Rainbows and Kissing Puppy Dogs

Do you remember last Christmas when I was the recipient of a random act of kindness when someone left a large box of chocolates at my front door? I had posted about it on Facebook, hoping I’d be able to root out the person who did it. No such luck. I asked all my friends and family. No one fessed up. Yesterday I was talking to one of my neighbors---the one I’ve known the longest and who snow-blows my front sidewalk in the winters---and I asked her if she by chance left the chocolates. Nope, but she said she got a box at her door too! She did the same thing I did, checked it good for package tampering before eating it because at first, it creeped both of us out. While the mystery still remains a mystery at least now I know who ever left the box is someone I don’t know at all and who lives on my cul-de-sac…or maybe our local Jehovah Witnesses who do the door-to-door preaching from time to time? Maybe I got a payoff for always being polite and taking their pamphlets?

I was reminded of the chocolates because this past week I’ve been getting another kind of random act of kindness in the form of painted rocks left inside my mailbox. It’s dark inside that box and when I saw the first one I thought it was a wasp nest. Scared more than the crap out of me because I’m allergic to bees. If anyone was watching me with my can of Raid and a long-handled broom poking the rock out through the mailbox’s back door they were probably laughing they butts off. By the time I realized it wasn’t a wasp nest, I picked up that rock with its rainbow painted on its face and I was smiling from ear to ear. No one in my neighborhood could possibility know how much I like stones and rocks. I have jars full and an antique trencher from the seventeen hundreds that I keep special rocks in. My trencher-worthy stones don’t necessarily have to be pretty stones I’ve bought along life’s journey. Some are just rocks I’ve picked up on a day when I was having fun. (I need to look up the words ‘stone’ and ‘rock’. Can I correctly use them interchangeably? There's always something new to learn, isn't there.)

There are ten houses on my cul-de-sac and countless little kids and I don’t know any of them by name. Most of them want to pet Levi when I take him for walks. He’s been taught to sit when little kids approach him and to stay seated while they pet him which has earned praise from my chocolate receiving neighbor who is also a veterinary. The rocks in the mailbox got me to thinking about neighbors and how much we judge them by the way they treat their dogs and kids. Two little girls who live two doors down are not allowed to go past my driveway and two little boys who live down the block on the other side of me are not allowed to go past my neighbor’s driveway which means the boys and girls never get closer than 170 feet apart. One day that will change and that 170 foot kid-free zone will no longer exist. My romance reading soul has me seeing them in the future playing kissy-face in front of my house. If it was the 1950s their parents would then get phone calls tattling on them before they even got back home. They say it takes a village to raise kids and it took me years to figure out why I couldn’t get away with any boy-girl shenanigans as I walked home from school. My neighborhood was apparently filled with spies, busybodies and concerned mothers. Yes, it does take a village so I suppose I should have reported that Levi licked one little girl's face. She then sat right down in front of him and kissed him back. On the lips. Mouth kissing puppy dogs is yucky in some circles, but Levi didn't mind.

I did laundry yesterday. It might not sound like a big deal but I went a total of fourteen days without doing laundry when in pre-pandemic times I did it every Sunday. How do I know it was fourteen days and not thirteen or twelve? I didn’t until I ran out of underpants and I was giving them the Marie Kondo folds when they came out of the dryer. But my first clue that I needed clean clothes came when I had nothing left in my undies drawer but a pair I set aside to wear to doctor appointments and trips to Urgent Care. (You do that too, fess up.) With the pandemic stay-at-home orders in effect underpants are the only garments I’ve consistently change every single day. I quit wearing bras in the second week and I was reminded recently that I need to start wearing them again. The weather warmed up enough to walk the dog without me wearing a winter coat and I got half way down the sidewalk then promptly made a U-turn back into the house. Levi thought we took the shortest walk in canine history but I just needed to get my boobs in a hammock. No one wants see 'old girls' hanging free. And in case you ever need to take a pop quiz on my life, this paragraph contains the answer to the extra credit question.  ©

