Pay Back Time!!

MY adorable granddaughter locked her mother and her big sister out on the deck last night and they had to call 911. She stretched out on the couch with the remote and Louie the dog, totally ignoring their frantic efforts to get her to unlock and let them in. The fireman had to crawl up a ladder and in the kitchen window to gain access.

She will be two years old next week.

She has a wonderful mother and all her friends are telling her what a great story this will be for when she gets older. Ha! I am the mother of her father and I can tell her...but won't..it's just the beginning.

We pulled John out of lakes, off of crick banks, from beneath tractors and chicken coops, down from tall trees..barn rafters..porch roofs.. and all this before he was four.

Then he became harder to track..the woods called..the creek wandered..people kept going off and leaving him because he was "too little" and his only recourse was to follow. Well, he did grow up.

And now he's got Ainsley. Hahahahahah!!!!

Well, Today IS Another Day

The baby chicks my friend brought for me to chick-sit yesterday, (just before the power outage, and only those who have nurtured newly hatched chickens know how upsetting that was) are doing well.

I am working on this artsy-crafty thing for the reunion and on Reunion Day I want all smart alecky comments on the results held at a minimum please!

Let’s just say it involved wallpaper scraps, spray-on glue and Styrofoam..

Now, in addition to all my socks being brown from the newly applied floor stain that all but one experts polled say will NEVER dry, (I’m betting on the one) and the seat of all my jeans sticking to everything I sit on, my fingers are now semi-permanently webbed with an “industrial strength” tacky glue! And the wallpaper scraps never scrapped out right to my measurements (nothing ever does) so it looks a little like a Home Depot decoupage thing..

I think I’ll go out and watch the baby chickens and relax.

Cleaning Glitch in Clean Land!!

The cleaning and refurbishing bug has hit a wall. What can I say?? Something is wrong with the stain I applied to the floor day before yesterday. It still isn't dry! What can the matter be? Who knows?? Surely it will dry eventually and let me slather on the other stuff that's supposed to make it hard and impervious to slops, spills, hammers and other domestic tools dropped by accident!

And did I mention that we inadverdantly cut the TV cable in two? What nut bag ran it under the carpet like that anyway? (Just call me Nutbag.) And we were so proud of remembering to get new blades for the box cutter to cut the carpet with.

It took a quick but necessary trip into town to Radio Shack to sustain my TV addiction.

The Radio Shack guy spent a good deal of time explaining how the ends were to be bared, poked in to the little brass gizmos and crimped with an ingenious hand tool which he loaned me. I only messed up one end and I thought that was pretty good for someone as unmechanical as myself but the fact remains that BOTH ends had to be workable.

However my mother didn't raise any dummies so I finally figured it out and with only a yard and a half of duct tape, the connection is working perfectly!

I would write more but I need to start working at getting the Red Walnut (whoever saw a red walnut?) stain off the bottom of my feet.

Winter is Coming

Winter is coming and I have the cleanup-paint-up, fix-up bug.

Don't ask me why. I never get the Spring Cleaning thing but this time of year I have an urgent need to not spend a long winter in dismal dirt and disaray.. (I love alliteration.)

Last week Brian and I tore up and drug out the old carpet.

That left us looking at 100 year old oak floors. There were three options. Lay new carpet. (I can't afford it.) Hire someone to lovingly refinish the old wood (I can't afford it) and freeze our butts off this winter, ...or compromise. Well I compromised. We are staining the old floor a deep red something or other kind of imitation wood juice and covering it with polyurethane stuff.

We will still freeze our butts off this winter but we will do it beautifully as the floor is a great surprise! It really looks good if I do say so! And the old woodwork matches so closely that it just needs a light rub of stain to pull it all together. I am so pleased with us.. I hope I will remember all this exuberance this January.

I am tired of the living room. I did it in the old Lizzy Borden colors..(mustardy yellow walls to go with the dark 100-year-old woodwork)thinking it was just sooo Victorian, as is the house, but Lizzy has had her day and the mustardy yellow walls suck!!@

Besides that nobody extant understood when I said it was the "Lizzy Bordon style". So a nice, calm cream-white stuff is going on the walls.

Can't wait to get it done.

I Believe Roger Clemens

I believe Roger Clemens. I believe Roger because I heard him testify before Congress last year or whenever it was and he sounded so sincere!

As a total needle-coward myself I can understand perfectly and believe absolutely in the ability of a person to block out all needle experiences. It is my habit to go off in a mental La La land any time I am confronted with a needle..thus rendering my memory of it totally void.

