culture | Bertram's Blog

Cogitation

June 26, 2022 — Pat Bertram

It was supposed to rain last night and well into today, so I was going to take it easy and do nothing, and when I finished doing nothing, I was going to take a nap. Unfortunately, the rain did not materialize except for a few drops that didn’t completely darken the sidewalk.

I still took it easy, though I did have to water my grass and newly seeded garden. (I didn’t want to spend all summer looking at the gone-to-seed larkspur, so I pulled them up and planted marigolds and a few other flowers that should last until fall.) Even though it didn’t rain, it was a pleasantly cool day, so that was enjoyable.

All this taking it easy, unfortunately, has given me too much time to think about things I’d rather not think about, such as the ramifications to the recent Supreme Court ruling. From what I understand, a lot of the power behind HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) came from Roe vs. Wade, which protected the medical privacy of individuals, though that may not be as significant as I thought. I paused here to read a few articles about how private medical records really are now, before the ruling, and they aren’t as private as we’d like to believe. Although our records are supposed to be accessed only by those to whom we have given permission, health insurance providers, law enforcement, and the government are all able to ask for the records. And then, of course, any time we get lab work done, the lab pretty much owns whatever records they glean as well as the actual samples taken from our bodies. Still, the ruling does make the whole privacy issue a bit dicey.

Even worse, bans are not just about forcing women to carry babies, even unviable babies, to term, especially since the USA shockingly has the highest maternal mortality rate of all developed countries and is the only country where the mortality is increasing. It’s also about women who suffer miscarriages. Abortifacients are given to women who have miscarried to make sure the fetus is completely dispelled. I can’t imagine what those poor women who are already suffering from a miscarriage would have to deal with if they also had to contend with accusations of abortion.

I hope I’m wrong, but I see a whole lot of heartache for a whole lot of women ahead.

As for other medical issues, one that involves me more directly, is the opioid crisis. If Percocet is removed from the market because some people get addicted, I will have no recourse when it comes to pain. When I was in the hospital after I destroyed my arm, they tried just about everything, even morphine, and nothing but Percocet even dimmed the pain. I ended up with a lot more pain than I should have because although the doctor prescribed six pills a day, the pharmacists refused to honor the prescription until they decided when it was okay for me to get more pills. Even though I was on the pills for months, I knew I’d never get addicted. The drug never made me feel good and never took away all the pain (just made it bearable). They did, however, make me disoriented and constipated. And they made me itch all over.

I would think, if people and government entities and regulatory agencies wanted to get personally involved in people’s medical business, they would figure out a way to make such potent (and necessary) drugs nonaddictive, or barring that, figure out a simple test to see how someone would react before prescribing the drug. Instead, they are taking a shotgun approach and attempting to ban the drugs altogether. I can’t imagine what horror I would have endured without the one painkiller that worked.

Luckily, I am not in any pain at the moment except for occasional knee issues. And luckily, too, this time of cogitation will pass, and once again I’ll be focusing my attention on something I might have a modicum of control over — my yard.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in culture, life. Tags: doing nothing, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA, miscarriage and abortion, no rain, opioid crisis, supreme court ruling. Leave a Comment »

Inequity

June 25, 2022 — Pat Bertram

The only time I watch television is occasionally when the woman I am looking after wants to watch. Usually we watch Judge Judy, though sometimes we watch the news.

I’ve been feeling rather smug since the fear-mongering tactics of the newscasters don’t work with someone who’s already been there. For example, if the prime interest rates are the highest they’ve been in twenty years, as they said, that means that I saw even higher rates twenty-plus years ago. If inflation is the worst in forty years, as they said, it means that forty-plus years ago, I experienced a worse rate of inflation. Same with the ups and the downs of the Dow. Been there. Survived that.

I must admit, though, that any smugness was wiped out by the shock of yesterday’s news. Truly stunning — from one minute to the next, this country’s clock was turned back fifty years. I don’t see how it’s possible. I don’t see how it became possible, especially since it wasn’t that long ago various factions were trying to get late-term abortions legalized. Since in Roe vs. Wade, first trimester terminations were acceptable, but later terminations were acceptable only if the mother’s health was in danger, making late-term abortions legal would have effectively overturned part of Roe vs. Wade, but to overturn the whole thing, banning all abortions? What the . . . ?

