Short Week

 

          I had a short week this week.

          “Peg! A week is always seven days!” you say.

          I know that that’s true technically, however, when you’re absorbed in a world of spinning pictures and stories into words, days slip by with hardly a notice. I lost Saturday to our trip and Sunday to sorting the tons of pictures I took on our trip. I was only part way through editing and resizing them when I looked at the time.

I’ll never finish this today. I thought. What if I do my letter blog in two parts this week? I’d already finished sorting and editing the early part of the week and I could start writing about it. I could do the first part of the week in one letter blog and the trip to Aunt Wallie’s funeral in another.

Then I had another thought. Maybe I should just forget about the early part of the week. That’s how Forget It? came to be written, and I lost Monday writing that.

Mike was sick. He woke up in the early hours of Monday morning with vomiting and diarrhea. He spent all day sleeping — when he wasn’t running to the bathroom. I’m sorry he was sick but it sure made for a quiet day of writing for me! He’s blaming his sickness on the church. He hasn’t been to church with me in months and he went last Sunday. “There’s another reason not to go to church!” he quipped.

Never mind that we just spent two days traveling and being around other people.

Tuesday, Mike was over it. He was better with no lingering effects.

I spent the day editing and resizing the pictures from our trip and started writing.

“Whimper, whimper, woof-woof,” Bondi said.

I paused from writing and looked to see what she wanted. She was sitting at the door, looking through the glass.

“You wanna go out?” I asked, pushed my chair back and got up from my desk.

I turned the knob and started to open the door when I see it.

“Spitfire left us a present,” I told Bondi. “Wait!” I commanded and went out to get rid of it.

Bondi wasn’t happy about that and watched through the door. When I let her out, she sniffed around the patio for a few minutes before she ran to the fence. She knows what I do with Spitfire’s presents.

Now, I have to tell you something. Just a couple of days before this, I took Bondi out. I went to my station at the edge of the patio and waited for her to make her rounds before she hit the grass. I don’t know why she insists I come out with her sometimes, but she does. She didn’t show up when I expected her to, so I went looking. There she was, mouth stuffed full of mouse, and jaws locked together tighter than Fort Knox!

I grabbed her. “Let it go!” I told her and tried to pry her jaws apart. “LET. IT. GO!” and I gave her head a shake. It took me quite a while and repeated commands of, “DROP IT!” before I could get her to open up and when she did, out fell a headless mouse.

“Yeah, Spitfire already ate the best part, didn’t he?” I said, holding her back and picking the poor little guy up by his tail. Bondi tried to jump high enough to snatch him from my fingers as I walked across the yard and tossed him over the fence.

So, it’s begun. I have to make sure there aren’t any presents on the patio before I let Bondi out.

And that Tiger!

I’ll tell ya what!

He likes to be out and he gets really mad and takes it out on Spitfire if I don’t let him go out. But here’s the thing. Tiger likes to do his hunting under the birdfeeders.

“That’s unsportsmanlike,” I tell him when I catch him, and make him come back in the house. He’s already caught one that way.

“What about Blackie?” you wanna know. “Does Tiger get after him, too?”

I’ve seen Tiger chase Blackie a few times, but he just runs and never complains, whereas Spitfire makes a lot of noise.

Sort of late Tuesday afternoon, I’m on page… I don’t know what page I was on. It seems like ten or twelve and I hadn’t even started to make a dent in the more than one-hundred-thirty pictures I’d planned on showing.

If I make them smaller, I can get more on a page, I thought and set to work trying to figure out what that might look like.

One of the first things I do every morning is shoot off a love note to my peeps. Wednesday was no exception. I wrote, “Good morning! Good morning! It's raining here. I'm hoping to get my letter blog finished today. I worked on it yesterday, got to page... I don't know what page I was on when I decided to make the pictures smaller. It doesn't affect the way it looks when I put it online but with more than 130 pictures, it'll make a difference in the number of pages I print. I was only able to put 8 pictures on a page when I sized them 2.3. By making them 1.5 I can get as many as 14 on a page. Big difference. Unfortunately, that made for a lot of rework. But it's done now and I can move on to the finish line. Something that will never be finished is my love for you. I love you tons and tons!”

