A whole week? in A small but passable life.

It’s been a week since I’ve scribbled anything. I’ve been lying poolside, listening to NPR, and I finally finished that novel that I found in the little RV park library. “The Time Traveler’s Wife” by Audrey Niffenegger was a fine story. I’d seen the movie and thought it wasn’t too bad. But now that I’ve read the original novel I realize that the movie missed the mark by a long shot. Movies will never be able to project that internal dialog, that world inside a person’s head. Never. The closest I’ve seen is “Mr. Robot”, which by the way has just blown it out of the water with the latest episode.

Anyway, last Friday found me once again wandering around Walmart while Carol did Mom’s nails. I had to wade into a flooded restroom to take a leak. I was tempted to just piss on the floor. There was a 65 inch 4k Smart TV for less than $800. Why would anyone need that? I told Mom to imagine what the Price Is Right would look like on that! She couldn’t imagine. We stopped in the garden center and got a poinsettia. I couldn’t believe that we left Walmart with buying only that.

Mom’s new table and chairs that she had ordered online finally arrived. I put it together and it now sits on the porch. It’ll probably never be sat at but at least it looks pretty up there with the poinsettia sitting on it.

Hopefully that will be Mom’s last obsession, her reason to fuss and fidget, for awhile until she thinks of some other worthless and unneeded consumer item to buy. At least she’s running out of room for crap!

The weather has been perfect. Highs in the low eighties and lows in the low sixties and high fifties. I woke up one morning and the atomic clock in the open window said 52 degrees. Glorious! I really don’t want to get up at 8am, but I do because I know Mom has probably already been up for hours and is waiting on her cup of coffee. So I get up, make my bed, put on a pot of coffee, and then come back out here to sit while I drink my three cups for the day.

Today Mom wants to go on a quest for quarter round trim, of a specific size to build more trays for Rummikub tiles. Last Tuesday we had seven full tables playing. We were short one tray.

I was planning on lying by the pool today because I didn’t yesterday, but I guess I have all Winter to do that. The forecast calls for above average temperatures for the coming week. With a forecast high of ninety degrees for Thanksgiving day, which if it happens will be a record high.

So yeah, one more cup of coffee and I’ll get dressed in street clothes and head out on this latest quest. Which will probably end up, with additional places to go added while in route, taking up most of the day.

The cracks in the bottom of my feet are finally healing up. I did trim off some callus with my pocket knife. Nearly seven months now without putting on socks or shoes. Except for the hike Daughter and I did that one morning.

I had also found a Peter Straub novel in the little library. c.1993. I just need to figure out if I’ve already read it. Or I could just start reading it and see if anything clicks.

Anyway, time to swallow the last of this coffee, pinch off the morning loaf, get dressed and get the circus started for the day.