There is a semi-wrecked car in my front yard. Am I too nice?

Monday: There is a car in my front yard.
It belongs to a guy who lives somewhere in the neighborhood who police said was probably going too fast on the slippery roads and came within feet of hitting the only tree in my corner lot.
It was before 9 a.m. He was very distraught and didn't seem dressed for the weather...it was one of those sub-zero days we are all loving so much. He had on a thin hoody and sweats was older, older than me! He was very shaken up.
So, when he came to my door and it was freezing cold I didn't think. "Dude, you almost hit my tree!" I didn't say, "give me all of your contact information, right now Mister, you've torn my yard to shreds!"
Nope, I was concerned that he was safe and warm and wasn't hurt. I was worried about him and didn't  even get his name. I told him no worries and I was just glad he was OK. My focus was on making sure whether he needed help while calculating whether or not it was safe to invite him into my house to get warm or make a call because I was alone and in my bath robe.  (His other vehicle, a Ford Tundra which  a police officer said capable of pulling the car out of the ditch, was  idling in the street.)
The tactic agreement in this exchange was that I expected he would do the right thing and come claim his car out of my yard when the weather got warmer and the crisis passed and make an effort to make things right.
So, now, five days later, there is still a car in my yard.
I called the police because I thought they would place one of those stickers you see stuck on cars on the side of the highway and, soon, remove it from my property.  I was informed by the police that it is parked on private property....mine...I am responsible to tow it away if the owner doesn't come to claim it.
So, I suppose, within the next few days I'll have to play some kind of hard ball and tow the car, somehow notify the owner and say "pay me what I paid to tow the car or it is mine."
That makes me uncomfortable. I was just trying to be nice. But I had a different recent experience were I discovered that all that being nice has gotten me is screwed out of tens of thousands of dollars over the years. And, believe me when I say, I do not have tens of thousands of  dollars to be screwed out of. But it got me wondering is it ever wrong to be nice? Have I been too accommodating over the years because I wanted to be liked or because I was afraid to hurt someone's feelings? Or because I I thought I was protecting someone else? Would it have been so wrong to ask the guy for his name and numbers?
Tuesday: So, I started writing this post on Monday and now it's Tuesday. The nervous car driver came by while I was carefully stepping through the icy driveway to retrieve my garbage can so I didn't break a hip. He was nervous and apologetic and promised to get the car out of my yard.
He said he had lost three people he loved in the last six months, including his wife and his mother,  and hadn't gotten use to it all. For a minute, to be honest, I wondered if he was telling the truth. There was an instant when I took all of him in. He was still wearing the same clothes ill-suited for the weather.  His speech was difficult to understand because it seemed he didn't have in his teeth. He looked about ready to cry. So I looked him squarely in the eye and said "I'm glad your were OK" and "I know you'll do your best."
In that moment it felt like the right thing to do but I still wondered, stepping gingerly back down the driveway that I may well be the biggest sucker of all time.
Wednesday: I pull out for work and the car was gone. It was one of those moments where I couldn't help but smile and the sun seemed to shine a little brighter.  It may be overstating it but I felt like my faith in humanity had been in part restored. I had considered reconsidering my probably naive life outlook that assumes that basically people are doing the best they can. This recent lapse in faith has been tied directly to a particular person who never ceases to amaze me in their ability to be thoughtless and hurtful.
But here is the thing. I'm the one at fault in that case. Once, maybe twice, you give a person a chance. When it gets to be chance, five, six, 100, 200.....you have to take some responsibility. Or, more directly, I have to take responsibility. And action. That person is out of good will and good thoughts.
But my distraught driver? He had one chance. He did the right thing and I have never been happier to see tire marks in my yard.

Shout out to our reader (readers?) in Poland! Menopause is universal.
Seventeen countries and counting!
Mary M.

Confessions of a Menopausal Mom at the Gym

Since I have seven months experience, six if you count that I've only been to the gym four times since Thanksgiving, I wanted to share my vast, hard-earned experience with you my fellow Menopausal Moms.

I just started wotking out last year in May. It was  12-wweek  program for people over 50. I always was an overachiever so I started at 49.  For $100 you got two visits with a nutrtionist, a weekly visit with a trainer and access to the gym. (HealthWork Baptist Health in Lexington offers the program called Joints in Motion)

Best Money I Ever Spent.

It did not start out in a great way. During my first visit the trainer didn't know what to do with me I was so nervous and sweaty. Sweaty partly because of anxiety, partly because my air conditioning didn't work in my car and partly because of the occasional hot flash which a careful reader will know by now are apparently made worse in me by stress.

He, seriously, took me past a Zumba class with a woman dancing in it with a chair in front of her so she could sit down. She easily had 100 pounds on me. There, he said, if she can do it you can.

 Looking back I guess that isn't a terrible motivational tool but it didn't feel encouraging at the time. I just got sweatier and more hot flashy.

But I stuck with it. It wasn't pretty. It was plenty sweaty. But I did it and am going to go back at it again in the New Year.

Here are some randoms thoughts, some confessions, about the gym.

• My first time at the gym the trainer told me to walk for four minutes on treadmill then left, seeming confused that walking 30 seconds seemed a challenge. I thought those four minutes would never end. It was nearly all due to nerves. In no time I was doing 15 than 20 than 30. It gets better. 
• There are very few chubby white haired women at the gym. I don't know where they all are because trips to Wal-Mart show me there are plenty of us. Let's see what we can do to change that.
• If you haven't worked out in a long time or ever then getting ready to work out can be a work out. Those damn tennis shoes don't tie themselves and gym shoes don't slip on. I was stiff, stiff, stiff. My awesome second trainer would catch me as I emerge from the dressing room, sweating from shoe-putting-on and no-airconditioning in the car and say "oh good, you are warmed up." It gets better.
• Most people aren't paying any attention to you. If you think they are judging you in some way for being in a gym but not being in shape...you are in the wrong gym and you, like me, are probably too self-conscious. That gets better too.
• Yes, sometimes, there are grunty, sweaty men which can make you, if you are like me, uncomfortable. (Women, in my experience, are 90 percent less grunty.) If you put in your ear buds, say tuned into One Direction, you can't hear them. (Or, maybe, grunt back randomly. I haven't tried that yet but I might. It's something to aspire to in 2015.)
• After the treadmill, I really, really wanted to stick with something that looked like a recumbent bike and that was it. It was where the Super Seniors at my gym hung out. I wanted nothing to do with the elliptical, no free weights, no walking to the part of the gym where the muscle-lifting, super grunters roam. I was scared. But with some encouragement I tried new things. I liked them. So, push yourself and get support.
• Sometimes there are fit young men in the gym. I feel that it is appropriate to admire them in not a creepy grandma way but in a way that honors God's good work. When I see a fit young man I say to myself, sometimes out loud, "Good Job, God. Look what you did there? Nice work!" There are some perks at the gym you just can't find anywhere else.
• Today's shout out is to Ireland. Yes, someone in Ireland has read Menopausal Moms of Kentucky. Mary Charlotte Meehan is my name. If you say it with an Irish accent you can see where my roots are. Go Ireland. Menopause and Moms are Universal.