Squirbs

My spouse and personal advisor invented a new word recently.
“Are you writing squirbs this week?” she asked.
I’m not sure, but I think a squirb is a combination of a squib and a blurb. Maybe not, but I think I know what she means. So here they are:
++++++++++
It’s early Wednesday morning as I write this. I usually wrap my column up on Tuesdays, but I’m a day behind schedule, mainly because of the anticipated arrival of our younger son and our youngest grandson, who flew in last night for a brief visit. You know, of course, that all 16-month-old boys are highly observant, and critical, even, when it comes to housekeeping , so we’ve been hard at it getting things up to the standards demanded by young John Patrick Sloan.
It was a long day of travel for them, so things are quiet for now. It’s just me and the cat, with the grandmother in residence upstairs restlessly awaiting the awakening of the little prince. We used to heartily subscribe to the “let sleeping babies lie” rule. But when it comes to grandchildren who live a thousand miles away, we just can’t wait to play.
+++++++++
I’m told my column on my beloved Isuzu Trooper was a little too attention-getting, as some people now honk, point and wait for disaster when they see it on the road. My co-pilot has been forced to drive the relic as her vehicle--our “good” car--has been inexplicably shop-bound for over three weeks in a scenario that seems more akin to a long-term hostage situation than auto repair. We cleaned the car out in preparation for yesterday’s trip to the airport, leading one of us to discover that the other had been storing a bit of musical equipment in the rear of the vehicle. It’s my contention that it’s easier to keep a small p.a., a couple of microphones and some stands in the car, ready for my next playing date. She was less impressed, noting that the Beatles probably hauled around less gear enroute to their 1965 show at Shea Stadium. In any case, the car is all emptied out, and clean, too. I just hope it wasn’t the dirt that was holding it together.
++++++++++
More on 34 finally saw me out searching for bargains and narrowly avoiding fender-benders, along with a whole host of other folks. I generally avoid the garage-sale circuit, but we were on a mission. Suddenly baby gear has become a hot item, as us baby boomers become grandmas and grandpas and find ourselves needing to rediscover the mass of toys, clothes, games and general equipment that once made parenthood a lot like being the road manager for the aforementioned 1965 Beatles’ tour.
++++++++++
Wow, I guess summer’s finally, really here. I knew if we complained about the cool spring, we’d pay for it, and now we are, with hot, sultry weather that is, hopefully, good for corn, at least. My personal bit of weather-related foolishness this week came about as we decided it was a good time to wash, scrub and re-stain our deck. If you drive by and notice it seems a little lighter in color than in previous years, blame me. I was sweating so hard, I think I was diluting the stain.
++++++++++
Post-Father’s Day thoughts:
As much as I loved being a father, I think being a grandfather has some real benefits as well. My own dad was pushing 50 when I was born, which made him closer to my friends’ grandparents in age. I remember asking him, later in life, what it was like having a new baby in the family at an age when many men would be ready to be done with a home dominated by diaper changes and late-night feedings.
“I felt like I was getting one more chance,” he said.
I didn’t really know what he meant at the time, but now, I think I do.
One more chance to be patient. One more chance to be wise. Another chance to understand any situation. And another to love without reservation.
My dad had the advantage of age and experience going into my childhood, and he was, indeed, a patient, wise, understanding, loving dad. Although he died 30 years ago this month, I continue to think about that patience and wisdom. I think about that “one more chance,” and wonder, if I, too, can do a better job of exhibiting those loving traits as I get my own second chance as a grandfather.
I hope so.
Happy Father’s Day to my dad, and all the dads and grandpas I know.