Even if 12 good men (or women) and true decide that he is a total prick (is this a pun?) and has needle tracks a mile wide up both arms I believe Roger because I have always liked the game of baseball and because I want to believe him.

My belief in Roger stems from a devotion similar to that of the religious faithful who believe Franklin Graham when he says he “loves Muslims”… or the Republican faithful who were willing to believe Sen. Larry Craig when he explained to the world about his “naturally wide stance”… or the Clinton devotees who took the old “I did not have sex with that woman..” thing totally to heart.

Sometimes the truth, no matter how incredulous, is just easier to take if you truly BELIEVE.

And so I believe Roger Clemens. I hope they publish the address of his new and upcoming federally funded residence so I can send him goody bags of goat cheese and homemade fudge. He might need a friend when the muscle starts to drop off and his athletic body resumes its former ordinariness. He may feel quite vulnerable there with all those long-timers who have had nothing else to do but pump iron for the last few years.

A Great Day!

Well, today is a great day!

My mind wasn’t much made up on the subject for the first half of the day, (it is now 12:00pm AKA noon.)

But after thinking on it, I can come up with quite the little list of positives that keep me keeping on.

#1: It has now been 162 days since I last dropped my cell phone in the pot!

Hey! High tech stuff is hard for my generation! But I think I have truly mastered the cell-phone-in-the-pot thing.

#2: I have not fallen out of bed since September 21, 2004

(that’s when I first moved to the new house and being totally disoriented in the middle of the night, rolled over the wrong way. It could happen to anyone.)

#3 I am pretty sure I don’t have worms.

I don’t seem to have any of the symptoms of that guy on Medical Mysteries that wound up with a 30-ft long tape worm. And besides, I never travel below the Mason/Dixon line just for that reason. I understand parasites really only love places that don’t freeze your monkey shut at least four times a year.

#4 My last bank statement shows that there were 19 days last month wherein (whereat?) I was not overdrawn!!

This is a great confidence builder. Of course if you’ve never BEEN overdrawn at the bank you will obviously just have to go through life feeling inferior on the subject. Sorry about that.

#5 My sore toe doesn’t hurt anymore.

You know, (if you don’t I’ll be happy to tell you about it) the one I broke five years ago kicking that goat.

AND:

#6 That itchy spot on my head wasn't lice after all but just that gash healing where the stapler fell on me last week.

Yes, today is a Great Day!!

The Art of Doing Nothing

"How do you do Nothing?" asked Pooh.

"Well, it's when people call out at you just as you're going off to do it, `What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?' and you say, `Oh, nothing' and then you go and do it. It means just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering."

--Winnie the Pooh

I Think I have the Colic!!

I feel like I have the colic. There is a lump of something pushing my left lower rib cage out. It feels like a big blob of air. Could it be fat?? It could possibly have been there forever just waiting for me to get fat enough and bored enough to find it! I think it is that rubbery steak I fixed for lunch. Cooking is not my best thing and I am not much of a meat eater so I think it is the steak. Just sitting there all gommed up waiting for me to notice it.

But when I turn the other way it kind of disappears! Is that normal?? I don't see how hypochondriacs can stand being one. Worrying about this air bubble is just eating up my time.

I think I will go drink another Coke and burp.

Inspection Time

Oh Boy, Oh Boy Oh Boy…this is really good news. I know I whine and complain a lot but this is REALLY good news.

I just this morning, this very morning, had my 15-year-old Buick inspected and retagged for two years and it is not only not even the end of the month but it only cost me $85!

This may seem like a minimal boon to those unaware of my relationship with Steve, my mechanic, or his capacity to hold my fate in his hands but around here it is a big %$@@**&$ deal?

For 15 years I have, at the very last minute, thrown myself upon his mercy and he has always managed to save me from pedestrian life by simply adding a few sets of brakes, new mufflers, a new tire or two etc. And I, whipped and beaten by the State and my own procrastination, slumping across his greasy counter, would commence to write a check that he and I both knew might bounce at least once.

Strangely enough these checks began to assume a terrible similarity in that they all exceeded $100! Over the years even our conversations on this matter have begun to be a little redundant.

“See these little wiry things sticking out of the side of your tires here, Laura?” says Steve, my mechanic. “Well, yes I noticed that.” say I, “What do you suppose the matter is?”

And Steve would say, “Well, the matter is Laura that this car won’t pass with these tires.”

