It was one of those days when I was so busy the step counter on my fitness watch was calling out in pain, not to mention my fallen aches were doing the same. It was window washing day at the continuum care facility and that generated three appointments for the project. The first at 7:45 AM and I normally don’t get up that early. That one was for the maintenance man to pop out my screens, then another appointment at 10ish for the guys from window washing company to wash the inside of my windows followed by a 12ish appointment for them to come back to wash the windows on the outside of my deck and to pop the clean screens back over the rest of my newly washed windows. In between all this I had a terrible case of diarrhea and the house cleaning service woman showed up on the wrong day and we had to work that out lest she be cleaning around all the stuff that I had to move out of the way of the windows.
After the three window washers/college kids left my apartment I went over to the cafe, had a half a bowl of soup before a lecture titled 'Quirky Baseball Parks' that started at 1:30. I had just enough time after that ended to go back to my apartment, pick up the Mahjong set and deposit the other half of my soup in the refrigerator. Thankfully, the afternoon was diarrhea-free and I won all three Mahjong games.
The craziness didn’t end there. After Mahjong I had a date with three others to go off campus to a popular bar for dinner. And that came about because their usual fourth for off campus adventures was Ms Manners (who moved out) and I happened to be sitting near-by when they planned their dinner so they asked me if I wanted to come (in her place). I really like all three of these women. One is as crazy about Mahjong as I am, one is my neighbor/a retired psychiatrist and the other was a high school English teacher who has the classy wardrobe on this campus. She’s tall and willowy and she could make a potato sack look like Paris couture. All three are in our Tuesday Dinner Discussion group formally known as the Secret Society of Liberal Ladies. Yes, you’d win a bet if you placed it on us toasting the latest criminal indictment of the former president. Speaking of which, there’s a rumor going around that Trump could be offered a plea deal. In exchange for admitting guilt and agreeing never to run for office again he could avoid a trial and a possible prison sentence. Place your bids, ladies and gentlemen, I’m saying he’ll never go for it. He’ll continue putting the country through his circus of flying monkeys until his tombstone reads: “I won that damn election.”
After I got home from dinner, I put all my furniture and window decor back in place, lined up clothes and plans for the following day then I felt into bed at midnight for a hard sleep that ended at 3AM with a nightmare. I couldn’t fall back to sleep. Finally after playing a dozen hands of Mahjong online, I went back to bed and by morning it came to me what had caused my nightmare.
In the dream there was heavy wooden door that I kept trying to close and lock with an old fashioned key but the door kept opening up, over and over again---me slamming it harder each time but each time it would open wider than the before. On the other side of the door were ghost-like figures looking menacing like from the movie, Scream. The door in my nightmare---it finally connected in my conscious mind---looked just like the rustic table top at the bar we’d been to.
At dinner the evening before the nightmare the other ladies were all talking about their divorces and how all their husbands had been alcoholics and abusive. And I revealed a carefully guarded detail about my life: The fact that while my husband and I had been a couple for 42 years we were only married for 12 1/2 of those years but the HUGE secret part that I've never shared on campus is that we didn’t live together until after Don's stroke. We had houses a mile apart and our relationship was complicated, hard to explain without a glass of hard cider in my hand and a growing trust factor that I wouldn't be judged. The English teacher said, “You were ahead of your time. That’s the way young people are doing now.” The secret revealed was the broken lock in the dream that wouldn’t keep the door shut any longer.
By the way, the lecture about quirky baseball parks was interesting and was given by college professor from a local college who was animated and funny in his delivery. Playing field sizes and shapes were not regulated in the early days, he told us, and that contributed to some of the records set by the stars of their era. Some fields where rectangles, others the size of little league fields today and several had uneven distances between their bases---as much as 50 feet! One even had a hill to climb in the outfield. Babe Ruth fell on the hill and quit playing four days later. In a Chicago park there was a small metal sign in the outfield that read: “Hit this sign and you’ll get a free suit at so-and-so store.” One baseball player hit it seven times and got seven tailor-made suits.
Wednesday are always Mahjong, lunch and lecture day. Wednesday is my favorite day of the week and in no small part because I get to interact with the blog community. Thank you all for reading and leaving comments here.
Until next Wednesday…. ©
P.S. I won two of the three Mahjong games we played this afternoon. I really love my Wednesdays.
