No padding here!

I find it rather annoying that authors have forgotten how to have their characters “walk” from room to room. Especially female characters. Oh, sometimes they do walk, but with increasing frequency they seem to “pad” from room to room:

She padded from the bedroom to the kitchen.
She padded from the kitchen to the living room

This usually happens in the morning when she first gets up or in the evening as she is winding down.

And so it goes with variations.

Last night I cracked the window a good 5 inches and fell sleep listening to the chorus of spring peepers in our pond at the edge of our pasture.

And I woke up at 2:45 to thunder and lightening and pouring rain, and it took a while to fall asleep again. Our place has been struck twice by lightening; fortunately, both times it was just the well pump was that damaged, but still. I say fortunately (although replacing the pump wasn’t cheap either time) because a friend at the aerobics class lost her house to a fire caused by lightening. One tends to be a little “concerned” when a thunder-and-lightening storm moves through.

So I was rather groggy when I woke up a little before 5 a.m., and I most assuredly did not “pad” from the bedroom to the bathroom and from there to the kitchen to get my morning cuppa coffee. I might have lurched, staggered, or wobbled. I may even have walked.

As I headed for the coffee pot, I looked at the floor and found myself remembering with surprising clarity the summer of ’62, when I was 12-going-on-13.

Two of my dad’s sisters and their families were going to the Seattle World’s Fair, and Aunt Vera invited me to go along with them. Her oldest daughter, who was the first grandchild born to that generation (I was the second) is about 18 months older than I am. Our ages were close enough that we could really enjoy each others’ company as we grew older.

We stayed in a campground outside of Seattle at the edge of the rain forest. Some of us had a close encounter with stinging nettles. We saw huge yellow slugs. We had a wonderful time. 

Back to the real world: no, giant yellow slugs were not oozing their way across the kitchen floor, but there were 2 (!) garden-variety slugs laying down a trail of slime.

I knew better than to use my fingers (have you ever tried to get slug slime off your fingers?), so I used a scrap of paper to scrape them up and deposit them outside.

And launched myself into the day, profoundly grateful and feeling very blessed to have had such a wonderful Aunt.

Baked projectiles

The daffodils and blooming shrubs are covered with about 2 inches of very wet snow, and I suspect the lizards that have been sunning themselves on the foundations of the house and the porch will once again retreat back to where they go when the temperature is too cold.

This too will pass, of course. It will be in the mid 60s in a couple of days.

He has split the biscuit with a fork around the edge and added blackberry fruit spread to each half. But instead of just picking the biscuit halves and eating them, he begins using the edge of his fork to cut each half in half and eats it that way. With a fork.

Then, a piece of biscuit that he is trying to cut in half shoots out from under the fork and smacks into the plastic bowl of the salad spinner at the edge of the table, leaving a purple smear. He wipes that off with his finger and licks it (no point in wasting good fruit spread). 

Why don't you just pick up the biscuit with your fingers? Why do you have to eat it with a fork? 

With a fork? he says. I need a jackhammer. 

And then begins to laugh, spears the biscuit on his fork and starts eating it and making exaggerated chewing motions.

This is like eating hardtack, he says. 

When I was having dinner with my brother and his wife in November and commented on the wonderful biscuits they served, he said "Bisquick," and then this sweet man sent us a box of Bisquick for Christmas. The biscuits "made from the box" were wonderful, but the Bisquick is gone and Richard is adamant that he does not want to eat "store-bought biscuits." 

So we are back to "same-old same-old"  Just another exciting Sunday morning breakfast, where jaws get the exercise.

...in which I am somewhat embarrassed

A family--husband, wife, and son--that recently moved here from Houston has been coming to church for a while, and I arranged to have lunch with the wife, Sue, on Friday. Her birthday is coming up, and I decided before I left to meet her at the restaurant that I would pay for her meal as a present. I grabbed a bill out of the envelope of cash I had just gotten from the bank to cover day-to-day expenses for the next couple of months, which had eight $20 bills and one $10 bill, and stuck it in my pocket.

I don’t carry a purse around town, so that was all I had.

Sue arrived, and I told her I would pay for our food in honor of her birthday. When the cashier gave us the total ($16 and change), I handed her the bill. And she stood there holding it, looking expectant, and repeated the amount, and I said “I gave you a $20,” and she said, “No, you gave me a $10” and she held it up. Sure enough. I had managed to miss all of the $20 bills in the envelope and instead pulled out $10.

Sue stepped into the breach, whipped out her credit card, and said “and we will put the rest of the cost on this…”

Eventually I knew I needed to shut up and stop apologizing, so I did, and we went on to have a pleasant lunch together.

How embarrassed was I? Had a hole opened in the floor, I would have happily crawled in and pulled the linoleum back down on top.

But I have learned a lesson. The next time I decide to do this, I will actually look at what I have in my hand.