I wasn’t asking for accolades, just telling them what was on mind like I do every morning. Nonetheless, I got this back from my beautiful West Virginia peep, “Good morning. Have I ever told you how much I appreciate all the work you put into your blogs? Well, I'm telling you now!! I love reading about your adventures and the animal antics. And the pictures, oh the pictures! You capture views that not too many people would even see. I'll keep reading as long as you keep writing. Love you to infinity and WAYYYYYY beyond.”

Sometimes, a bit of encouragement when we don’t even know we need it, goes a long way.

I spent the rest of Wednesday writing and posting Goodbye Aunt Wallie.

Speaking of posting…

I was looking through all of my blog posts, picking a story here and there to read, and do you know that everything I’ve written since July of 2014 is on my blog site? Four hundred and seventeen posts — mistakes and all! I have an editor now. A big shout-out to Jenn Kipp, the best editor ever — and my Miss Rosie, she helps me, too!

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were gone. That left just Thursday and Friday before it was time to start another letter blog!

There probably won’t be much happening in two days for me to write about, I think to myself.

Thursday, when my five in the a.m. alarm went off, I woke up enough to take my reflux meds, then I laid back down to snooze till the six o’clock alarm went off.

My stomach started hurting and I couldn’t go back to sleep.

When I got up, I took a couple of swigs of that nasty pink stuff and felt better. Maybe it was my meds, I thought. Even though they’ve never bothered me before, I thought since I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch the day before, maybe being exceptionally empty might’ve done it.

“Why didn’t you have any supper or snacks?” you ask.

I don’t know. I just didn’t feel like eating, wasn’t hungry — and that hardly ever happens to me.

We’d already planned to run some errands Thursday. Mike needed to go to the bank, I hadn’t been to my resale shop for a while, and McDonald’s has Fillet O’ Fish on sale right now — all very valid reasons for the thirty-some-mile round trip. To make it more valid, we needed to make two more stops. One to the grocery for golden raisins and the other at a State Store.

“A State Store!” you exclaim. “What would two teetotalers like you two need from a State Store‽”

Mike had an interesting conversation with the guy who came to do the yearly service on our generator.

“He told me if you soak golden raisins in gin and have a spoonful or two every day, it helps with arthritis pain,” Mike told me.

We Googled it and there’s no proof it helps but this guy swore by it and the guy who told him about it swore by it and what’ve we got to lose.

All you do is cover the raisins with gin, cheesecloth over top, and let the alcohol evaporate. In a week or two you eat a spoonful of raisins every day.

Mike called Dave for his recipe. “I don’t have one. I just let the raisins soak for a week or two then take a couple of spoons of the liquid. But it has to be Gilbey’s Gin. It’s the only one made in a copper vat.”

I don’t know if that’s true or not, I don’t even know if it would make any difference, but we bought Gilbey’s.

We followed a couple of slow-moving trucks as we came back up Welles’ Mountain.

“There’s a whole line of cars behind us,” Mike said. 

My stomach started hurting again on the way home and I spent the rest of the afternoon in bed. I was sorta okay as long as I was laying down, with only occasional waves of nausea. Besides, the book I was reading was going back to the library in two days and this gave me a good excuse to do nothing but read — and play a little tug-o-war with Bondi. She spent the day in bed with me. Sometimes playing, sometimes napping.

Around five I got up to do the litter boxes and give the cats their nighttime treat of canned cat food. I couldn’t do it. The worst wave yet of nausea rolled over me and left me sweating and on the verge of vomiting. I sat in the coolness of the kitchen patio, head in hands, until it passed. Then I laid back down for five minutes. It passed and I was able to get up and feed the cats. Litter boxes could wait.

I was better Friday and we had another errand run planned. We’d been to Walmart the week before, intending to pick up chicken leg quarters for sixty-nine cents a pound, and forgot them. This time we’d head to Tunkhannock and get the chicken, some dry cat food, and redeem our gas points from Weis before they expire. With gas at four-twenty-nine, thirty cents off a gallon helps.

The flowers and trees all bloom sooner down in town than they do up here on the mountain. I snapped some fuzzy Forsythia pictures as we zoomed past.