It seems simple to me. If you think even first trimester abortion is immoral, don’t have one. But other than that, what possible difference can one woman’s struggle with impending motherhood have to do with anyone else? People who think pregnancy termination is murder, well, so is the death sentence, so is sending our young people to other countries to be cannon fodder in distant wars. So why not terminate death row? Why not stop sending people to war? While we’re at it, why not protect children in school?

Why not a lot of things.

I can understand taking federal funding away from abortion clinics, because truly, why should taxpayers who think abortion is immoral have to pay for them? But to completely remove the option of termination for any reason, even incest or rape (as will be the law in some states), is truly unconscionable. There could possibly be a case made for women who willfully participate in sex because they did make a choice (though the choice they made might not be the one they have to live with) but women — and girls — who did not have any choice in the matter shouldn’t be penalized. They were already penalized too much.

I have no idea what to make of any of this, especially since pro-lifers are only pro-life as long as that life is a fetus. Once it becomes a baby, those very same people stop caring. What is going to happen to all those unwanted babies? (Unwanted even by those who oppose abortion.) What is going to happen to all those mothers, especially those who are unable to support the children they now have?

And why are only women being punished? It takes two to make a fetus. If the woman is forced to be a mother, why isn’t the man forced to be a father? If the woman’s life and income are at risk, why shouldn’t the man also bear some of the risk? If pregnancy is God’s will, why is Viagra allowed — wouldn’t the inability to get it up also be God’s will? Couldn’t it be God’s way of preventing pregnancy?

You’d think from all of this that I’m a liberal; I am not, although I do hold some so-called liberal views. Nor am I a conservative, though I hold some so-called conservative views. But my bewilderment at the Supreme Court decision? That isn’t about being liberal or conservative. It’s about being intelligent and empathetic, seeing beyond the idiocy to the very real problems that will be arising. Some states are talking about banning women from going to another state to take care of an unwanted pregnancy, though to monitor such situations would be even more horrific than what is going on now. Other states are talking about banning morning-after pills; some are even talking about banning contraception. Does anyone else see beyond the politics and the immorality of the moralists to the insanity of it all?

I generally try to stay away from writing about the issues of today, but this most recent issue is so beyond the pale that I can’t get over it.

I suppose not having to deal with the specter of an unwanted pregnancy is a benefit of getting older. So not only have I been there when many of the worsts have happened, so not only was I there when Roe vs. Wade was put into effect to the revulsion of almost everyone I knew, I am also here at the end of that particular era.

I’ve survived all that. It makes me wonder, though, how many women won’t survive this inequity.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.

Posted in culture, history/myth, life. Tags: highest interest rates in twenty years, late term abortion, men should bear responsibility for pregnancy, pregnancy terminations, Roe vs Wade, viagra goes against the will of Gog, worst inflation in forty years. 7 Comments »

Where the Day Takes You

May 28, 2022 — Pat Bertram

The current crop of young clerks seems to be even less gracious than the last couple of generations. Back in the day, it used to be that clerks thanked customers for shopping at the store. Then it got to the point where clerks expected us to thank them for deigning to wait on us. Actually, we’re still to that point. I wish I could break myself of the habit of saying “thank you” to someone I just gave a fistful of dollars. But I was a touch rude today, so perhaps that offset the thanks.

The clerk, as they all do now, told me “Have a good one” in a bored tone as she handed me my change.

What does that even mean, “Have a good one?” So I asked her. She just stared at me as if I were Homo Unsapiens Unsapiens, then finally responded, “Day?”

So why not say “Have a good day”? “One” and “day” each have a single syllable, so these clerks are not saving any time by using “one” instead of the more concrete word. Perhaps it’s that “one” is comprised of soft sounds, and “day” is not, which might make it infinitesimally harder to say.

Oh, well, it’s not my world anymore. My world is one of precise speech, words that mean something, people who care not just about words but about those they come in contact even if only for a moment.

I suppose it’s foolish of me to waste time and words on such trivial matters as to the meaning of a meaningless phrase when the rest of the world is resorting to desperate measures and coping with trauma, but for the most part, you have to go where the day takes you and deal with day you are dealt.

