My weekend was out-of-the-norm starting with Friday when I
had to stay home all day because a power washing company was cleaning my deck,
the eaves, driveway and sidewalks. The deck had to be done in advance of a
staining crew that showed up on Saturday and will come back later for a second
coat on the flat areas. I’ve never seen anyone stain using mitts like you’d use
to wash a car and, boy, did they get the job done fast and neat. The two man
crew did my huge deck with its 250+ spinals in half the time that it’s been
done before. One of the past crews sprayed the stain and another used rollers
and brushes. I was impressed with mitt staining. And for the bonus round points
the guys didn’t have radios blasting at full volume to annoy me and the dog.
The eaves troughs had to be cleaned well in advance of the 4th
of July. You would not believe the amount of dry pine needles they took out of
my eaves. Still, I always make sure my hoses are hooked up this time of the
year because I live in a neighborhood of people who are in love with fireworks
and I’m afraid they’ll start my house on fire. I’m constantly picking up fireworks debris between the 4th through Thanksgiving. Here, they are
legal on ten designated holidays plus the day before and after---not that
anyone follows the law all that closely---and, yes, I’ve even seen them on
Christmas. Praise the Lord, do you think He likes things that go boom at midnight
and lights up the night?
Since I was stuck home two days in a row, I re-read my 2014
blog entries, checking for typos and glaring sins against the rules of
punctuation. I’m way behind the time when I had scheduled myself to slurp them
all up into a hard copy book. I’ve been doing that every year with my blogs so I’ll
still have access to my blog entries when I get too old to remember how to turn
on the computer, but not so old that I don’t want to glance back at my past
from time to time. Reading through my 2014 misadventures it became clear that in
the third year of widowhood my social life got more and more wrapped up in the
activities at the senior hall. Not sure if that’s a bad thing or a good thing.
It’s just something to put in a jar and re-exam later on. But the scary part is
some of the stuff I did last year had already slipped off my memory radar. What
next? Will I finish peeing and not remember if I wiped myself? Oh, well, as
long as my bladder still holds out and I make it to the bathroom each and every
time, it’s all good.
Speaking of which, am I the only person on earth who is sick
of seeing so many ads for Depends Adult panties/diapers on TV? If I believed
their surge in the marketplace I’d have to believe half the women at the senior
all are sitting around peeing their pants as we speak. The ad that annoys me
the most shows a woman at a theater and she’s laughing hard and a voice-over is
talking about just “let it go.” I’m surprised they didn’t use the voice of
Queen Elsa from Frozen to belt out a
verse or two of the Let it Go Disney
song. They probably tried but couldn’t get the rights. The commercial probably
bugs me because when I go to my monthly Movie and Lunch Club I’m the only one
who has to get up during a film to use the bathroom. I’ve often
wondered why I'm the only one. Ohmygod, it just dawned on me! Maybe I’m not! Maybe
I’m sitting next to a dozen plus women wearing Depends! How am I going to get
that visual out of my head before next Friday when we meet again? I don’t mean
to make light of people who need them, but do we really need the Depends Underwareness Campaign encouraging every man, woman and child in the world to
show off their pee-in-me skivvies? I say, “Hell no!” and I rest my case hoping a jury of my peers agrees.
Growing old has so many sink holes we all hope to avoid, but
deep within we each fear one of them will swallow us up if we don’t keep ever
so vigilant. Keeping my brain sharp worries me more than the other sink holes of aging. If one day I’m wandering up the street talking to myself and the
neighbors are worried that I’ve finally punched out of reality, I hope I’m reciting
the following dialogue from The Help movie: "Every day you're not dead in the ground, when you wake up in the
morning, you're gonna have to make some decisions. Got to ask yourself
this question: 'Am I gonna believe all them bad things them fools say
about me today?'" And
if my answer is “no” then I’ll know I'm sharp enough to go back home and find something
to do that doesn’t involve training my bird watching binoculars on the
neighbors. I’m quite sure that’s listed as a no-no in every etiquette book
published in the Western Hemisphere. ©
I can't find the commercial in the theater but here's another one for Depends. They have a 5-6 of them.
