Sunday, July 4, 2010

FAREWELL TO A GOOD MAN

It’s the 4th of July and firecrackers are going off all around me. There are no beautiful fireworks tonight or even the night before. Our town does the big display on carnival weekend. The noise is enough to drive our dogs bonkers. Most are hiding under the beds.

I knew I was in trouble when I walked to church this morning. The church is only two blocks away and my left foot kept rolling under. By the time I got to church I was exhausted. I spent much of my time in church worrying about the walk home. I should have used a cane. It was nice this morning, even hot. We are ready for a streak of warm weather. I had errands to run and when I got back I needed to clean up the grill and make sure it was ready. It was warm enough that I took my sweatshirt off. As I was finishing the job, the clouds started to roll in. It took very little time before deciding to move the eating part inside. It’s the NW. Everyone else is having nice weather. We are in sweatshirts with cloudy and possible showers. Showers here are not really showers. Usually they are a kind of mist or light drizzle. But it is always cold. I would love to walk in the rain, but not here.

It was a terrific BBQ. Over 40 people attended. That’s our biggest crowd ever. Boy did we have food. We had enough to go into the highways and byways to feed the masses. A few who wandered in might have been from that crowd. I never saw them before. Besides celebrating the 4th, we were celebrating the monthly birthdays. By the time we got around to the cake, none of the five people with birthdays this month were even in the dining room. We sang anyway. I don’t know why. Tradition, tradition (sing with gusto) we also had three cakes. There was plenty left over. We will have it for coffee break the rest of the week.

The maintenance man was talking with me outside at the grill when he got an emergency call for the other property. It was just at the time we were going inside to present him with some farewell gifts. So we waited and we waited and then waited some more. (Don’t you just love waiting)? More and more people were drifting away. By the time he got back there may have been 18 people left. He talked more and gave more information than he would have had the crowd been larger. But it was small enough that we sat around in a circle and he talked conversationally about his move, and invited us all to come see him in Florida. I would like to, but there are a lot of things I would like to do and probably won’t do. It’s no fun bring poor on my world class tastes.

Maria is my right hand gal when doing a food event. She is organized and a very good cook to boot. The biggest problem we have with her is ordering people around. Some of us have been trying to teach her words such as please and thank you. They’re tough words. She didn’t throw them out, but she was far less bossy than usual. My heart aches for her. She has several health problems and they are greatly affecting her attitude. She is generally lashing out more. If we can get that under control, we might work on getting her to forgive and forget. Naw, it will never happen.

Walking around on that gimp foot left me exhausted. I watched one show when I returned and sat to write this before dropping off. I know this is a weak report. I’ll do better tomorrow, hopefully. If I can’t get funny, I’ll run a chapter of a Bill Cosby book.

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