And I would try not to let Steve see how rattled I was at the possibility of the cost of a new set of tires but he must be a good guesser because he would say, “I might have some used ones around here good enough to pass and other than that it’s just a few replacement bulbs and a new wiper blade on the passenger side…(I never replace that one..my passengers are better off not seeing anything.) ..and that should get you by.”

And I say “How much will that be all together, Steve?” and he would get out his greasy little receipt book and figure on it with his Independent Farmer’s Bank ball point pen and it would always come out to “…can’t say exactly Laura but it looks like about $100 or maybe a little more.” And that’s what it would be including the “little more.”

Or he might say, “See how that bungy cord you have holding the hood down allows the hood to flop up and down, Laura?” (That was on the old pick-up)..And I would say, “I plan to get a new bungy cord the very next time I’m in town, Steve.” But he says, “You been saying that for awhile, Laura but you really need to get that latch fixed. It won’t pass with a bungy cord.” And I would say, “Well, can you do it?” and he would say “I think so, but I’ll have to order a spring…(thingy)” and I say, “Well, how much do you think it will be all together?”

And out would come the little receipt book and the Independent Farmer’s Bank ball point pen and it would always come out to “…can’t say exactly Laura but it looks like about $100 or maybe a little more.” And that’s what it would be plus a little more.

And that’s why this is such REALLY good news. I know there’s not that much difference between $85 and $100. Yes, I know that. But it’s the TREND that’s encouraging.

Therapy

Dear Sister,

I did mention didn’t I that they are doing therapy on my shoulder and knee injured in that run-a-way shopping cart attack in May?

I was pretty nervous about it but found the first session very reassuring. The therapist was just the cutest thing. After being tenderly analyzed and gently led into the least painful manipulations possible by this really cute therapist, I decided therapy wasn’t so bad. Except for his being married and the 40-year age difference I think we could have developed a relationship but I decided against it.

During the process Chris, (the really cute therapist) chatted away about me and my torn rotator cuff and me and my tendons and me and my pain and suffering and (well, you can see why it was of such interest to ME). And like I said, he was very cute.

I soon took my cue from the other therapy recipients sprinkled in among the mechanical contraptions that crowded the room and learned not to shriek and by the end of the first session had the pitiful face contortions and mumbly groans down pat. Chris said I was “great” and “doing very well” and it was perfectly obvious that no other patient had EVER been so great or done so well.

So far so good.

The second session was disappointing at first in that Chris had abandoned me and put me in the care of Barbara, a plump, friendly person who was very good to talk to. We continued the conversation about me and my torn rotator cuff and me and my tendons and me and my pain and suffering and (well, you can see why it was so interesting).

Over the next three weeks two more therapists continued to monitor my walk toward total rotator cuff health and kept up the chit chat about..you guessed it.. me and my torn rotator cuff and me and my tendons and me and my pain and suffering and by now I am sick and tired of my torn rotator cuff and tired of not being able to do what I want to do and totally tired of therapy eating up all that time..it was taking entirely too much time..so changed my appointments to 8:00 am instead of the original 10:30 that seemed to just eat up a whole morning.

Thursday was my first 8:00 am and I felt unwell. I remembered why the original 10:30 was decided upon. Although I am still at my best early in the day, my best is not what it used to be and early in the day is not as early as it used to be. 10 a.m. seems to be the high-water mark anymore.

On top of that I had a totally new therapist and she was very brisk, studied my chart, held the little right angle yard stick up to my shoulder and announced that I “was not doing well” and that I “had not improved much at all bilaterally” etc. I was filled with dismay. I was stunned. She never mentioned a thing about how great I was or how well I was doing.

She kept talking about Dr. Lingenfelter, the bone and joint man who ordered the therapy, and how he was “not going to be happy” . Didn’t she know we weren’t supposed to be talking about Dr. Lingenfelter and whether he was happy or not? Didn’t she know we were supposed to be talking about me and my torn rotator cuff and me and my tendons and…well you remember..

Anyway, she wound up devising this torture exercize that was supposed to make up for my earlier dereliction and while I was laying on their little hard couch doing my best to get my left hand behind my head and back ten times, my peripheral vision caught a glimpse of some very nice man legs, smooth and tanned, just hairy enough to be interesting with a medical boot on one foot.

I rested from my behind-the-head thing long enough to check out this really slim guy with beautiful white hair. Except for the medical boot he looked perfectly healthy and mighty fine. It was his first therapy session so Chris took him through the same procedure he had with me. That Traitor. He asked him all about his stupid foot injury and talked about how well he had done and so on. It sounded very familiar if you know what I mean.

