Being back online is a blessing for a writer

Time for air conditioning

                How dependent I am on a working internet at my advanced age was brought home to me when a July 2 thunderstorm took out the modem. Even after a 52-minute consult with two Filipino women—one whom I could understand; the other whom I couldn’t—and trying everything they suggested, which I’d already done once, a tech was scheduled for Tuesday, the 7^th between 2 and 4 p.m. FIVE DAYS LATER! OH, WOE!

                By my schedule, I should be napping since I arose with the alarm to get my taxes to town to the agent, to buy stamps at the post office, to buy printer ink at Office Depot, which was locked and barred, then buy birdseed at Tractor Supply with Mother’s Day gift cards from my younger daughter. Three errands out of four wasn’t bad, eh? Oh, and I stopped at a Dollar General for retirement cards. Lately, my cousin and my BFF have both retired. And now I had stamps!

                I was more careful selecting bird seed this time because the young birds didn’t care for all the small yellow seeds; they wanted sunflower seeds. In desperation one day, I bought some cockatiel seed from the grocery store. No, thank you. Perhaps the squirrels and chipmunks enjoyed what was spit out or pushed out, or what I dumped out the following morning.

                I was saddened by the death of Hugh Downs. In 2014, I read his book, Letter to Great Grandson, 2004, Scribner, p. 93 where he said, “To walk around the south pole—thus around the world—takes twenty-four steps, each step in a different time zone.” This scrap of paper was one of the things I found when I cleaned off the surface for the modem. Isn’t that strange, that I found his quote from six years ago around the time of his death? Wonders never cease.

                Birthday joys abounded even as late as today. My older daughter and her son, who was in Finland as an exchange student until the country “deported” all exchange students at the onset of COVID, came by to visit. We social-distanced. She brought fresh plums and tommy-toe tomatoes from a farmers’ market in Conway and a fresh, still-in-the-package mask. Jake, who will be a music major at UCA this fall, looked through my enormous stack of LPs and took home a plastic crate full. Now, who would like the others?

                Stay out of the heat if possible; wear a mask in public, and stay safe otherwise.

Grandson Billy Paulus and nephew Keith Hoggard @ my 80th birthday party