Humans and other Animals

On my walk, I encountered a pup dog 🐶 I kind of knew whose it was and to which house he belonged. I told him to follow me "home" while other dogs 🐕🐩🐕🐩 across the street scolded him with their barks, as if to say, "You're naughty; if we have to be inside, or leashed, or penned, you have no right to be out!" When we got to the place with two ramps, there was a cat🐱 guarding the door. I stooped to look at his license and read the phone number out loud. The look he gave me indicated that he understood that if I had to, I would call his owner on my phone. Immediately, he clipped up the incline, and the two creatures stole into the house. 🐕🐈 I laughed through all this, because animals, whether they're across-the-street observers or "busted" puppies, have an intelligence that we humans underestimate.

Lord, Send Me a Sign

Okay...Grocery store adventures! 🛒 Yesterday's was a bit uneventful, except the 3 oz paper cups at Dollar💲 Tree 🌳turned out to actually be 2 oz cups, but Bill likes miniature things, so he's planning on putting coke in them. (They make good viewing-at-home communion glasses, too.)
As I entered Meijer today, there were these big old signs on the doors telling the customers that state law says they MUST wear a mask. "Well," I thought, "that does it. Surely, they'll comply with those signs." Oh contrare! Again, about 1/3 were wandering aimlessly about 🚶‍♀️🚶‍♂️ as if they'd failed their remedial reading 📖courses. As for arrows, ⬆️⬇️which are pretty easy to understand, you still managed to meet up with folks going the wrong way on a one-way "street". The 1/3 were also hard of hearing, because they failed to hear the P.A.📢 pep talk on using hand sanitizers and other precautions, (like wearing masks) which explained the why's and wherefores of doing those things. As I said, Bill likes miniature things, so I got him a teeny-tiny hand sanitizer bottle (and one for me, too).
But there were other good things like, actually finding bona fide masks😷 in the health section. I was wearing a sock.🧦 Now, I'd grown quite fond of socks on the face, so I traveled in a circuitous fashion, after getting Meijer-priced ink cartridges, ending up in the sock section. I thought the prices were "highway robbery" for just socks. I wanted something distinctive, and this took a long time to evaluate. I was about to "cave" to Hanes, but my eyes wandered to yet another display I hadn't seen, Aha! Only $5 for 2 pair. (As luck would have it, the receipt showed the 2 pair marked down to $1.25!) The distinctive aspect of one of the pairs is multi-colored puppy paw🐕🐶 prints. So, I hope I don't screw up the cutting and creative process.
Had to wait to hit the cleaning aisle before I found the nearly extinct disposable latex gloves. 🦖
And last but not least, food,🍉🍌🍒🥕which will hopefully carry us for another, say, week and a half.

Out There in the Grocery Arena

I like to talk about grocery adventures, since those are the only ones you can have these days. In a small store like Aldi's, it's really artful to avoid people. If they want me to come at senior times, you can bet I'm still sleeping. 😴 What do they think seniors are about, assuming they're early birds?🐦 I noticed a senior guy at checkout, wearing a mask, but it had fallen off to the side. So, why bother? 
Anyway, the clerk invited us to #1 aisle, so I went, with my black sock mask 🧦on with a coffee filter ☕️insert. He (unmasked) kept asking me questions, and I didn't do much talking. He should have been the one not talking. Basically, he wanted to know if I needed some help. It was either my gray hair 👩‍🦳cascading down my back or that I had a lot of stuff. Well, again, what could I say? I was stuck, between the side of the cart 🛒and whatever was behind me, and I couldn't get my ample figure👩‍🦳🛒 out of the vice. So, I just went along, quietly and meekly. 
He had a shield for his check out area, but I couldn't help but wonder why, when he was generally so "out there", near me.

A Hundred Million Miracles

Don't lose your sense of magic.🤹‍♂️ I remember when I received my first email, from just across town, and I told the one who wrote it, this is a miracle!
Well, I know it's hard for some to be locked up or down, whichever you want to call it. But I started my day with a Zoom class;🖥 this is something I'm being initiated into. Later on, I had a Dr. appointment/consultation, and no, I didn't go anywhere but here. The new initiation was talking to my Dr. face to face, (though I said I was a little more used to the computer or laptop); on my smart phone. 👩‍⚕️ So, that was a first, too. Talked long distance to someone else, too, the old fashioned way, on the landline.📞
Bill and I watched the first part of "Gun Smoke", and though we'd both planned on reading, Bill asked me why I was watching it. 📺 I said, those people never even dreamed of a time when they wouldn't need horses pulling their carriages, airplanes, phones, TVs, computers, and cell phones...
Yup, in 1918, there was a Spanish flu, but they didn't have these things to carry them through, not even SSRIs,😊 but then, that's another matter to "discuss" at another time.