They Say it's Your Birthday

“Are you gathering fodder for your column?”
A friend asked me that question as we watched the wedding reception for the daughter of some dear neighborhood friends wind down Saturday night in a small Indiana town. I suppose it’s a fair question, as many of the columns I write seem to be devoted to the people and things I see and the places I go.
While I spent most of my working life doing other things and writing on different topics, working for a newspaper was always a dream that rattled around in the back of my mind. After a bout with cancer forced me to readjust some of my activities and interests, I was excited to get a chance to get to do something new. As a sportswriter for the Star Courier, I’ve had an opportunity to meet and observe some dedicated, hard-working young people and the coaches who work so tirelessly to teach and inspire them. It was just about a year ago that I wrote an essay on that experience. That opinion piece, apparently, convinced column boss Rocky Stufflebeam to ask me if I’d like to do something similar every week and so, this column was born.
It sounded like a great idea to me, though I didn’t have a clue as to what I’d write about every week.
I still don’t.
The list of topics over the past year has included meanderings on old friends and family members, the economy, kids and coaches, politics, holidays, backroads travels and even the thoughts that come to mind as I mow my lawn.
As a result of my need for “fodder,” as that friend called it, some people have started keeping an eye on me as I wander through their midst.
“What’s he going to write about this time?” they seem to wonder, which, unaccountably results in exemplary public behavior on the part of some of my friends. The person across the table reminds me, though, that some of them still just don’t give a darn whether I write about them or not.
And that’s OK.
I love the fact that someone might straighten up and fly right because they think I might rat them out in the pages of a daily newspaper. But I also love the chance to see and experience and enjoy every single one of you just as you are.
Because, while you might think this column is all about me, it’s not, really.
It’s about you.
So I’ll keep writing as long as you keep reminding me of all the ways I love living where I live and doing what I do.
It’s been a year. It’s been fun.
And there’s always this question:
What’s next?

Click it or...

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that my beloved 1994 Isuzu Trooper has been gradually shedding certain “nonessential” functions as it approaches the quarter-million mile mark. Things like the radio, interior lights, the dashboard clock and my ability to electrically control the passenger side window have all gone south, as the mighty 4-wheeler conserves its energy and resources for the long drives ahead. Last summer, in an apparent attempt to conserve fuel, the vehicle presented me with a choice: Air conditioning or the ability to reach the speed limit on hills, which explains the sweaty, wind-blown look I cultivated on some hot August days.
But a certain quirkiness in the relationship I’ve had with my cars is nothing new. In fact, it’s a part of my family history. Take, for instance, this reference to my paternal grandfather in the pages of a book called “Homeburg Memories,” written in 1915 by George Fitch, a well-known writer and humorist of the early 20th century who was born and raised in Galva. 
“Our oculist was our pioneer automobile owner.  He bought a home-made machine and a mule at the same time, and by judiciously combining the two, he got a great deal of mileage out of both.  He would work all morning getting the auto down-town and all afternoon getting the mule to haul it back.”
Years later, my other grandfather helped to develop and market a device that would periodically start a car throughout cold winter nights so it would be warmed up enough to go in the morning.  As the story goes, though, there was a fairly serious design flaw: The devise would start the car all right, but would sometimes fail to shut it off, so the owner would be met with a dual early-morning problem: A car that was both cold and out of gas.
My father was known for a time for owning what may have been Galva’s largest and smallest cars at the same time, a 1951 Packard and a 1959 Volkswagen, while I followed in the same strange path when I owned both an ancient Mercedes Benz and a new, but highly flawed, Yugo.
But back to the Trooper.
While absent radios, dome lights and clocks are more annoying than anything else, the Trooper has, more recently, developed another bit of aberrant behavior that combines a bit of inconvenience with a distinct element of danger. Apparently, the car has decided that a fully functioning driver’s-side door is a little more luxury than I require. It’s the result of a high wind several years ago that caught the open door and sprung its hinges. Since then, I and other more capable craftsmen have worked to keep it opening and closing on request, rather than on its own volition. It currently takes an entire sequence of actions to get the door to close securely from both inside and out. Best results from the interior of the beast require a rolled-down window and a series of mighty upward slams, while getting it to close tight enough to actually engage the door locks from the outside demands the same upward push, plus a solid hip check much like the ones employed by NHL defensemen to send their opponents careening into the boards.
She: “That’s a nasty bruise on your hip. What have you been doing, wrestling steers?”
Me: “No, I just had to lock the car.”
Sometimes, if I forget to carry out all the steps properly, the door swings open anyway, oftentimes due to the wind and bumps encountered at highway speeds, along with the inertia provided by a right-hand curve. It’s a disturbing phenomenon that, apparently, presents an interesting view to cars following behind.
“I thought you were lowering your flaps so you could come in for a landing,” said one wit who was treated to the sight of me frantically trying to reach and pull the door shut while swinging onto the eastbound Page Street blacktop one afternoon.
Autobody maven Kerry Anderson tells me it’s probably reached the end of the tinkering stage, and likely requires a bit of spot welding. In the meantime, I’ve decided to look at it as a highly interactive safety feature. It is, of course, the ultimate reminder to always fasten my seatbelt.
After all, “Click it or ticket” is nothing compared to my new reality:
“Click it or get run over by a Buick.”

