Tears at the Car Wash

The luncheon at the senior hall got canceled this week but when I got up that morning I didn’t check their website or look for district school closings on TV that triggers that to happen. It was rainy and gloomy but the temperature was a couple of degrees over 32 so it never occurred to me that ice or fog might have been an issue earlier in the morning when they have to send the buses out. Off I went to find the doors to the hall locked up tight and eight or nine others in the parking lot who’d made the same mistake. “Hell’s bells!” as my mother used to say---her only foothold in the world of swearing. A local restaurant chain I’ve ordered breakfast in since before I went through menopause was around the corner, so off I went. I surprised myself and the waitress by ordering the baked chicken special because it seemed like a comfort food kind of day. It was good but not like my mother used to make with a can of cream of mushroom soup. I’ve been craving chicken so much lately that I’m starting to crow like a rooster looking to get laid. Not funny? Not accurate? Sorry, I know nothing about the sex life of poultry. I do know my chicken cravings caused me to sign up for a two-hour cooking class on what you can do with store-bought rotisserie chickens. Apparently there is more than making soup.

The dollar store was my next stop. It's close to home and I often stop there when I’ve got no place else to go thus wasting getting all spiffed up for just a hour’s worth of time away from the house. (I used to joke about my dad’s girlfriend who, when I chauffeured them around on their dates, always wanted to go to the dollar store. Now that I’m the age she was back then, I get it. I get that sometimes a lady just needs to go shopping someplace where she can’t be tempted to spend more than a $1.98.) But Bill Murray, that prolific recording artist of Vaudeville fame---be still my heart---summed it up better when he sang: “When you're all dressed up and have no place to go, how you long for someone near you, just to cheer you, just to dear you. It’s when you’ll understand the meaning of that little word ‘lonesome’ when you’re all dressed up and have no place to go.”

Change of topic. Levi has a birthday coming up soon, his ninth, which meant he got to go shopping at Chow Hound to use the birthday money/coupon they sent him. We picked out a new collar and some peanut butter bones that usually make him barf. He got to smell the rabbits and cats in cages and the other dogs shopping. He loves Chow Hound and it’s sad that his mom (that would be me) doesn’t take him more often. When he’s along on shopping trips it cost more because Chow Hound puts all the plush toys, smelly pig parts and flavored treats down low where the dogs can grab them. With Levi’s long Schnauzer beard and mustache he always manages to smuggle something up to the checkout line where he’ll be coerced to drop it long enough for the cashier to scan it. Thankfully, he waits until I get the plastic off the contraband (usually a peanut butter bone) before he eats it. 

After Chow Hound we went to Starbucks where Levi got a puppuccino and I got a cappuccino. I get my drink free around my birthday but he gets his “drink” free any day of the year. After I pulled out of the drive-thru line I had to park the car to hold his cup while Levi licked up the cream. By the time he’d finished off the puppuccino his beard and mustache were white with cream. But he was happy and raring to go to the third place on his birthday tradition list: the car wash. Some dogs hate the car wash, others love it and Levi is in the latter group. When my husband was alive the three of us used to sing our way through the place but I can’t make Levi howling the way Don could. 

It’s funny how your emotions can change on a dime.  The first half of January leading up to my husband’s sadiversary usually effects my moods but the years when it made me cry, I thought, were in the rear view mirror. Going through the car wash, however, had me wiping a few tears off my cheek. Maybe it was the week of endless rain. Maybe it was the baked chicken disappointment without the mushroom soup the day before or maybe I was just crying because Levi was such a mess I would have liked to hold head out the window while going through the car wash. Nope, the tears couldn’t have been a ‘widow thing.’ I am woman and I’m too strong for that! ©

Levi's old and new collars. From 'Pets for Peace', bought during the Obama administration and
 'psychedelic', bought under the Trump administration.