And the hand I’ve been dealt today is a good one. It’s such a beautiful day that even a barely civil clerk couldn’t ruin it.

The day after tomorrow is Memorial Day. If you’re travelling this weekend, please take it easy.

And if you want to play a silly game, count how many movies titles I used in this blog.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in culture, life. Tags: A Fistful of Dollars, Back in the Day, Desperate Measures, Have a good one, It's Such a Beautiful Day, The Day after Tomorrow, trauma, trivial matters. Leave a Comment »

Rain, Rain

May 24, 2022 — Pat Bertram

It’s been raining for most of the night, all morning, and will continue for several more hours. This sort of puts the kibosh on my plans for the day, but one thing I would never say (or even mean) are the words to that old ditty, “Rain, rain, go away.” In a drought-ridden area, we need all the rain we can get, even if it’s inconvenient, even if it overruns the drainage system. (The poorly conceived drainage system, I might add.) It’s a good thing I don’t have to work today. The last time it rained so much that the gutters overflowed, it took me more than thirty minutes to trek the two blocks to where I work. Actually, that day it was more than two blocks. By the time I detoured around all the flooded areas, I must have walked close to a mile. Luckily, I brought an extra pair of shoes that day, so I didn’t have to wear wet shoes while I was there.

[I took a break here to look up kibosh. It’s one of those English words that’s been around for a long time, since the early nineteenth century at least, though no one knows where it came from. One interesting theory is that it’s from a Gaelic word meaning “death cap,” which could refer to either the cap the judge put on to pronounce sentence, or the black hood that was placed over someone’s head before they were hanged. Hanging, for sure, would put the kibosh on someone’s life!]

My mention of things I would never say reminded me of an anecdote I read the other day. A new mother was at home recuperating from a Caesarian section. The father had to go to the grocery store and took the baby with him to give his wife some rest. An old woman came up to him and berated his absent wife for letting him take the baby. He responded, “My wife died in childbirth.” That shut the old woman up, but it gave me the shudders. I would never be able to say anything like that for fear that I’d go home to find the person dead for real.

I suppose it’s superstitious of me to refrain from saying certain things lest they happen because generally things don’t happen that way. Words may not really have that sort of power, but they are powerful. Just think of what happens when you tell someone you love them. Now those are magical words!

But I’m getting off the topic of . . . whatever my topic was. Rain, I guess, since that’s what I started with. It’s kind of nice having such a rainy day since nothing can be done. Well, things could be done, such as the errands I was going to run today, but there’s no reason to brave the weather today when tomorrow will be warm and sunny though probably very humid.

I have a couple of unread library books, a cozy place to read, and lots of tea. Sounds like a good rain day, to me.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in culture, life. Tags: death cap, kibosh, poor drainage system, rain rain go away, rainy day, superstition, things I'd never say. 2 Comments »

Attracting Flowers

May 17, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I recently read a book claiming that the secret of the universe, the power of the universe, is attraction, so you’re supposed to think positive thoughts because what you think about is what you attract.

I don’t believe that is true. The way I understand it, the power of the universe (if there is such a thing) comes not from attraction but from the energy created between attraction and aversion, push and pull, yin and yang.

Nor do I believe in the power of positive thinking because of its corollary — that if bad things happen to you, it’s your fault because you attracted them. The truth is, sometimes bad things happen for no reason. Besides, in the push/pull of the universe, “positive” and “negative” don’t mean good and bad. They seem to be arbitrary names attached to the way ions are charged. And in the real universe, not the universe of positive thinkers, two like charges repel, two unlike charges attract.

Sometimes, of course, in our own lives, what we think about is what we attract. Look at me, for example. What I’ve been thinking about lately, almost to the exclusion of anything else, is my garden and plants and flowers. And guess what? Today I attracted an abundance of flowers! The power of positive thinking? Perhaps, but the truth is, I went out and bought the plant starters, though that makes them no less mine than those that are already growing in my garden. (Which raises the issue of whether, in fact, the flowers that grow in my yard belong to me. They could just as well belong to themselves, or to the universe, or anyone who stops by to look at my yard.)

