Uncle Sam is My Hero Friday Round-Up

If I died today, it would be the last time the bed was made. The surviving spouse, as they call him, would sleep in a heap of sheets and blankets until the EMT’s came days after the neighbors called for a welfare check on him. Oh well. Everyone is different. I think one cannot get into bed unless the bed is made. This means, yes, that I will sometimes make the bed within minutes of getting in it. I’m not compulsive about much else.

In a formal meeting today, I introduced a set of serious items on the agenda by stating the first two and then, in reference to the third, saying “blah, blah, blah.” Out loud. I clapped my hand over my mouth as the group started to laugh, and I wondered where in my brain was that stored. What happened to my businesslike demeanor? I don’t know but it was fun and funny to mess up, to have some relief from my unceasing perfection.

I bought four $1 tomato plants, a $1 green pepper plant, a pair of earrings, three pins, seven greeting cards for 20 cents apiece, and a picture of Uncle Sam at the senior center today. The total was a wallet shattering $18. When I told the old guy I probably needed a second green pepper plant, he said, “Look, there are four shoots in that pot,” so in the interest of extreme old lady thrift, I put the second pepper pot back. I love old people so much.

A colleague has a significant vision impairment. Today, in our meeting, he asked that others send him messages via text or his personal email so he can use the text to speech tool which doesn’t work with his official email. And it was one more time that I was reminded that we so often don’t know the work required for some of us to be present. So much happens out of our sight, if you will.

“The world is too much with us,” said William Wordsworth. And never was this truer than this moment. Waking up yesterday to the news that the Republicans’ obscene budget bill triggered a deficit so large that mandatory Medicare cuts will occur made me sick. I started railing about this to my husband but he said he didn’t want to talk about it, he was reading about baseball. I found this irksome until I remembered Wordsworth. We have to take the world in small bites right now. Or we will choke.