From the Shores of Gitche Gumee

I’m writing--and transmitting--this from the beautiful shores of Lake Superior, where my sister and her husband live, happily surrounded by children, grandchildren and an ever-present passel of cats. The ability to zap this directly from her house to Rocky the column chief is pretty amazing to me, though, when you come to think of it, newspaper folks have been using technology to make deadlines since the American Civil War, when reporters filed stories near battlefields from Antietam to Gettysburg.
I was impressed then, too.
It was a nice day for a long drive, with the 500 miles highlighted by a quick stop at Lake Geneva and a long northward trek along the shores of Lake Michigan before the final woods-bound stretch to the shores of Gitche Gumee, and the land of Hiawatha and Nokomis just outside Marquette, Michigan.
The area where they live is part of a bridge-connected section of Michigan called the “U.P.,” which is short for the Upper Peninsula. For lake lovers like us, it’s pure bliss, as it’s bounded by three different great lakes (Superior, Michigan & Huron) and filled with a variety of fresh-water lakes, ponds and rivers that are clear, clean and very, very cold, especially at this time of year.
The Upper Peninsula has been a regular destination for us for years, as Mary and Jim got hitched in 1967 and, soon after, moved to a beach house on “the big lake,” where they’ve lived ever since. Their beach is never crowded, with an incredible view of the water, the Marquette cityscape and Sugarloaf, a little mountain on the other side of town. When we got married, the U.P., and its lakes and beaches, was our destination, too. I had already moved north and started graduate school at Northern Michigan University, while my future bride was living at her parents’ house in Chicago Heights, while working, saving money, and planning our August wedding.
Somehow, through some incredible bit of bad judgement on our parts, I was left with the task of finding someplace for us to live once she joined me after the wedding.
Though the price of lakefront property was not nearly what it is today, I thought it was still way out of our range, until an acquaintance named Smith (names changed, as usual) told me about his “camp.” “Camp” is the northwoods word for cabin or cottage. In this case, it was a genuine log cabin right on the beach just down from my sister’s place. Oh, it needed a couple of minor things, like heat and water, but all in all, it looked like just the place to start a life of wedded bliss. So a deal was made, and I waited in anticipation for her next visit so I could break the exciting news. She was coming in a few days, riding from Chicago, as coincidence will have it, with Smith’s future son-in-law, who had been a high school classmate of hers.
As they neared Jim and Mary’s, where I was staying for the summer, he said,
“Hey, We’re not far from the Smith camp.”
“Oh, what’s that like?” queried my future bride.”
“Just an old shack,” he answered. “Nobody uses it anymore because it’s so filled with mice.”
It’s pretty easy to imagine how the conversation went once they arrived.
Me: “Guess what? I found us a place to live and it’s right on the beach!
She: “Really!? Where is it.”
Me: “Right down the road. It’s the old Smith camp.”
It is a tribute, indeed, to her toughness and spirit of adventure that we spent our first year in that cabin. It was a beautiful place, with enormous interior beams, hand-pounded copper chandeliers and a massive stone fireplace. We cleaned and swept and polished to erase every trace of Mickey Mouse and his friends. Thanks to the advanced handyman abilities of my brother-in-law, we dug a well and installed an anemic propane space heater that just barely increased our chances of surviving the long, Lake Superior winter.
There were times you could see your breath in the bedroom and sometime, when the wind blew really hard, snow would sift through the chinks of the cabin, forming drifts in the corners of the living room.
But our hearts were warm, as was the electric blanket we had received as a wedding gift. And if it still got a little chilly from time to time, there was always this bit of good news:
It was too cold for the mice.

