Skip to main content

A confession...or two



   I don’t know how to tell you this.
   I have a job. It’s a part-time job and I’m not sure it will continue after the summer, but I’m counting it anyway.  I know.  It’s the story of my life. You could almost cheer for me but it’s just a little too uncertain to celebrate.  It does mean I shower early every day and put on clothes that match somewhat and it requires a car ride and a door key to the place. That sounds like a real job doesn’t it?
   On top of the blurriness of my employment, I am also doing something I’ve never really done much of before. I am copy editing. Oh, I’ve been an editor. I can decide which story stays and which story goes, and what to put on page 3 but I’ve never worried about using a semicolon so much in my life. Or a capital letter or the space bar. It’s quite something. I’ve already lost several hours sleep over letting Roxberry slip through when it should have been Roxbury.
   I have to admit that the routine feels good. And today I worked on deadline day and the server was out for a couple of hours. I felt the rush of adrenaline just like the old days only this time I realized it wasn’t my rush and I could walk out the door leaving everyone else to deal with the rest of deadline day. Honestly, that part was really, really cool.
   And while we’re discussing new experiences, I want to talk a little bit about sunglasses.
   As my old friend Evelyn Stelmashuck says, wearing sunglasses makes me feel like I am “showing on myself.” That’s right. It’s the same with hats. I just cannot bring myself to wear either one of those props. I’ve gone hatless and sunglassless my whole life.
   Well that’s all changed now. I bought a pair of sunglasses with very smart multicolored frames moments ago at Leslie’s Drugstore where the cashier told me they were “cute.”  I plan to wear them. The sun is so omnipresent here that I really don’t have much choice. It’s the sunglasses or laser surgery within the next few years if I don’t bite my weird phobia and put them on. And I took up wearing the occasional baseball cap months ago but only when there’s a slight drizzle outside.
   Let this be a lesson to you: Indeed, you can change. It all depends on where you are and how you adapt to your surroundings. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go out on the deck and read a book with my new sunglasses. The sun is too bright today for baseball caps. 

 Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction. - Adlai E. Stevenson



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

He sells sea shells, I wish

   So now rather than being obsessed with fake fingernails I can’t afford, I’m becoming obsessed with checking this blog. I’m pretty sure all 52 views were made by either me or my husband.   That leads me right into the current situation at hand. We need friends. We’re desperate for them. I’ve started handing out my telephone number to people I meet while doing my meager freelance work. They think it’s for the story I’m writing but really it’s in hope that someday they’ll find a reason to call and then I can hit them with, “By the way, do you play cards? Bingo? Gin Rummy?” If I wasn’t so arthritic I’d throw Twister in there.    It’s not so much for me, it’s my husband who likes to have people around. I have become hermit-like since moving here while he has become convinced we could die here and not be found for months. He had friends back in Syracuse but he chose to stay home at night with his loving wife. Now all of a sudden I get the impression he’d h...
6 comments
Read more

I Like to Call Them Ow-Bows

   It’s a toss-up. Do I write about the fact that if you search “jobless goddess” in Google the dairy goddess and the library goddess come way ahead of me, or do I write about the fact that my husband is incapacitated due to a broken elbow? I guess I’ll go with the broken elbow. Besides, who the hell breaks their elbow anyway? My husband of course.    It started out innocently enough. I, in my desire to lose weight and become the wrinkly, thinner woman I was meant to be, decided we should start up the morning walks again. I prodded him while he was still under the covers. “Come on, let’s do it. You know we have to do this,” I said while tugging on my really sexy yoga pants (which, by the way, never get used for yoga).    To his credit, he got up, pulled on his pajama pants and went with me. We got about a 16 th of a mile past the driveway before he landed in the gravel. I’m talking a bed of gravel. Gravel embedded in the palm of your hand. Gravel ...
2 comments
Read more

Parish the Thought

     I love small towns. When I lived in Parish, New York, there was no end to the reverie, not to mention the constant parades.      We had a Halloween parade through town featuring people of all ages marching in costume along a rather abbreviated parade route. It all culminated at the fire barn where a couple of old draft horses would pull along a hay wagon. Most all town festivities featured the fire barn.       Monday night bingo held there. The caller was a volunteer firefighter prone to bringing on fits of laughter when he drew N 44…which he pronounced as "N farty-far," whereby producing great gales of cackling from the middle-aged women who showed up every week, I think maybe just to flirt with the caller and the other male volunteers who collected their money. Don't get me wrong, I'm not making fun. I spent more than a few Monday nights there myself.      The gas stations served as restaurants in Parish. You...
2 comments
Read more