Up, Up and Away!

One day last week Kim and I sat out on the patio for a late-afternoon chat. The sun was in our eyes, so we raised the big umbrella. For one reason or another, we went inside without closing the umbrella and didn't give it another thought before bedtime.

The next morning I opened the back door and noticed that the small clay pot Kim uses as an ashtray on the umbrella table had tipped over and spilled half a dozen cigarette butts on the concrete. I hurried to pick them up before the dogs could get them, thinking all the while that something else seemed wrong. It took a minute to realize that the umbrella was missing.

A quick look in the backyard and the side yard showed that the umbrella wasn't there. I walked the width of the house, not really thinking that the umbrella could have blown far enough to end up in the driveway, and indeed it wasn't there. I had a clear view of neighbors' yards all around, could have seen a big green umbrella if there'd been one in any of them, but there wasn't.

Kim woke up a few minutes later, and I asked her to look around outside and see if she could tell what was different. She didn't register the missing umbrella immediately, either. Once she did, she looked in all the same places I'd looked. We both laughed at the mental image of a huge umbrella floating off into space.

Kim got dressed and went out the front door to look some more. Minutes later she came in giggling and said she'd found the umbrella. I followed her out that way and didn't see any sign of it until she told me to look up.

This photo shows the green umbrella, lodged upside down in a niche of the roof between the front of my house and the rear of our rent house across the carport.












Here's where it started from:

Apparently, on an otherwise clear, calm night, there was one gust of wind that was strong enough to lift the umbrella and its weighted pole high enough to clear our rooftop. Gosh, I wish I'd seen it happen! What fun that would have been.

How Old Do I Look?

The other day I stepped inside the nearest gas station/convenience store and paid for a drive-thru car wash. The teenaged attendant glanced at the car wash code printed at the bottom of my receipt, looked at me for a long second, then turned the receipt over and wrote the code in large numerals on the back of it.

"There!" he said as he handed the receipt to me. "Isn't that better than those small numbers?"

I thanked him profusely. His intentions were good, the little s#*t.

April Already?

This year is whizzing by! Allergy season has arrived and has brought with it a couple of intense bouts of vertigo, during which I could do nothing but lie flat on the bed and watch my dresser and chest of drawers pass by again and again. Fortunately, antihistamines and this exercise seem to have stopped the spinning for now.

The new thyroid medicine has kicked in, and I'm feeling much better than I did a couple of months ago. The sunshine and warmer temperatures helped, too, of course. My spirits would probably be even higher if my summer clothes still fit. Thank goodness for the lightweight, stretchy knits we call "activewear." What a misnomer that is!

The weather this week has been beautiful, warm enough that the little anole lizards are out and about, which makes Gimpy just about the happiest dog on the planet. Every time he steps out the door, he closely inspects the drain pipes, the patio furniture, the spaces between slats in the privacy fence--all the places where lizards hide. He almost never catches one (thank goodness!), but it isn't for lack of trying.

Kim hosted a small dinner party last weekend, and my Goldendoodle boys seemed to think they were the guests of honor. Levi placed his ball in front of each person in turn, allowing everyone a chance to throw it for him, eventually narrowing the players down to one or two people who could throw the farthest. Gimpy played ball, too, but his main objective for the evening seemed to be making sure he left no chin unlicked.

One of Kim's guests had a charming accent (Mississippi, I think). When he spoke of "one feller who had a 'dee-limmer,'" I chuckled to myself at the quaint pronunciation and listened more closely, trying to determine what the fellow's dilemma was. Turns out Kim's friend was talking about clearing trees off some property. What the guy actually had was a delimber, a machine that removes the limbs from cut-down trees. My bad. Who knew there was such a thing?

Speaking of words, the Life Writing class I've enjoyed so much has been canceled, along with all the other LSU-sponsored classes in this parish. Our last class was Monday. It seems that enrollment was so low that the classes weren't cost-effective for LSU. That disappoints me, though I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that continuing education and artistic or intellectual pursuits aren't high on the bucket lists of many people in this small-town community. What delights me is that the members of our Life Writing class have decided to continue meeting and writing together on our own. We've found a meeting place and will start next week. Yay, us!

I'm looking forward to Sunday, when I'll get to spend time with kids, grandkids and great-grandkids all at one time. Those get-togethers are precious to me, and I hope you get to share the holiday with those you love most, too. Happy Easter, y'all!