Car-isma

I grew up in a family that always had a car. To us it was a method of transportation. No fuss, no muss. If you got in, turned the key and it started , it was great. We never waxed, washed or buffed. It was not a priority.  It was a piece of metal. My life now revolves around a car. I didn't give birth to it but it has become a third child. It is pampered and cared for. It has cost more than a years college tuition at an Ivy League school. I will never understand "car people". I give my heart to something that returns the love. Maybe a car does that in a way that I just do not see.

Fig Tree

Nothing is sweeter than eating fruit from a tree that you have grown. Two years ago on the day of my son's engagement party, his future father-in-law planted a fig tree in my backyard. It wasn't really a tree. It was a leafless branch. He told me to water it daily and within five years it would bear fruit. For two years I looked at this twig and waited to see a change. Last month I saw leaves sprouting from it. I was so happy. Finally after two years of being nothing more than a piece of wood, there was a change. I never looked too closely at it after that. Last week I took a closer look and there they were. Tiny figs. A few of them. I was so happy that the tree was bearing fruit in only two years instead of five. I do not have a green thumb so my expectations of growing my own figs was rather low. In a few more weeks, I will be able to eat my favorite fruit fresh off of the tree. I cannot wait.

The Great Divide

For over twenty years I have been dining out with my Mah Jongg girls every few months. It is the most pleasant, easy dinner. I am using the word easy, specifically. It is meant to describe a group of people that feels comfortable with each other. There is an equal give and take of conversation. Each person is genuinely happy for the other person's accomplishments. Maybe that comes with having a long history with each other. Maybe it comes from each person having a pleasant temperament. Either way it is always a fun evening. We order good food and always leave room for dessert, even when there really is no room. Throughout the years I have an unspoken assigned job. I have been given the responsibility of equally dividing dessert. We order 2 desserts and need them to be divided into four equal parts. It used to be five when we had another group member. I size up the dessert and use my spatial relation skills to figure our how to make it equal. Not every dessert is an even shape. That is where my "great dividing skills" come in. I hope to hold this job for another twenty years.

Heat Wave or Eat Wave

My sister and I decided to add exercise to our weekly routine. Last week we went to the local high school and walked the track four times. Each lap is 1/4 mile so we felt that a full mile was a good start. The track is new and cushions your feet. I am glad to see my tax dollars at work. Last night we planned to walk again. It was 91 degrees but we still went to the track. Since we made the commitment to be healthy we did not want to back out. We walked 2 laps and decided it was just too hot to continue. We then put a contingency plan into motion. We drove to McDonald's and got sweet tea and caramel mocha latte and then continued on to Dunkin Donuts for chocolate chip muffins. Boy, this is a health plan I could really live with!

Unsavory People

The oddest thing happened yesterday afternoon. I was expecting my daughter-in-law for dinner at around 5pm. My puppy Shelby has designated himself as the community watch dog and barks anytime someone walks by my house. At around 5 o'clock he started to bark but in more of a frantic tone. I went to the door expecting "J" and instead I found 2 strangers on my lawn. One of them was a woman in her 30's walking a big ugly dog. The other one was a small man, in his 40's walking with an empty baby carriage. The man looked a little "out of it". I opened the door and went on to the front porch and said, "Can I help you"? The woman looked at me and responded, "No" but never moved off the lawn. I wanted her to go away so I then told her that my lawn has deadly chemicals and her dog's feet would be burnt. She slowly moved off and walked away. I watched them walk down the block and do this on another neighbor's lawn. I have no idea what they were looking for, but if I ever see them on my block again I will call the police. They had to have been up to something.

Internal Alarm

My body has an internal alarm clock. It is set for 6am. It is not like the new types of alarm clocks that have a Monday to Friday setting and a Saturday/Sunday setting. Mine is a seven day a week type. No matter what day it is, my eyes open at 6am. On weekend days when I would love to sleep at least an hour later, my eyes open at 6am. It doesn't even matter what time I go to sleep. The wake up time remains the same. This morning I am tired, but no matter how hard I tried to fall asleep again, I couldn't. So I am up, dressed and ready to go to work with time to spare. My motto should either be, "the early bird catches the worm" or "no rest for the weary".

Old Days

Last night I attended a small gathering of 10 people. Most of us had not known each other. The couple who invited us knew everyone. As usual, when new people get together, it becomes a game of who's who. Like the book "Six Degrees of Separation", most people have someone in common. As it turned out, this particular group had gone to the same high school. Although their paths never crossed then, each one knew the other one's friends. At one point a telephone call was made to someone's sister, as she had dated one of the men at the gathering. Most of the people sitting around the dessert table were over sixty years old but they remembered high school events as if it was yesterday, down to the clothes they were wearing and the foods they ate. For a few hours last night, we were all 18 again.