We were loading the groceries in the back of the car and I was digging in the bottom of a bag trying to find the jelly beans I’d bought. I love jelly beans and Easter time is about the only time I allow myself to have any.

“Squeak squeak,” went Bondi’s new toys.

She sat up in her car seat, turned and looked at us, her ears at full attention.

“Uh-oh,” Mike said. “You shouldn’t’ve done that.”

“I know, but I wanted my jelly beans!”

Bondi whined the whole way home.

We cut the leg quarters apart and froze them.

“Do you know what I need?” I asked my handsome mountain man.

“What?”

“A dry erase board. That way I wouldn’t have to open the freezer every time I wanted to know what was in there.” Besides our stockpile of frozen meat and veggies, I have some prepared meals in there, too.

Mike, good husband that he is, got online and Googled dry erase boards. He started rattling off prices.

“Holy cow! I don’t need one that bad.” Then a picture pops into my head. A picture of the plastic sheets that Lamar gave me. “I bet they’d work.” I pulled one from my stash, took a non-permanent marker, made a mark on the plastic, and erased it. “It works!”

I didn’t want glue residue from box tape left on the freezer if I decide to remove it, so I used magnets to hold it in place. Maybe it’s not fancy-schmancy enough for some, but it does the job, and it’s good enough for me and the guys I go with.

Bondi wasn’t really underfoot as we carried our purchases in and started putting stuff away, but she had her full attention on us.

“She knows, doesn’t she?” I asked.

“Yep,” Mike answered. He took the pack of five squeaky toys and cut one free. Then he started squeezing it.

Squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak-squeak.

The more he squeaked it, the more Bondi was whipped into a frenzy. Her tail about wagged itself off her bottom, she ran in circles, and jumped two feet in the air! Once Mike threw it, he knew it would be a long time till he saw it again. And it was. Bondi worked on that squeaker, the whole thing in her mouth (I was a little worried she’d choke on it) and worked it.

\

Heading for the bathroom, I reached down to unbutton my jeans and discovered my zipper was open! Aye-yi-yi! I just walked around three stores with my zipper open and no one told me! I hope it was because my shirt kept it covered and not out of any meanness on their part — because that’s what it is. Just pure meanness not to alert someone to a potentially embarrassing situation.

Mike and I settled in to play cards when things got quiet. I looked over at Bondi and she was standing over her new toy with her nose about an inch away. The toy had collapsed and was slowly re-inflating. Bondi cocked her head one way then the other as she seemingly was fascinated. Once fully inflated, she grabbed it and set to work to make it squeak again. It was almost a blessing when it gave up the ghost and died.

Coming home from shopping, my stomach started hurting again. I don’t know if it was a little of the bug hanging on or maybe the jelly beans I was snacking on. Sugar sometimes has the same effect on my belly as oil does. My stomach didn’t hurt bad. Just bad enough to give me an excuse to lay down and do nothing but try to finish my book. It was going back in two hours and I was only about a hundred pages shy of the end.

My phone beeped. I picked it up to see what message came in.

“Caleb just let the Longhorns into the field by the road if you still want to come see them,” Jenny, my beautiful neighbor across the hill messaged. She knew I’d been wanting to get pictures of them.

“I can’t right now,” I told her. I had a date with my bed and book. “Will they still be there in a couple of hours?”

“It’s hard to say. You can check in before you come over if you want.”

I decided I’d take my chances. If I didn’t finish the book, it would be a month till I got it back.

Thirty minutes to go and the writing was on the wall. I wouldn’t be able to finish it. Five chapters left to go. It was futile.

“Speed reading is nothing more than skimming and picking up the important parts,” my handsome father told me once. “When I’m reading, if they start talking about the landscape, I skip the whole paragraph. I don’t need to know that the clouds were soft white and pillowy in a clear azure blue sky. It isn’t going to affect the outcome of the story one bit.”

Speed reading may get you the gist of a story but you miss all the wonderful pictures and feelings words inspire. In this case, I didn’t have a lot of choice. With his sage advice echoing in the chambers of memory, I started skimming. Page after page I flipped until I got to the end. Good wins. That’s all I need to know. And just as an aside, this is the first time I’ve ever read the last page before I earned it the honest way — and I doubt I would’ve done it if I hadn’t been so close to the end in the first place.