The purple and pink petunias will be going in various containers. Despite their less-than-optimal appearance, they should grow up to be beautiful.

The marigolds will be planted with the cherry tomatoes (when I figure out where to plant the tomatoes.)

And the assortment of purple flowers is a hanging basket. Because of the wind that’s coming tonight and the possibility of a storm tomorrow, the basket is temporarily an on-the-ground basket.

It’s too hot to plant today — 95 degrees Fahrenheit! Tomorrow will be a bit cooler, and I won’t spend the morning coolness buying more flowers, so I’m hoping to be able to get these flowers planted so that they can attract more flowers.

***

Posted in culture, gardening, life. Tags: buying plant starters, marigolds and tomotoes, positive thinking, the power of positive thinking, the power of the universe, the secret of the universe. 2 Comments »

Do the Job in Front of You

May 14, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I’m reading a science fiction book about people being able to step from this Earth into multiple other Earths, as if all possible Earths were stacked together like a deck of cards, and people could go from one to another.

At first, it was kids who found a way to step, and suddenly, kids all over the world were disappearing. The cops didn’t know what was going on. Terrorists? Aliens? One young cop asked the sergeant-in-charge what he was supposed to do, and the sergeant relied, “Do the job in front of you.”

It’s funny how in a story about strangeness, such an innocuous remark should have caught my attention, but it seems to be good advice no matter what. For example, landscaping a yard and creating garden spots in that yard can be rather overwhelming. It’s not something that can be done in a season or even two or three. I’m starting my fourth season, if I counted accurately, and despite how nice some parts of the yard are, other parts are still quite wild and weed-infested.

I’ve never had much patience for such long projects — I’m more of a do-it-and-get-it-done sort of person. Or at least I was. Apparently, I am now someone who can embark on a project that will never be finished. Almost by definition, a garden is always in progress. Volunteer plants show up. Long-standing plants die. Weeds take over certain areas. The only way to deal with such a long-term, unending project, is to do the job in front of you.

This change in me, from wanting things to be done to being able to deal with things that never are done, is a holdover from grief. Grief is one of those things that are never finished, though oddly, grief comes about because a loved one is finished — finished with their life here on Earth. But for those left behind, it’s never finished. At the beginning, especially, it seems impossible. Not only are you going through the most horrendous pain and most confusing time of your life, you are faced with a never-ending list of end-of-life chores. A person who dies doesn’t just disappear. The body has to be dealt with. Their things have to be dealt with. The government has to be informed and dealt with. Banks have to be dealt with. The only way to get through all that is to do the job in front of you.

It’s the same way with writing a book — during the course of the months and sometimes years that it takes to complete a novel, there are thousands of decisions to be made. Some people can sit down and simply write, without a plan, without agonizing over every detail, but for others, writing is the details. And the way to write for those people is to do the job in front of them, whether a paragraph, a page, a chapter.

I suppose life is the same way. I tend to try to look into my future, to see what I can do now to prevent some possible effects of old age, but in the end, no amount of projection will protect me (or anyone) from the vagaries of life. All any of us can do is the job in front of us, and the job — the life job — is to live the best we can today.

Luckily, we are all (or at least I think we all are) dealing with a single Earth, which makes things just a bit easier to do the job in front of us.

***

Posted in culture, gardening, grief, life, writing. Tags: dealing with what is in front of us, doing the job in front of us, gardening is never finished, grief is never finished, living the best we can today, multiple earths. Leave a Comment »

The Day is What the Day Is

May 7, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I’ve finally become acclimated to the clock change we had to make because of daylight savings time, and the disorientation I felt because of the change has abated. Unfortunately, I’m dealing with disorientation again, though this time it’s confusion not about hours but about days.

My work schedule was abruptly changed this week after almost two years on basically the same schedule. Now, I work one day that I always did, one day that I sometimes did, and sometimes one day that I never did. (Did that confuse you? Now you know how I feel!) In addition to all that, my “weekend” was changed to the middle of the week.

I’m not complaining. It’s actually a good schedule for me, with more free days than working days, so I’m sure it will be easy to get used to the new routine. But until then, I am rather lost in time, never quite sure what day it is or what I am supposed to be doing on that day.