I listened to the guy’s story and how he had been injured and what his life style was. A retired Geography professor, he had a place at Lake Viking and a place at Orlando and a small farm somewhere. He had almost fell off the roof of his place in Orlando two months ago while trying to fix some kind of communication device up there.

The only thing that saved him was catching his foot on a rung of the ladder and although this was hard on the cartussel bone in his foot, (I’m not too good at medical terms) it did spare his head and I thought he should have been grateful enough to leave it at that but here he was, eating up my therapists time.

Chris asked him how active he was and he talked far too long about his swimming pool and his boat at the lake and scuba diving at Orlando and his golf game and the small business he ran to “keep busy”.. I hated his guts.

Yes, I hated his guts. How in the world could anyone compete with a tale like that? Getting run down by a shopping cart is in no way comparable to dangling dangerously from the roof of an Orlando mansion. The closest thing I get to scuba diving is when I can’t get the shower to turn off. My version of golf is the stray rocks that careen off the mower blade.

Yes, I hated his guts and therapy is not going well.

And to Think I Knew it All

And to think that just a few, short decades ago I knew it all!

I don’t seem to know much about anything anymore. Every morning it seems like I wake up to a new world. The things I no longer know seem to fall into one of three categories.

1) What I used to know is now different.

2) What I thought I knew I forgot

and

3) What I actually knew didn’t matter at all.

Thank heavens for children and grandchildren. I am pinning my hopes on them. It is absolutely vital to the human race that they take their turn. It is THEY who must now know everything.

I am so glad somebody does.

Doctoring

Had lunch with John today at McDonalds in between his work hours and my trip home from the Doctor in Kansas City.

I got to tell him all about what I said and what the doctor said and what all was wrong with me, ( I was attacked by a shopping cart in a 30-mile-an-hour wind) and how it would get fixed. I think John really enjoyed this little chat. I know I did. You know how us old people like to discuss such things.

Also the doctor was very nice to me. I think it was more than just that doctors are always nice to old people. I can’t help but think he was impressed with my style sense. John thought the brown sweater and electric blue blouse was a real eye catcher but as for me the gray plaid pants were what really set the outfit off. And no, I did not wear my tennis shoes, even though those little pointy toed slipper things hurt like the devil and made me limp. It reminded me how my knee hurt so I asked the doctor about that too.

I had to wait awhile in the little room where they put you at the last, while the doctor looked at the latest x-rays and the MRI. I betcha I glow in the dark by now. I will report on that later if I can stay awake late enough to notice.

They had some really neat charts on the wall with pictures of all sorts of stuff that can go wrong and I found one I thought was probably my knee and it said that forcing the leg to turn too sharply caused a tear in the messeosis or something. Sure enough, when I told the doctor the problem with my knee he said, “It is probably a torn messeoiss…..” Heck, I bet I could be a bone doctor.

On the way home I stopped at Sarah’s office and told her what I said and what the doctor said and all about the messiosis thing and we had a nice chat too but her eyes were bothering her or something because they kept wandering to a stack of papers she had on her desk and back to the computer and when she looked right at me her eyes looked kind of blank. I hope it’s nothing catching.

I’ve had my fill of doctors for awhile.

A Birthday With Boo Bear

Today you are you, that is truer than true.
There is no one alive who is youer than you- Dr. Seuss

Today is Brian’s birthday! And I won’t say which one but as I am only 49 how old could he be??

As usual, Boo Bear came out of his cabinet hidey hole for the birthday breakfast and sits propped up by the sugar bowl. Brown and formerly fuzzy, one ear drooping from the gnawing bestowed by a very little boy, with the tattered remains of a satin neck tie, Boo can count as many birthdays as Brian ever had if he so chose, but we don’t ask that of him. We just like him there.

A gift from Aunt Kathryn on that very first birthday, he still brings a smile to the face of the man that little boy became.

Boo is a good omen. Although his plush receded to what now resembles soft felt years ago the eyes are still button bright and friendly, granting us all a sweet memory of those birthdays and the people who remembered them.

Happy Birthday Brian!! Happy Birthday Boo!

Willie Nelson Has Cut Off His Pigtails!

Willie Nelson has cut off his pigtails!

Just when I thought the news couldn’t get worse, what with the economy in disaster mode, British oil smothering the Gulf Coast and volcanoes and earth quakes shaking up the world, this sad and sorry news crept silently across the bottom of my TV screen this morning.

