November 3, 2021
Here we are again in November!
Golly, it seems like only a couple of months since we were here last time.
This past weekend, we were
pleased that the son of an old friend came by for lunch. He’s about the same
age as our oldest grandson, and a pleasant young man. In the course of our
conversation during lunch, he commented that time seemed to move so fast lately.
I assured him that as he got older, it would speed up even more.
This young man will be driving
up north to spend the weekend with his dad mid November, and David will be
going, too. It’s been more than thirty years since the pair have seen each other,
face to face, but they have been in communication for the last several months.
I’ve given the matter of time
moving fast some thought and I’ve decided it’s nature’s way of addressing
boredom. In my opinion, a lot of life is a case of wash, rinse, repeat. Really,
isn’t that in essence what life is? Life is living. Living requires repetition.
A week is seven days—seven days of getting out of bed, seven days of getting
dressed, seven days of making meals, going to work, home chores….and sometimes,
we have variations on those themes. But basically, life is built out of all
those accumulated little moments, repeated moments, and every breath taken in
between.
November is the birth month of
Wednesday’s Words. The first essay I wrote I posted to all the romance author
related Yahoo! Groups to which I belonged in November of 2006. Yes, WW is 15 years
old this month. Now, I have missed a handful of Wednesdays. There was that time
we went on a cruise and there was no way I was spending what the cruise line
wanted to charge me for Internet service in those days. I was and remain too
frugal for that. There were also a couple of other occasions when we were on
trips to one conference or another, and I think I was likely in the hospital a
time or two as well.
But for the most part, I have
been brazen enough to offer my opinion on everything and nothing (equally),
once a week, for a decade and a half.
I’m trying to decide, as I sit
here and think back over these last 15 years, whether I’ve mellowed over time,
or instead, if I’ve let my inner curmudgeon be a little less “inner”. I can’t
decide, and maybe that’s as it should be. Maybe that’s not something for me to
ponder, but a matter for all y’all to think on, if you’ve a mind to.
As I write this, my husband is
once more using his leaf blower to gather up the debris from our now nearly
nude walnut tree. We have the schedule of when the leaf bags will be collected
next, and that day is on Tuesday of the third week of November. And that is the
last time this year that the county will collect yard waste, so he wants to get
it all done. We have a wooden shed which he built a few years back, and we also
now have, well, as of just last year, a canvas “garage” that he put up where
our driveway used to be. Despite it being a garage by design, it’s used the way
Canadians tend to use their garages, regardless of whatever material they have
been constructed—to store their “junk”. He keeps his scooter in this enclosure.
It also holds the summer back yard furniture, the lawn mower, various and
sundry outdoor tools like the leaf blower—and, it is also the temporary storage
area for the full paper bags of leaves and twigs.
It didn’t take us long to
understand that those sturdy looking tan bags don’t stay sturdy once they’ve
been rained upon. In hindsight it’s funny how we learned that little fact of
life. The bags looked sound. But when David picked one up by placing his hands
oh, about middle of the bag and lifting, the bottom of the bag stayed on the
ground, the middle of it lifted, and the leaves simply rained down. Fortunately,
we did have enough dry bags on hand and some time to spare before they needed
to be at the curb.
The most expedient method to
fix the issue was to turn the fresh, newly unfolded and opened bags upside down
and then slide them down over the innocent-looking full but previously rained upon
bags, and then turn them right-way up, thus ensuring no more broken bags.
Today he didn’t tell me he was
going to do the yard work. That job included his once more climbing the darn ladder
so that he could get leaves off the porch roof and then clean out those small eave’s
troughs. He does that twice. On the north side of the porch and the south side.
The only good thing about that is when he climbs up to clear the north side, I
can see him out of the window of my office, right in front of me.
So at least for half of the
job, I know that if he has a mishap, and falls off the darn ladder and breaks
his damn fool neck, someone is aware of the situation and can call for
assistance.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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