Sweet Serendipity

Serendipity.
Now there’s a word.
“Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.”
I like the idea. I like when it actually happens even better.
We, like many of you, spent part of Memorial Day weekend remembering. In our case, it meant a trip to Fort Madison, Iowa, the river town where my late mother-in-law grew up. There’s a cemetery on a hill north of town where she, my father-in-law, and her parents are laid to rest. It’s a place we visit at least a couple of times a year--sometimes more--to leave flowers and wreaths and to remember the happy days my wife and her siblings spent visiting their grandmother.
After we paid our respects that day, it was time to plan the route home. I wondered about a short detour through Nauvoo, when she piped up with another idea.
“How about we head for Bonaparte and Keosauqua?” she said.
A quick look at an Iowa map showed those two towns to be located northwest of Fort Madison, right on the banks of the Des Moines River.
During the mid-19th century, the river provided the main commercial transportation across Iowa until the building of the railroads in the 1860s. It rises in southwestern Minnesota and heads through Des Moines (named after the river, not vise-versa) and southeast from there. Once the river traffic ceased, things pretty much came to a halt for many of those places, with the result being a series of interesting little towns that retain much of the look and charm of those long-ago days. The towns on and near the river are a part of an historic district gathered under the auspices of the “Villages of Van Buren,” a series of twelve small burgs located in Van Buren County.
“We have no fast food restaurants and not a single stoplight to alter the ambience that our county prides itself on,” says the brochure put out by the county group.
We figured we’d check it out, see some old buildings and price a few antiques that we don’t really need. A nice enough way to finish off a holiday Sunday afternoon.
One of the villages we visited is called Bentonsport, which was a busy river town even before the state of Iowa was born. Mormon craftsmen, on their way west to Utah from Nauvoo, helped build some of the buildings that still stand. It was the site of a lock and dam, plus paper, grist, saw, linseed oil and woolen mills, and was a major center of commerce, with an estimated one thousand people living there.
Now there are about forty full-time residents, many of whom are involved in a series of small craft shops and businesses that reflect the special nature of the place, which is listed as a historic district in the National Register of Historic Places.
One of them is Betty Printy.
She and her blacksmith husband, Bill, operate a shop called “Iron and Lace,” which features Bill’s ironwork and Betty’s pottery and weaving. Betty's pottery features a unique design element that triggered the first sense of serendipity.
“It’s Queen Anne’s Lace,” exclaimed Megan.
Queen Anne's Lace is a wildflower that grows naturally in fields and along roadways.  It’s Megan’s all-time favorite; so much so, that she picked our wedding colors--white and blue--based on the beautiful sight of Queen Anne’s Lace and Cornflowers growing along the country roads around Galva back in our courting days when she was first getting to know the area. The Printys have a large field of these flowers in their garden space that they pick and dry every year. Betty presses a different flower onto each piece of pottery before firing, leaving a lovely, wholly unique pattern on every one.
Hearing that we had struggled to make the flower grow in our own garden, and seeing she had an enthusiast on her hands, Betty invited us out back to dig up a couple of the plants. As we walked through, she gestured to a familiar viney-looking plant that wound ‘round the yard.
“That’s bittersweet. We like to do some things with that, too,” she said.
Serendipity number two.
Regular readers of this column might remember that Bittersweet holds a special place in my heart. It evokes special memories of my childhood, my autumn days, and of my mother. It’s hard to find, yet, here it was, my old-fashioned favorite flourishing in this old-fashioned place.
We were pretty excited about our visit as we prepared to leave, but there was one more surprise in store. I don’t know how the topic of breadmaking came up, but it did, followed by Betty’s casual announcement that she had recently created a clay bread baker for the baking of artisan bread. If there’s one thing I like better than Queen Anne’s Lace and Bittersweet, it’s bread baking, and I’ve been searching for a way to better create the crusty texture required for good hearth bread. She even offered me a cup of her precious sourdough starter the next time I’m in town.
We were a happy pair of backroads travelers as we headed on the winding eastbound trek back to Illinois.
“I’m so glad we did this,” said Megan. “It was like...serendipity.”
You said it, honey.