The news people, who have no trouble articulating the tragic effects of all kinds of natural and man made disasters, evidently couldn’t bear to speak of it. I might not have noticed the report at all if I hadn’t been distracted by the commentator brushing at a fly hovering beneath his chin and causing it to drop to the bottom of the screen dangerously close to his coffee cup!

Willie Nelson without his pigtails! What can I say? Does this change the world or what? And in case you think me shallow and sophomoric I want you to know that I care nothing about the Lohann girl’s alcohol content, the pitiful childhood of Jessee James or what the odds are of all the conceptions in Hollywood becoming twins by natural means.

If you think I inflate the importance of this day it means you have never heard about The Day I Almost Met Willie Nelson!

The truest truism ever uttered is the one where at the end of your life you are far more likely to regret the things you did not do than the things you did. The day I almost met Willie was a perfect example.

I was going to the fair, The Sedalia State Fair to be exact, at Sedalia wouldn’t you know. Always an early up-and-outer type person I left before dawn from North Missouri to be there in time for the 8:00 a.m. Dairy Goat Milking contest. I got a good parking place and walked onto the empty fair grounds.

It was too early for most fair goers and the venders were just opening up. At a tiny coffee booth a guy was stacking his cups and getting ready for the crowd. His coffee smelled good. If I was a coffee drinker I would have bought some. Then this guy crossed the roadway right in front of me. He looked just like Willie Nelson, bandana scarf, pigtails, blue jeans... He went to the coffee booth and started talking to the big guy.

My thinking went like this. “He looks just like Willie Nelson would have looked twenty years ago”. He really looked a lot better than Willie Nelson did on TV.

And then..smugly.. ‘Why would a grown man walk around trying to look like someone else?”

The Willie Nelson looking man nodded pleasantly as I passed him and the coffee booth. I nodded back.

At my seat in the bleachers a good ten minutes before the Dairy Goat judging I dug out my fair program and right there on the front cover was a smiling picture of tonight's headliner, Willie Nelson, bandana, pigtails and all. He was at the fair!

I could have stopped to chat! I could have bought a cup of coffee and nursed it forever!

I could have met Willie Nelson!

But I didn’t do any of those things and the only thing that made me feel better was the determination that when that happens again I will buy that cup of coffee!

But how will I recognize him? The pigtails are gone! And there will be no need for the bandana I suppose so that will be gone too! I have kept that day tucked away in my mind under the heading of “unfinished business” for so long I feel like there is a great big hole there where Willie’s pigtails ought to be!

This is not good news.

Willie Nelson has cut off his pigtails.

Id’s My Blog and I’ll Cry Ib I Wand Do!!

I’be god a code in my head and my throad hurds and there’s a fly in da house!!

Easter, the Time of New Beginnings

Around here Easter is the real beginning of the year. It comes at the most marvelous time.

Just a few short weeks ago sleet and ice lashed and beat us. But now, in an eye blink of time, all snow and ice is gone and nothing but green stretches away across the pasture. Newborn calves dot the fields passed on my way to work and geese, who never do anything quietly, wake me early with the whoosh, whoosh of many wings and their excited discussion of travel plans laid down in their DNA by ancestors almost as old as the earth over which they fly.

The mother skunk who lives under Rudy’s Discount Smoke Shop, where I work, is not to be seen. I suspect she is tending a new family and the occasional white-tail does seen at the roadside are more alert..on guard and newly slimmed, from their late winter birthings.

The neighbor had the first yard sale of the year and “Eggs for Sale” signs are being posted up and down the road. I am anxious for the “perfect conditions” necessary to spring plow the garden. It has to be right. Not to wet… not too late…

Yes, Easter is the real New Beginning. I hope and pray a good and happy one for all of you.

On a Roll for Spring

Well, I'm definitely on a roll.

I made two loaves of bread and they are delicious, I cut my hair and look three months younger, the lilies, iris and tulips are popping through the ground and I have a line on a rocking horse for Ms. Ainsley. I hope she likes it.

I do love spring.

The tractor man has promised to come and plow the garden, the lawn mower man has promised to come rehabilitate the riding mowers, the mechanic has promised to do a brake thing on my car Wednesday, John plans to work on the siding soon, I have two new front tires and had the front end aligned ..on the car not on me.

I am glad to get this all taken care of. That way the choking and gasping when I open my bank statement will only occur once.

But I do love spring.

Progress on the Violin

Guess What!!

My son John put new strings on my violin and gave me a pitch pipe. A pitch pipe is a little thing you toot on to tune instruments. It has four notes, E A D and G. I had a little trouble with it and John, the little snot, said he didn't think they gave pitch-pipe lessons. He just couldn't pass it up, could he?

