Tag: love

A Death in the Family

~ patponderslife ~ Leave a comment

Don’t panic, all of us are fine, but one of our hens died. One of the white ones. Wyatt found her when I sent him out to collect the eggs and let them out to range the acerage, and poor kid, it was pretty traumatic for him. She was just lying there next to the water dispenser and had been dead probably for at least ten hours. The rest of them seemed to not even notice as they went about their little chicken lives doing what they do, but it put a pause in the humans. We had a funeral of sorts, tears were shed, words spoken, children comforted, and adults (me, anyway) went off to examine what we could have/should have done to prevent it and/or what we might have done to cause it, as is this human’s way.

That happened on Sunday–that dreaded day before we randomly rob ourselves of an hour by turning the hands of any clocks you might still have in your house. We have three of them, plus the microwave, stove, and my husband’s bedside digital clock. I resent having to do that.

So, I woke up Monday still feeling out of sorts about the hen (Princess Fluffy Butt, aka Big Girl, aks Whitney), and I took on a clean-up and rearrange project in the guest bedroom that is still sitting there in chaos. And I have work to do for Global Underwater Explorers, and the kitchen is a mess, and I’ve not slept well for three nights, so I’m surly.

One thing happened, though. I was looking for something good to come from all this miserable, upsetting stuff going on right now, and came up with this: I never gave a single thought (well, almost never) to what it meant to live in a country that guaranteed me freedom. For better or worse, and sure sometimes it’s worse, we can say what we want to say, dress how we want to dress, watch and listen to what we want to watch and listen to, love who we want (or not), and on and on. I’ve never lived anywhere without all those freedoms I took for granted. Now that they seem to be gradually being threatened, I’m understanding how much it means.

I hope it’s not too late, like it is for Princess.

Lady at Publix

~ patponderslife ~ 1 Comment

I’m relatively low maintenance. Especially now that I’m retired. I may or may not have makeup on (except I’ll probably have applied some eyebrows–my mother used to say she had to do that so as to not scare the horses). If I’m going to the doctor or to lunch, I might make a little more effort. I’ll wear foundation on my face and something fairly “nice” that will match, no doubt. But to Publix it’s hit or miss. I might be there in my gym clothes, even. On the day I met the lady in the parking lot, I was a very pale example of decked out compared to her. She had so much bling it was blinding. Her makeup was impecable, including lip liner and frosted lipstick and lots of eye makeup. She reminded me of Dolly Parton or maybe Jennifer Coolidge (look her up; she’s a dead ringer for my new parking lot friend). Anyway, I had just gotten some reusable bags from the back of my Subaru when she pulled up in the aisle and called out, “Excuse me!” I turned and there she was. She said the cutest thing, “We women,” which made me immediately like her. I walked over to her car–a big white sedan of some kind. She said, “Can you help me put an address in my car’s gps?” Nope. Wrong person. What I said was, “I’m older than you are; we need to find someone young to do that.” To be fair, I could have put an address in her phone, but I’m not any kind of expert on car bluetooth thingies. Anyway, I asked where she was going, she told me West Palm Beach, which is where I was born and raised and spent a good deal of my life, so we had that to talk about, and I had no problem telling her what she needed to know to get down 441 to I-75 to the turnpike (“stay to the left; don’t go to Tampa”) to I-95 at around North Palm Beach or so (she was going to Singer Island where as a kid I attended plenty of beach parties, but that’s another story.) She was divorced, sadly, her husband wasn’t taking it well, and a girlfriend invited her to come stay for a bit. She needed to get away, and I completely understood. We bonded–the low-maintenance eighty-five year old and the bombshell who had been married 46 years but had divorced the hard-driving, take no prisoners, otherwise nice guy. She questioned her decision, but I told her I thought it was because she looked at how much longer she had and decided she couldn’t spend it unhappy. “Exactly!” she said to me. I waved goodbye as she took off to see her girlfriend for a much needed visit, and I went on into the store to buy dinner. And a few other things. I love days when stuff happens that makes me smile. Don’t you?