Late May Morning Ramble
On the back porch swing, the one that’s 14 years old and was the first birthday present from your now husband and has been repaired twice with new chains but still has the original cushions all faded and worn, and that squeaks and squeals and scares off the wildlife, the morning is cool and crisp enough even on a late May morning – 61° – to scoot inside and fetch the rag quilt from the bed, the one made with flannel backing to match your plaid quilted comforter with its autumn colors- leaves of green and rust, cranberries, butters – its edges frayed purposefully for that shabby- chic/ rustic modern farmhouse look, even though your house is your own unique blend of mix-matched styles without rules for fitting in except that nothing is mere frippery and it all serves a purpose, unlike those candles people never burn because they think tomorrow will always come and who keep clothes five sizes too small because they also believe their thyroid gland might come back to work full-time, even in a world that can’t hire enough help not to have long lines at the short-staffed sandwich shops and dollar stores that were called dime stores in the 1970s before so much inflation, because unemployment now makes it easier to stay home and watch stories all day like my grandmother used to do in her living room in front of her ironing board – watching As the World Turns and All my Children and Days of our Lives in her dusters and terry cloth stretch slippers and hair net, only without their modern-day irons since they aren’t going anywhere these days to actually need pressed pants or button down shirts, and besides – the cleaners would do it in today’s world of modern conveniences anyway, like the way you use Clicklist to avoid time spent grocery shopping when you can click a few days’ or a week‘s worth of items, pay for it online, pull up and park and wait for it to be loaded and drive off never having stepped out into the parking lot, even though convenience is not the reason you use Clicklist – your reason is introversion and not having to wait on people who don’t know what brand of pork skins they want to buy and who stand in the aisle with entire extended families blocking the way like they’re aimless deer standing in a herd, caught in the headlights and frozen in stupid, while you cuss newly-invented words under your breath hoping modern technology never finds a way to flash across your forehead for all to see or hear what you’re muttering to yourself while you – at the same time – ask forgiveness and summon God’s peace for the polite breath to say “excuse me” to these complete morons and wait for them to move at the speed of two-toed sloths to the side so you can go around and grab your husband a simple bag of respectable Doritos that you’re glad Clicklist saves you the trouble of doing, which even at the unwaived $4.95 shopping fee, is well worth the money when you are a person of pretty routine habits and meal preferences to know exactly what you want without feeling the need to venture out with so many options because you don’t have the time or desire to cook new recipes or dine like royalty after working all day – you just want to put a small strip of steak and a piece of marinated salmon on your 14×12 electric grill plugged in on the porch and pop some steamable edamame and a bag of Uncle Ben’s Jasmine Ready Rice into the microwave and call it a meal in 20 minutes and hope and pray this time – without all the mind cussing beforehand – that you didn’t contract Alpha Gal Syndrome from the Lone Star Tick you pulled off your neck last week and saved in a Ziploc bag just in case you keeled over and died so your husband would then be able to confirm for the investigators that he didn’t choke you – you died of a legit tick bite from eating the meat of a hoofed animal and asphyxiated because you failed to heed caution and get the tick and yourself tested to know whether or not to get an EpiPen for times when you mix-meat grill both hoofed and gilled on the same shared surface, and all of this makes you stop mid-swing and wonder about the risks you’re taking with outdoor swinging, bundled up in a rag quilt where your warm body is nothing but one big open invitation to every Lone Star tick eyeing you from the freshly-bushhogged edge of the yard, now crawling as fast as they can, running as fast as ticks can run, sprinting towards you to sink their Alpha Gal poisons into you and bury their full heads into your flesh and drink from you like a frat boy drinks from a keg for days on end, all drunk with lethargic unawareness like that same herd of deer from the pork skin aisle – – so you quickly wrap up and go inside, thinking it’s safer snuggling with your sweet little Schnauzer on the couch – your very sweet little dog who probably brought the Lone Star tick indoors to you on the paws of his Nexgarded self in the first place last week, to pass off to your unNexgarded neck in the dead of night while you slept peacefully under the rag quilt …..
Common Threads 