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Tuesday, May 21, 2013

May Madness

Some months it's just not worth getting out of bed.

The lilacs are finally in bloom after a lingering winter. My cats are sunning themselves on the front steps. Those are two good things that have happened so far this month.

On the flip side, I've lost my glasses. Again. I have several pairs of glasses, one pair so old that I look a bit like a bug when I put them on (as pointed out by my friend Jan on her recent visit here). But the two unbug-like pairs have vanished, under a chair or beside a bed or resting on some table as yet undiscovered. I'm a contact wearer but am down to one lens, which has a chip in it, and I haven't found time to go to the eye doctor for a new prescription. So I've been reduced to wearing the bug glasses in my search for the lost spectacles. The other night I was coming down the stairs, bug glasses in hand, and stumbled over shoes I'd foolishly left on the bottom step. Staggered, grabbed the rail, saved myself. Alas, in the midst of the stumble, the bug glasses in my hand were snapped in two. 

Harry has escaped twice from the back fence. The first time he was spotted racing down my street by a friend (fortunately he came home unsquashed by a truck) and the second time, a few days ago, I went to check on him and saw him fooling around in the bushes by my car, again unfettered by the wooden walls built to contain him. Again, he came to me when I called. At least he's coming back, about which I am relieved as in the past when he's escaped he's been gone like a shot, through the gate and hell-bent for Main Street. I discovered his escape hatch (a hole dug under the fence by my terrier son) and plugged it. I am now compulsive in looking out the kitchen window at him, anticipating another prison break when he finds more soft under-fence soil.

The same day of Harry's most recent escape, he murdered three baby rabbits, two of which he presented to me in full bloody carcass form on my kitchen floor. The third was mostly devoured by the time I got to him. He looked up at me, rabbit entrails dangling from his smiling and bloody teeth. Luckily, since I have no glasses, the image was blurry.

Yesterday I was hanging flower baskets on my front porch and noticed that a wicker love seat, which in truth I was planning to toss to the street due to a broken leg, was missing. Porch thieves have struck. I only hope when they sit on the thing the back leg finally collapses and they fall over, cracking their stupid skulls.

This morning, while writing this, I was on my porch admiring the lilacs -- one of few May pleasures so far -- when a large bee darted from a lilac blossom, made a swooping turn, and took a high dive into my half-full coffee cup. At least I saw it happen. Had I not, I'd more than likely be in the ER right now facing doctors with tweezers pulling a stinging insect out of my throat.

Ok. Karmic message received. I'm going to pull the May blankets up over my head and hunker down until June.

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About Me

Newspaper columnist; blogger; author of Delta Dead; author of 101 Tip$ From My Depression-Era Parents; author of Australian Fly; editor: ...And I Breathed (author, Jason Garner, former CEO of Global Music at Live Nation), "A History of the Lawrence S. Donaldson Residence"; "The Port Washington Yacht Club: A Centennial Perspective"; "The Northeastern Society of Periodontists: The First Fifty Years"; editor: NESP Bulletin; editor: PWYC Mainsail; past editorial director: The International Journal of Fertility & Women's Medicine; past editor of: Long Island Power & Sail, Respiratory Review; Medical Travelers' Advisory; School Nurse News; Clear Images; Periodontal Clinical Investigations; Community Nurse Forum