Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Female friends took another female friend clothes shopping. 103 years old, the third friend had declared, “I’m tired of wearing bras. I want a garment to stop me from jiggling but I’m swearing off bras.”
My wife — who never wears a bra at home — exclaimed, “103 and she’s swearing off bras now? Boy, she has a lot more tolerance than me.”
Heard from my wife, who heard from a friend that other friends have been stricken with COVID. See, the annual Easter brunch planning is underway. We’re invited. So are the COVID couple. The wife answered the evite that they have COVID now but were hopeful they’d be better by the end of the month. She — the wife — has it worse.
Concerning, yes. As concerning are the ration of natural questions which come with COVID announcements. How’d they get it, and when? When did they test, and how are they both doing? What are their symptoms?
It’s basically the standard COVID script.
Sunshine glistens, highlighting white clouds with plump blue and gray muscles, cutting through the chilly air like a friendly furnace. A Cooper’s Hawk judges the human traffic from a high-wire act. Three blackbirds start an overhead interaction from different compass points, pulling my attention with their fervor. Flying toward a central tree, they posture on naked branches. Intense chatter explodes. Stopping, I eavesdrop to see what I can learn. One spreads their wings, exposing large white coins on their wing’s bottom, and offers a short, shrill, impassioned speech that silences the others. The three depart in relative silence but flap away in the same direction. Some accommodation seems at hand.
Around the corner, a crow sits in a high bare oak branch, black against a blue sky, beaking on about his world assessments. Further on, a robin preaches from the top of a sagging brown wooden fence protecting a yard.
Spring might be coming, if you believe the bird gossip.
The woman beside me at the coffee shop seemed so familiar that I had to speak. We talked about where I might know her from but nothing was uncovered.
I shrugged it off. It’s a small town and we’re similiar ages. Maybe similiar politics; I’m progressive and there are many progressives in town. I’ve probably seen her at a rally, protest, shopping, or concert. It’s one of those small-town perks.
Ever watch an animal stretch and yawn and suddenly envy them?
The barista and I chatted when I ‘ordered’. Ordering wasn’t needed; my order was known and delivered before I reached the counter.
During our chat, it was somehow revealed that the barista was 20 years old. Then it came out that her father was three years older than her when he became a father (she was the oldest), and she couldn’t imagine that. She was nowhere ready to be a parent, herself.
I, meanwhile, did the math, and made that her father was probably about 43 years old. Meaning, he wasn’t born when the Stones song I listened to on the car radio on the way to the coffee shop was released (“Wild Horses”, 1970). Curious, I asked her if she knew who the Stones were. Yes, she said. She knew them because Dad was a fan. His older brother had introduced him to them after their parents introduced the Stones to the older brother. All this made me think that her grandparents were probably just a few years older than me.
And all of this is so right and fine, and amusing.
I have trouble with names. For example, Calvin, a coffee barista who I’ve known for over two years. I call him Tyler. He’s a Tyler to me, not a Calvin. Tyler fits him better.
At least in my head.
Whenever I come home, I check to ensure the cats are still alive. I do the same with my wife if she’s napping or in bed. Is this normal behavior.
Signed, Am I Being Macabre?
When the rain or snow has been falling from a sky that’s almost as dark as night, and then sunshine breaks through and spreads bright waves of light and warmth, it’s a dazzling, uplifting scene to contemplate, pulling up my spirits with promises that it’s really not that bad.
The power of sunshine can be so theraputic.
My good ol’ Fitbit, which isn’t that old, actually — I’ll need to look that up — stopped working again.
First sign: at 9:15 this morning, it declared that I’d walked over 18,000 steps.
Had I been sleepwalking, I wondered? Chasing the cats, or saving them from a bear, cougar, or other beasts? Not that I recalled, and I believeI would have remembered that. So, must be something else.
Okay. I added resetting the Fitbit to my list of things to do but it was still nominally functioning, until, ‘lo, in the coffee shop, I tapped it for the time and got nada.
Well, I muttered in my mind. That sucks.
But what was really irritating was that, just a little later, as I wrapped up my reading day, I tapped my Fitbit to check the time.
Idiot! Habits are really difficult to stop.
Michael Seidel, writer 