deer by the local hmong population. Needless to say there was a lot of loud talking. At least at first. We ventured down an old creek path I knew as a kid, I knew this trail blindfolded then could run its length barefoot knew where to jump over bogs where to dodge every tree branch. Today though the place seemed so over grown and less traveled. We walked a floating trail through the bog that was never there when I was a kid , we only walked that area when it was frozen in winter nearer the creek just to see where it went like Lewis and Clark. We pretended as kids we were explorers and trappers of lore. I tell my two chidrens about "when I was a kid" we didn't have any electronics to keep us in doors all day and night, we had the woods, the creek, the lake, the ball field, the dirt roads. I think being outside in the actual woods that I grew up in resonated the truth of what I said instead of groans of oh dad knock it off. There was nothing really but silence off agreement from them. I told them how we were let out in the morning and in summer hardly ventured back inside until dark. There was lounging about inside then, no ps2 games. I think maybe pong, I know we didn't have a pong game until maybe 1995.
we left the woods as we came went home to eat lunch. I took a nap. And when I woke up without my saying a word my boy had taken it upon hisself to clean the chimney take the wood from the truck and stack it neatly near the door, clean off the deck.
I got on the tractor and mulched up the leaves. A head start on tomorrows yard work.
tonight I rest up watch a movie hold the ma enjoy my great American life.