Party Talk and my Not-so-Secret Obsession

My new book club had their Christmas party at one of the nicest restaurants in the area, a beautiful marble, glass and stainless steel place on a golf course in the high rollers part of town. I was the only person wearing a Christmas sweater. Not true at the other two parties I attended this year where holiday wear was the norm including elf and Santa hats. These ladies “cleaned up nicely” as they say. Professional looking, quality clothing etc., etc., and three of them walked up to me with their hands stuck out to shake as they introduced themselves. I don’t like to shake hands especially during flu season but I did it with grace (I hope) and I was glad a woman across the table from me wasn’t one of the hand shakers. She shared the fact that she’s had “the flu” since visiting her family in Texas over Thanksgiving. She can’t get rid of it even after spending a few days in the hospital and taking a ton of medication. Thanks for sharing.

After writing “these ladies cleaned up nicely” I decided to google the phrase to pinpoint where it came from. The earliest reference I could find was a 1989 Seinfeld clip of Kramer saying it to Jerry when they were both wearing tuxedos, but my search was brief and I could have missed something. I did learn that the phrase appears on a list of eight things you should never say to anyone. Apparently, many people take it as an insult. People used to say it to my husband and we never took offense. He got grubby at work and play and did clean up well going from chimney sweeper dirty to GQ Cool. Language changes over time and thank goodness for that. Otherwise we’d all still be talking like Shakespeare: “What art thou that usurp’st this time of night…” but on the con side of changing language is we have to keep current. Last year a snowflake was just a beautiful ice crystal, this year it's anyone who is easily offended or can't deal with opposing opinions.

I already knew and like half the women in this book club from various activities around the senior hall and this party was an opportunity to get to know the other half. One lady, I learned, I will be avoid commenting on anything she says about current events. When the topic of what people watch or don’t watch on TV came up she announced, “I never watch politics because it’s always changing. ALWAYS!” Say what? What can you watch on TV that isn’t changing, a color pattern late at night in 1955? And when the waitress left the room for the last time the young girl said, “Happy holidays, ladies!” to which the woman who claims she doesn’t watch politics screamed out in a loud booming voice, “It’s Merry Christmas! Christmas is back!” Okay, that was my queue to buy a Starbucks coffee on the way home since they’re so-called foot soldiers in the so-called war on Christmas. I got so buzzed up on coffee last year over the red cup controversy that the car thought it was programmed to go to Starbucks drive-thou on every trip out of the garage. 

Another lady said she never watches TV because it makes her mad when a certain person comes on which I assumed was Mr. Trump but it could have been Captain Kangaroo for all I know. The vast major of those around the table of twelve said they hardly ever watch TV or they just watch PBS or classic movies. I kept quiet about the fact that turning on the television is the first thing I do in the morning and turning it off is the last thing I do at night. One woman said she thought people who watch cable news are always angry and the ‘color pattern’ lady agreed. Am I always angry? I must be a good actress if that’s true because I’ve never been accused of being perpetually angry…nor am I a Snowflake. I would never, for example, scream out, “It’s Merry [frigging] Christmas! Christmas is back!” which was an angry, joy-sucking political statement if I ever heard one. 

Party talk aside---the political kind, not the be merry kind that dominated most of the luncheon---one of the ladies at the party makes salves and potions out of essential oils and she brought a basket full of products to give away, so I went home with a gift that I love for the tin it came in. I love tiny seed-saver style tins even though I have no garden or seeds to save. I do have some seed savers with glass tops that I use to display special stones or sea shells. Want to hear another confession? When I empty out a pickle or other glass jar that has no printing on the lid, I wash it out and fill it with stones or shells. I know that sounds hoarder-lady like and the photos above and below probably bear witness to the fact that I could be headed in the direction. If you ever see me at the recycling center picking through glass jars please do an intervention. ©

 

yes, that wicker planter is filled with rocks

my sun porch is running out of empty windowsills

seed savers