Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Rope a Mope Friday Round-Up
There are weeks when there is nothing good to say. This might be one of them except the heat broke which gave the week a point it would otherwise not have. My petunias are leggy and turning brown, the tiny gnats are nesting around my front door, and thousands of women in Texas are wondering what in the goddamn hell they’re going to do now. And then there are the smirks – the Texas legislators and the U.S. Supreme Court getting all clever and fancy and sneaky. It’s something to overturn a fifty-year ruling with no hearing, no arguments, just a black candle burning in the middle of the night.
My husband had one of his many business meetings on the front porch this week. This gave him and his guest a perfect view of our curb trash including an old treadmill, a dining room chair with a chewed up cushion brought up from the basement, a never-worked-well canoe carrier, and a battered Time of the Month Club box. Plus the lawn was overgrown and raggedy. I left for my own meeting, hoping his guest wouldn’t use the bathroom since I hadn’t time to straighten it up but then thought ‘it’s his bathroom, too’ and his guest. This removed the issue from my brain only until I got home and he told me that yes, indeed, his guest had used the bathroom. It would never occur to my husband to worry about what the bathroom looked like – what is it like to have that kind of extra brain space?
Swirl now eats prescription renal support dog food. And the reason for that is pretty obvious. This is the consequence of adopting old dogs. Swirl is old and beautiful and seemingly so healthy. I’d have a broken heart about his kidney disease but it is too early. Meanwhile, there is the new food and lots of exercise outside and winter coming, thank God, and he will do well for a good while. But heartache is coming, but then, when isn’t it?
I went to a press conference yesterday which was really a demo for affordable housing. The event was inside City Hall with everyone gathered up in a hallway just outside a Common Council hearing room.Everyone was masked except the preacher who gave the best speech and then took his place back in the crowd, thus transfixing me on the question of how far away I needed to stand. I’d not been around so many people inside, or anywhere, in eighteen months and it felt great but also risky like riding a bike on a windy day on a very tall bridge. By the time I left, my KN95 mask had worked grooves into my nose and cheeks.
Tomorrow I’m setting up a new mom’s bedroom and a wee nursery in our guest room. We’re the landing zone for our single mom daughter after she leaves the hospital. It’s been a long time between babies here but I still have a pretty good rocking chair so it should be fine. It’s not what I thought I’d be doing right now but nothing I’m doing is.
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Photo by Michael Cox on Unsplash
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
I so love your evocative and sassy writing, Jan! I’m just starting a “Creative Non-Fiction” writing class thru Great Courses so I’m especially attuned to your style. Thanks so much for doing what you do. Even if it doesn’t feel special to you…your sometimes smelly gritty reality helps us to be grounded.