Take this job and shovel it

I gave my wife a shovel for Mothers’ Day.
Wait. Before all you moms gather outside my door in an angry mob, let
me explain. The shovel had an attachment:
Me.
When our boys were younger, I used to be heavily involved in the
procurement and delivery of appropriate Mom’s Day greetings. But
they’re older now. They are mature, responsible men, who are fully
capable of buying and sending the proper card and/or gift to their
mom. And besides, they both have wives who really do remember to do
the right thing at the right time, so I’m pretty much off the hook.
But back to the shovel.
While I’m always (too) quick to note that she’s not my mother, I have
to agree that my valiant spouse deserves as much recognition as
possible on that special day. From me, even, as she surely was stuck
with the task of helping me slowly grow up along with the kids. So, I
made a special holiday offer. I would provide my services on Mothers’
Day afternoon for a round of what we call “point gardening.” It goes
kind of like this:
She points at a bare spot; I dig a hole and plant a plant in the
designated spot. Repeat as needed.
She knows where the plants should go.
I know enough to know I don’t know where they should go.
But I can handle a shovel.
All in all, it is the perfect symbiotic relationship and goes a long
way towards defining the wonderful give-and-take (point-and-dig?)
process that’s made our almost 37 years of marriage seem to zip by
like an extended prom date.
I was reminded that there are additional gender differentials existing
in marriages other than my own Monday night, when I had the pleasure
of presenting a program to a group consisting of all ladies. There
was a dinner before the presentation, and I was invited to join the
group for the meal. I thought I was holding my own,
conversation-wise, when, suddenly, the topic took a dangerous turn:
Husbands and grocery shopping.
I can’t quote the comments exactly, but the crux of the discussion was
this: While it might be nice if husbands helped with the shopping once
in awhile, the truth of the matter is that they’re generally more
trouble than they’re worth. Suddenly, I found myself reduced from my
self-assumed role of liberated helpmate to the status of a 3-year-old
wailing in the seat of a shopping cart and pointing to a box of
chocolate-coated sugar bombs.
I think it all comes down to a basic, fundamental difference:
Women shop. Men buy.
The shopping process, while often tedious to me, does indicate some
measure of thought. It generally includes something called a “list”
and a certain amount of knowledge as to the items already in
possession. On the other hand, my own thoughtless buying sprees tend
to look more like an episode of “Supermarket Sweep,” where I dash
madly through the aisles in an effort to gather as much stuff in as
short a time as possible. It’s quicker, for sure, but I’m not sure
it’s entirely efficient.
My flexible daytime schedule makes me a frequent grocery shopper for
our household. A quick gander at some of the items residing in our
pantry and other storage areas indicates the results of some of my
efforts. Some examples:
•14 cans of Cream of Mushroom soup (just in case)
•Five boxes of the same brand of cereal (I like it)
•Four opened jars of raspberry jam (ditto)
•14 packets of dry yeast (I like to bake bread, though not often 14
loaves at a time)
•Three cloves of garlic (apparently in preparation for the vampire
attacks threatening Galva)
Some of the cans and boxes I’ve purchased over time seem to be from
the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, while other, newer items,
feature labels written in Aramaic and Latin.
But the most horrifying discovery was in the freezer compartment of
our second refrigerator, which is used for soda and other items too
large for our main fridge in the kitchen.
An entire, 12-pound frozen turkey.
I’m not sure when I bought it. I’m sure it seemed like a good deal
(and idea) at the time. But now, there it rests, shrouded in a
frosted plastic wrapper. I can’t quite make out the date on the label,
so I’m considering sending a sample out for carbon-14 testing. But,
chances are, it’s years past its prime, leaving me with a dilemma:
What do you do with an outdated 12-pound turkey? If I put it in the
trash, it will present a way-too-temping opportunity for the raccoons
who travel through my back yard on their nightly fact-finding
missions. I suppose I could just leave it there for my heirs, but
they’re going to have enough trouble deciding what to do with my
valuable collection of used, but unbroken, guitar strings and that
bagful of unmatched socks I’m holding onto. Now that I’ve discovered
it, my conscience is demanding I do something about it, so how about
this?
A proper burial, in a far corner of my back yard, would be a righteous
send-off for my frozen, once-feathered friend. I could even erect a
little headstone like the ones we’ve placed for other departed family
pets. So, I’d like to invite you to the funeral, next Tuesday at ten
o’clock, unless it rains.
Please omit flowers, and don’t worry.
I’ve got a shovel.

Don't buy it, they'll just eat it.