I got up. “Mike, you wanna go for a golf cart ride?” I asked.

“Where?”

          “Out to the Walkers’. Caleb let the Longhorns out.”

          It was a little chilly on the golf cart, but not too bad. It’d been a long time since we’d ridden out that way and we could see where the recent storm took trees down.

          “Do you think that old house is still standing?” Mike asked.

          “I don’t know. I guess we’ll see.”

          It’s still there.

          We were nearing the Walkers’ new house when a blue tractor pulls into the driveway.

“Was that Randy?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see.”

He had his hoodie pulled up to ward off the chill.

Just past the farm Mike sees them. “There they are,” He pulled off the road and Bondi and I got out to take pictures.

 The white one stopped scratching her head and neck against the tree long enough to look at us.

          A few minutes later we hear the tractor coming.

 

              It’s Caleb, the oldest of Jenny and Randy Walker’s clan, that stopped to chat with us.

 

Mike asked all kinds of questions about the Longhorns. How many do you have? How big do the horns get? How far did you have to travel to buy them? How much do they cost? I don’t remember the answers and I don’t want to tell you wrong. And they talked about tractors and other boy stuff, too. I was busy taking pictures but do remember what Caleb said when we asked where the rest of them were.

“Probably over the hill there,” he said, pointing.

Bondi ducked under the bottom wire of the fence and was busy sniffing the pasture she could reach, which wasn’t much. The leash only allowed her about a foot. The white cow saw her and made a slow turn, taking a couple of steps in our direction.

I didn’t think anything of it. My attention was split between watching the cows and the guy’s conversation. I heard a snort and turned back just in time to see her rear up and charge the fence. She stopped short. Bondi darted back behind my legs pretty quick, let me tell you! She’s all bluster. Then again, I’m not so brave either when facing this. Those horns look menacing!

I picked Bondi up and feeling a little braver, she barked.

“Stop!” I told her. I don’t know if an angry cow could come through a four-strand barbed wire fence or not, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

Satisfied we weren’t any threat, she moseyed a little way away, stopped and turned. She shook her head — was that a warning? I don’t know.

Then she moved on.

A few feet later she stops and turns to look at us again. Did Bondi bark? I don’t remember. Then she went on over the hill.

“If you want to go down that road you might see more,” Caleb said.

The road is an easement for the gas company. “Are you sure it’s alright?” Mike asked.

“Yeah. It’s my road. If they don’t like it, tell ‘em to come see me,” Caleb said and went back to work.

 Since we had permission, we checked out the gas site.

Then it was back to the cows. The white one found another tree to scratch her neck on.

And this calf nursed while mama stood guard.

Caleb Walker is such a nice and polite young man. I think it’s fantabulous that he’s following in his father’s footsteps and keeping the family farm going. Most twenty-year-old’s would’ve rebelled and gone off to sow their wild oats. I guess farming is in your blood or it ain’t.

I found an earring. It was on the floorboard on the driver’s side and glinted in the sun as I got back in the car after church.

“Who did you have in the car?” I mocked accused my husband.

“Nobody,” he answered.

“Oh yeah? Then who’s earring is this?” I wanted to know. “It’s not mine.”

For the life of us we couldn’t figure out how an earring came to be on the floor under the steering wheel or where it came from. Then an idea came to me. Maybe it snagged on me when I hugged one of the gals at church and it fell off when I got in the car. Anyone lose an earring?

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were gone. Just gone. Now it’s Saturday and letter blog day and I’m wondering what I’m going to write about.

Maybe I’ll skip this week.

“It’s alright if you skip a week,” my Miss Rosie tells me. But when push comes to shove, when it’s time to shit or git off the pot, as the oldster used to say, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stop thinking about you and how much you like to read my jibber-jabber — although why is beyond me!

Saturday evening and book reading time. I open the Libby app on my Kindle Fire and see Swan Song is sitting there waiting for me. The other two people who were in line to get it must’ve been in the middle of reading something else and chose the ‘deliver later’ option. I’ve done that before.

And I didn’t have anything to write about.

Let’s call this one done!