Even though I had to work today, I still managed to water my grass. Tomorrow, I will water the bushes and trees. So that’s good. It’s easy to know where I stand when it comes to my yard — if I watered the grass yesterday, then I don’t need to do it today Same with the bushes. (If that sounds like a lot of watering for this time of year, we’re going through a hot spell — 97 degrees Fahrenheit today — so I am on a summer watering schedule.)

Unfortunately, the rest of my life isn’t as easy to figure out. If I worked yesterday, does that mean I have today off? If I have today off, does that mean I work tomorrow? Eek.

Luckily, I have calendars, both paper and electronic, to help keep me oriented. Mostly, though, I only need to keep track of what calendar day it is so I know whether to go to work, whether the library is open, whether . . . You get the idea. In the long run — or the short run — it doesn’t matter if today feels like Saturday or Sunday or Monday. The day is what the day is. And today is the day the first larkspur decided to bloom!

***

Posted in culture, gardening, life. Tags: confused about the days, first larkspur of the season, larkspur, taking care of a lawn, time change disorientation, work schedule change. 4 Comments »

Red-Letter Day

April 27, 2022 — Pat Bertram

The term “red letter day” refers to the practice, dating back to the Roman Empire, of using red calendar numbers to signify important days. Although this was (and still is) a common practice for perhaps a couple of thousand years, the actual term “red-letter day” wasn’t used in print until 1663. Unlike so many words and terms that have begun to mean the opposite of their original meanings (bully originally meant a darling; harlot originally meant a goofy fellow; naughty originally meant having naught; nice originally meant silly; silly originally meant blessed), the meaning of “red-letter day” seems to have remained unchanged for centuries.

Despite this discussion of “red-letter days,” today is more of a “white blossom day” than a “red-letter day” because the blossoms are what make this such a momentous day. “What blossoms?” you might ask.

The blossoms on the greengage plum tree I planted last year. Those blossoms. And oh! They are so pretty, and such a sign of hope.

Flowers of all kinds seem to symbolize hope, of course, but fruit blossoms bring with them the added hope of someday having fruit. There might be too few blossoms to merit even a single plum this year, but still, it’s nice seeing the flowers.

Today is also a “black hat day.” My use of the phrase “black hat” isn’t used idiomatically to mean a villain, but is used literally. A neighbor gifted me with a beautiful black hat! A wonderful side effect of being known as “Pat in the Hat,” is that if anyone has a hat to donate, I am the first one to come to mind.

It’s also a grey cloud day, and a pink tulip day, and probably all sorts of other “days,” but all these important days can be found under the single umbrella of “red-letter day.”

I hope you’re having a red-letter day, too.

***

Posted in culture, gardening, life, writing. Tags: black hat day, greengage plum blossoms, plum blossoms, red calendar days, red letter day meaning. 2 Comments »

Too Much Television

April 26, 2022 — Pat Bertram

I watch too much television

Now that’s a sentence I never thought I’d write since I don’t have television and only watch an hour or so with my client when I’m at work. It comes out to be four to six hours of television a week, and that, truly, is too much! I end up with jingles going through my head, as well as names of drugs.

Someone, somewhere, has done research on how to create the most memorable names for drugs, and it works, because those names get stuck in my head. Almost all of the names are three syllables, almost all contain q, x, or z, and none of them have any recognizable meaning. Nonsense, in its literal meaning.

Considering the cost of television commercials, it’s no wonder the most prevalent ads are for personal injury attorneys, window and gutter installers, vehicles, and of course, drugs. None of these commercials mean anything to me, especially not the drugs considering the long list of potentially lethal side effects. What gets me is that despite that shopping list of side effects, people still ask their doctors about those drugs. You’d think that listing the dangers of the drugs would make people stay away from them, but since they show happy families and now-healthy folks doing fun things while the horrors are being recounted, it’s no wonder ill people embrace these drugs. And anyway, most people believe that bad things happen to others, not them.

But that’s not what prompted this rather mild diatribe. What really stands out are the vaccine ads.

In the midst of all the pharmaceutical commercials with their long lists of side effects, there are the vaccine commercials. They don’t show happy people. They show determined people getting a shot. But what’s even more obviously missing is the recounting of side effects. Instead, they have representatives of doctors, nurses, and other health professionals saying, “Trust me.”