Well, he'll be surprised when I give my recital.

If things go well the program will consist of three songs, Claire De Lune, Danny Boy and Waltzing Matilda. If things go badly it will be Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Go Down Moses and Are You Sleeping Brother John. If things go very badly Are You Sleeping Brother John will be scratched.

For those who want to attend keep the following tentative dates open. April 14, 2022, June 4, 2023 and July 17, 2024.

These dates are subject to change with no notice.

Poncho's Audition & the Violin

I’ve decided to learn to play the violin.

Today, a lovely spring day, I chanced by a moving/yard sale that was only about ten miles down a half mud, half gravel road past the sign that first caught my eye. There I found a really nice violin with four strings and a rock-like hunk of resin in a battered old case. It only cost ten bucks and I just happened to have it! Oh happy me!

My daughter, who happens to live close by, has not been very supportive. I first became interested in the violin when she was an infant. I can’t remember now what ever made me want to play…it was so long ago. I do remember her brother and sister huddling under the sewing machine cabinet with their little hands over their ears when I practiced. Not a one of those kids had a lick of musical appreciation and never played an instrument. I blame it on my first husband’s genes because my two sons from my second husband are very musical. (Of course I had given up the violin by the time they arrived.)

Come to think of it, I’m sorry to say, my life has been riddled with failure. .just one debacle after another. Those violin lessons were just an example of a long string of incomplete and unproductive events in my life. The best I can say for myself is that on several occasions I have provided my neighbors and acquaintances with something to smile about.

But success, or victory or whatever you want to call it seems to elude me.

Take the time I took Kenny’s Beagle Hound pup, Poncho, to the Lyric Opera’s audition in Kansas City. They were looking for hound dogs for a production that had an English hunt scene and the lucky hound owner was to receive free seasons tickets. I love the theater.

I drove all the way to Kansas City from Henry County. The dog threw up in the backseat and wallowed in it. I had to stop at a car wash to hose him down.

When we got to Barney Allis Plaza in Kansas City the grassy little park area was full of well-dressed media folk parading their own mostly overweight but well-behaved dogs around on leashes. None of them looked like they had been through the car wash. I recognized several of the PBS-TV people that I had met through my Public Relations classes at CMSU but they didn’t seem to recognize me. It was just as well.

Poncho was pretty excited and let out that wailing, howling thing Beagle hounds do non-stop. He fought the leash and drug me all over the park, tangling us up with two fat, double-leashed Bassets and a skinny Greyhound who looked like he hadn’t eaten in three weeks.. The Public Relations Director who had seemed so very friendly on her visit to CMSU the last semester seemed rather cool.

I gave up and had to drag Poncho back to the car and we went home. But if you did happen to watch the news that night, KCMO-TV had a segment on the audition and the hound sound you heard was definitely Poncho.

I could go on and on about such failures but I am getting depressed.

However, I am more mature now and I believe the violin is just the ticket for a redeeming success!

The Census Lady's Visit

The Census Lady came the other day. We are now officially counted for posterity. I answered all her questions openly and freely. Why not? I love to talk about myself. I have no fear of all my personal info being plastered across the world. Most of my neighbors and acquaintances know my name anyway. They know I live here. They know who else lives here. I don’t much care about the rest of the population in that regard.

My neighbors and acquaintances know I don’t always keep the grass mowed and trimmed although the lady didn’t ask about it. They know I am a Democrat because of the bumper sticker on the back of my old Buick but she didn’t ask about that either. They probably know when and how much I am overdrawn at the bank, small towns not being big on personal privacy except that everyone wants it, but nothing about my bank habits was on the questionnaire. I’m glad about that. I always sweat when I lie.

She did ask if I could dress myself and such or had trouble with stairs and I asked her if she meant going up or coming down. There is definitely a difference. She asked me how many times I’ve been married and when the last happy divorce occurred. (my words.. not hers) About half way through the thing she asked me if I was deaf. That was kind of funny as we had been having quite an informative little conversation up ‘til then.

She asked if I had a telephone, a TV, bathroom plumbing, a sink with a faucet. I thought that was kind of cute except I can remember living in houses that did not have a faucet in the sink. Heck, I can remember living in houses without bathroom plumbing!

Anyway, I hope all this top-secret info guides those in high positions to make the weighty decisions they are charged with in the matters of indoor plumbing and how long it takes me to climb a flight of stairs and the date of my last divorce.

I’ve done my part!