Opinion

Yesterday I was picking up a sign from a listing that had sold. I get my lockbox and grabbed my sign and take off to my vehicle. I lean it against the car, open the hatch and lay the seat down. I maneuver my sign in and start to close the hatch when I see something stuck to my sign. A bright green frog the size of my hand! Luckily the owner’s son was there and my screams beckoned him. He asked “Is it a snake or a frog?” before he came to help. I feel if it had been a snake, I was on my own. He kindly relocated the frog and I went on my way. Can you imagine if I had not seen the frog and took off with it? Cleanup on aisle 2… Last night I dreamed I was dating Robert Di Nero and he got arrested. I read yesterday was his birthday. I assume he got picked up after our night of celebrating. I just discovered the surefire way to get your husband to fix something for you. Start your sentence with “Can you use duct tape on things that heat up?”

My family and I recently visited Pocahontas to watch the eclipse. I wanted to reach out to let you know how much we enjoyed our visit and to thank you for your hospitality. We drove all night from North Carolina towards the path of totality with no final destination in mind. Just as the sun was rising we fortuitously arrived in Pocahontas at a beautiful park by the river with clear blue skies.

MIKE: “I just realized the hot blonde over there wasn’t staring at me but the tv above us.” ME: “No baby... I’m sure she was staring at you.

Sitting here today, I keep thinking about the little rocking chair, with thunder rolling outside. It’s warm and dry here in The Gallery window, looking out. I never tire of the view of The Historic Court Square. The rocking chair was a gift to Mama on her third birthday. Her sister, Geneva, already married and gone from home, also got Mama a wicker doll buggy. I have a picture of Mama with the buggy, wearing long stockings and double T-strap Mary Jane shoes, as a much-loved little sister and the baby of the family, born when Grandma was thirty-six years old. The chair was oak with a clear varnish finish and a thin strip woven cane bottom. Mama loved the chair dearly—what child isn’t happy with a chair just their size? Ten years after Mama, her nephew Donald came along to enjoy rocking. At some point, one of the rockers got broken. Grandpa, a cabinet maker, fixed it, and to this day, it has held up. Ten more years passed, and it was my time. Grandma and I rocked many happy hours side by side. If my cousin Steve was there, we took turns sharing that rocker. I was four months older than him, and people would ask Grandma if we were twins. When I was six, my sister Janie was born, and soon she was crowding me out of that rocker, which I still wedged myself into. One Christmas, it was given a fresh coat of bright, cheery red paint and placed near the huge Christmas tree, where it reigned over the Christmas festivities. The baby of the family then claimed it for her own, all those long curls rocking with the chair. Donald had a couple of young sons by then, and you know the story by now. It left Indiana and made the move to Oklahoma with us. I don’t know how we managed to keep it all those years through all those moves.

My mama was born in 1927. Not many women wore slacks, jeans, or dungarees at that time. Then came a war, and the men went away, and women started working in factories, doing men’s jobs, and they started wearing pants! When the men returned home from war, most women went back to wearing dresses. When the men came home, they liked their ladies to look feminine. My mama was one of those women. I was born in 1947, and when I started school in Indiana, girls were still not allowed to wear jeans or slacks to school. We lived two or three blocks from the Ohio River, and winters could be very harsh. Sometimes in the winter, we girls nearly froze walking to school. Our skinny legs would turn blue. At home in winter, I could wear elastic waist corduroy pants with flannel linings. They were warm and comfy. We turned the cuffs up to show pretty plaids and wore a solid-colored shirt. There is only that one photo of me standing on the back of my cousin’s tricycle wearing pants. I was five at the time, visiting my Uncle John’s.

I was driving down the road yesterday and glanced down at my speedometer. I had a slight panic attack when I saw it said 110. I automatically hit the brakes thinking something was wrong and it was accelerating on its own. After my mini heart attack and further investigating, I determined I had it set on kilometers instead of mph. Great. Like I don’t have enough to tend with having to try to see to drive, now they want me to do math too?