Domestic Life

How many ladies are finally forced into domesticity?  I just kind of dabbled in it before now.

I was in a quandary about which organization project to tackle, so Bill counseled that the kitchen was first priority, and my office was second priority. Funny how the kitchen is the part that affects him getting in and out of the basement door. As a result of being stumped, neither one got done today. But at least, I was thinking about it. This took a great deal of deliberation.🤨

Taking time to label my office stuff. So, why is this label maker more complicated than learning a Bluetooth? I mean, that is, if you want to get really good at it. Note all the instructions.

There must be little elves doing magical things lately: Two items turned up we've been rummaging through stores for weeks, to find.

I didn't make the Au Gratins from scratch, but I stuck pre-cooked ham slices in there like a pro and baked them together. Husband said, Yummm...

Don't you Worry None. I'll be Right Back

Bill glances at Faux Noise once in awhile, to tell me that Hannity thinks it's time for us seasoned citizens to croak, so Hannity and his minions can be rich. So if that happens, I'm going to reincarnate as a Faux Noise-caster.👩‍💻 By then, Hannity will be a seasoned one himself, 🧓and I will come dressed in a dark-hooded robe and scythe.🧟‍♀️ No more retirement and grandchildren time for you, you used up, dried up old coot!😜
       

On the other hand, my mom told a story about a kid in a family who was intelligence-quotient challenged. 👶 The brothers and sisters were upset, because their sibling continually drooled. One of them said, "Aw just let her spit." That's why it's a good idea to just ignore and move on, most of the time, past outrageous, unbelievable, jaw-dropping posts. My motto: "Let 'em..."😜

Free to Just Be

 I feel as though I'm playing a part in "history", wherein all this has happened before, and the Playwright already knows the outcome.

When I was teaching adult education, it was required that teachers, in order to provide a guest-host atmosphere for students, ask this question, "What would you choose if you had time by yourself to do whatever you wanted? 

Freed from Continual Checking (for now)

It's been a vacation from appointments. Health insurers are continually checking to see if you can still see, your bones are holding up, your teeth are falling out, your boobs are okay, or whether or not you're still alive. 😀

Expected to stay here through May, but already, the health care workers are after me, calling for me to reschedule. Sorry, folks, I'm 🐔💩. Besides being a good citizen and fan of the governor, I finally get this hibernation 🐻 away from continual testing, and I don't mean for CoV19. They don't have enough tests for that here, probably because she tells the truth.

Slowing Down

It's not that I haven't experienced a little panic🧟‍♀️ a couple times or that I don't miss others, especially little people👧👩‍🦱, but ever since college graduation (having been sent to a school "out in the sticks"), I've missed being able to slow down. That's what my life was like, pretty much. I did a lot of bike riding🚵‍♀️, walking and hiking🚶‍♀️, sitting and dreaming🧘‍♀️, music making🎸, painting and puppetry🎨, reading 📖and writing🖋, and rehearsing, theatrically🎭. 
When "living life" came along, I thought, "When do I ever get a break?" Well, here it is. 

So, people fake protesting (since what's really permitted is peaceful protest, not guns) because they can't get out; yet there they are, looking like they're pretty "out there", just reveal they don't have much in the way of inner resources, much like the one who backs them.  Apparently, they have nothing better to do than broadcast hostility, with their emblems, and breathe out germs, bringing them back to our side of the state.
Get a life, "hollow people, heads filled with straw", credit to TS Elliot.

(On that note:  I think most grocery store people do as well as they can to be considerate, but ran into a lady, with no mask, yelling in the aisle that the world was going to hell. As she rounded the corner where I was, I shot down the other direction, and she mocked, hurry, hurry...I don't think I'm reading into this, but she was apparently a b---h.)

I'm reading a book📖about a girl who, back in history, had a wild imagination and managed to get so carried away in her own world, that she screwed up a lot of things (do I hear a drum roll for character identification?). So, I got to thinking about this. Let us "imagine" that we're all serious scientists👨‍⚕️👩‍🔬👨‍🔬 🔬(for me, this is a challenge) with the intent of preserving the earth,🌎 by living in one of those domes in Antarctica, 🌬doing research. Now, doesn't this noble cause during our quarantine make you feel all better? 🤪

You can still take walks in the sunshine, if you bundle up. The novel I'm reading is now influencing me to slow down, if you can get any slower, but have taken to naming homes and places, like one Victorian House, which houses a lot of people, I've decided to name my grandmother's 👵 upstairs apartment; other places would be Japanese gardens, if they have special little trees.🌳