Everybody has a few old saying that they like to trot out once in a
while. Most of them are kind of tired old statements like “A bird in
the hand is worth two in the bush,” and “A penny saved is a penny
earned,” but there’s another bit of wisdom, one that I learned from
my late father-in-law, that came to mind the other day:
“Don’t buy it, they’ll just eat it.”
He coined that phrase in response to the Sisyphean task of stocking
the larder for the hungry minions known as his four children. It was a
phrase, and attitude, we picked up as well, as we dealt with the
unending job of keeping our two growing boys fed. It wasn’t too bad
when they were just little boys, when we still thought we were in
charge. It was when those boys started growing up, things started
getting out of hand. I suppose it started when they got old enough to
bring friends around that I began thinking of these words from the
book of Exodus:
They swarmed over the whole land of Egypt and settled down on every
part of it. Never before had there been such a fierce swarm of
locusts, nor will there ever be.
They covered the surface of the whole land, till it was black with
them. They ate up all the vegetation in the land and the fruit of
whatever trees the hail had spared. Nothing green was left on any tree
or plant throughout the land of Egypt.
But that was nothing.
By the time they reached high school, someone had, apparently, erected
a sign in my front yard. A large neon sign that blinked on and off, repeating this message:
Good Eats.
People who live near places like Yellowstone Park or, say, the Alaskan
wilderness, might rightfully anticipate a sudden invasion by bears. But, in our case, it was sheer terror as, lying in bed, we would hear the ominous “thunk” of car doors closing, followed by rumbling thumps and bumps in the kitchen and pantry. If we were lucky, they would just settle for the snack foods we had left out in hopes of distracting them, like chips cookies and soda pop. Too often, though, they would decide to “cook” (note: no quotation marks are large enough to express
the irony in the use of this word) which meant we were about to be treated to a late-night symphony of scents and sounds produced, inevitably, by the smell of something edible being plunked into a hot frying pan and, a few minutes later, the insistent beeping of the kitchen smoke alarm. Being responsible lads, they would attempt to clear the smoke and “clean up” (see previous ironic note) before going off to hibernate.
“Don’t your sons know we own a dishwasher?” my wife would say
dangerously as she surveyed the disaster zone that had once been a
kitchen.
“Apparently not,” I would reply cautiously, as I set about scraping
down the inside of the microwave with a putty knife.
But nowadays, as empty-nesters, we find ourselves missing having our
sons around our house and home, even if they were steadily eating us
out of it. The main reason is obvious, as we truly enjoy the company
of our sons and their growing families. The other reason is less
obvious, but compelling, as well, for me, at least:
You see, there’s not often much food in this house. Part of it has to
do with our conflicting mealtime schedules, while another reason is
our mutual desire to weigh less than popular circus animals. It’s not
a real problem for my spouse, who subscribes to another old saying,
“moderation in all things,” along with a regular exercise regime to
stay svelte and pretty. I, on the other hand, have no, repeat, no
willpower. I never met a brownie I didn’t like and, when given the
chance, will pile on the calories like an Emperor Penguin anticipating
a long Antarctic winter.
“Don’t buy it, they’ll just eat it” applies to me, now, so you can
imagine my excitement as we anticipated a pair of visits from older
son Colin and his family last weekend as they traveled between
Carbondale and their home in Northern Minnesota.
If you saw me in the supermarket last week, you, no doubt, heard me
whistling a happy little tune as I traveled from aisle to aisle.
“Oh, the kids will like this,” I said to myself, as I packed my cart
with all manner of good and wonderful things.
There was whole milk to supplant the grey-blue skim stuff I generally
splash on my cornflakes. There was a box of a cereal I think was
called Chocolate-coated Sugar Bombs, that looked like a good way to
start a busy day.
It soon became like a mantra: “The kids will like this, the kids will
like this,” I repeated over and over again, as I tossed in treats to
tempt them all.
There were chips and cookies and coffeecake and even a bag of those
cheese curls that turn your fingers, and perhaps your very soul, a
bright orange when you eat them, all dedicated to the happiness and
well-being of my soon-to-arrive family.
My partner in crime even got into the act, baking both a carrot cake
with cream cheese frosting and a killer chocolate truffle cheesecake.
“The kids will like this,” I moaned ecstatically as I licked the spoon.
And one more thing. As I was rolling through the bakery department on
my way to the checkout lane, I spied a beautiful cream-filled doughnut
that looked like just the thing to reward my sometimes-finicky
granddaughter after she finished her sugar bombs.
“Oh, she’ll like this,” I thought happily.
It’s now a brand-new week. The kids have come and gone and come and gone again. Despite some dicy weather in Carbondale, the weekend was a success. Colin, who is a chef, even cooked for his mom on Mother’s Day, creating a true gastronomical climax to the festivities.
What’s left of the cakes will be taken to school, to be safely
consumed by fellow teachers. Everything else is pretty much gone.
Except one thing.
I was poking around in the pantry this morning, wondering if they had,
perhaps, left a handful of sugar bombs when I spotted it. There, on a
shelf where I had tucked it away, sat the doughnut. Cream-filled and
sticking lightly to the waxed bag I bought it in.
I had forgotten to give it to her.
Well, you can’t mail a doughnut, can you?
And there’s even one more old saying that fit the moment perfectly:
“Waste not, want not.”