Huh? That’s it? Just, “trust me”? That’s the extent of the information they’re giving us?

It makes sense when you consider that vaccines are immune from product liability lawsuits. It doesn’t matter what the side effects are (and yes, there are possible side effects no matter what they want you to believe) because you have no recourse. The whole purpose of listing side effects is to limit the company’s liability because if they can prove a person knew ahead of time about potential lethality, then the person can be considered complicit. But that’s not the case with vaccines. So a simple “trust me” is all they need to encourage people to get the shot.

What makes me even more leery about the whole thing is that they now have a drug that supposedly knocks out The Bob if you take it in the first five days, so you’d think it would make the vaccine less important. But miss out on all that non-litigable money? No way!

Not that any of this makes any difference. It’s just that I’ve been watching so much television lately that I am familiar with what is standard in a drug commercial. And what is not.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.

Posted in culture, life. Tags: drug commercials, side effects, trust me, vaccine commercials, vaccines immune from lawsuits, watching too much television. 6 Comments »

Accidentally Noticeable

April 18, 2022 — Pat Bertram

When I was outside today, checking on the weather, someone walking by stopped and commented my yard, saying I have the greenest grass in town. (Not surprising since most grass around here hasn’t started greening up yet.)

It seems odd to me how often people stop to look at my yard, or comment on my hat or my car, as if I’m so very different from everyone else, and perhaps I am, though I never planned to be so noticeable. Each one of the elements of my persona (for lack of a better word) started almost by accident.

The first thing that catches people’s eye are my hats. The sun tends not to agree with me and sometimes even causes small hives on any skin left bare, so I always cover myself on sunny days. Long sleeves are a must, as are wide-brimmed hats. I used to just wear a plain straw gardening hat because it was cheap. When that disintegrated in the sun (better the hat than my head!) I started using a straw cowboy hat that Jeff had bought and never used, and then as that hat wore out, and as I found new ones, I started stocking up. People seem to have such a distaste for “hat hair” that hats have so fallen out of favor they tend to be hard to find. The decorations on my hats were also . . . not exactly accidental, but not planned, either. Several years ago, I set my then current hat next to an ornate bow I’d taken off a gift from my sister that was too pretty to dismantle. The juxtaposition seemed serendipitous, so I slipped the ribbon over the crown of the hat and oh, was it pretty! And thus “Pat in the Hat” was born.

My distinctive car is also something that happened by accident. Back when I bought my Beetle, it was the same as half the cars on the road. Nothing special. What is special is that years after the majority of those VWs disappeared, I still have mine. Over the decades, it became rather a mess, and I wasn’t sure it was worth keeping. A few car guys salivated over my bug, telling me that if I bought a new car, in five years, I’d have a piece of junk, but if I restored the bug, in five years, I’d have a little gem. In the end, it was the potentially huge automobile insurance bill that would accompany a new car that made me decide to keep — and restore — my bug. As it turned out, it was a good thing (at least until recently and the problem of getting the right part to fix the brakes). It certainly made my cross-country trip memorable because of all the people who sought me out to talk about my car and to tell me their VW Beetle stories.

The most recent thing that has set me apart is my lawn, which truly was accidental, and the attention truly surprising. I mean, it’s just grass.

But apparently not. As the passerby today said, no one in town has grass as green as mine. It’s so emerald-bright, that it’s hard to miss. The funny thing is, I had no idea what type of grass I was getting. My contractor had told a landscaper that I was interested in sodding a corner of my yard; not long afterward, the landscaper contacted him and said he had a couple of pallets leftover from a job. Even though I didn’t think it would be enough for the small square of lawn in the front corner of my lot, I said I wanted it. Well, it turns out there was about four times what I needed, so they kept laying down the sod and laying it down until it was all gone. And wow! So much green!

The rest of the landscaping, such as the path meandering around my yard, was also somewhat of an accident in that I never planned it. My contractor, knowing I was trying to elder-proof my property, suggested the paths, and I agreed to let him do it. Even the red of the path that offsets the grass so well was his choice. (Or rather the landscaping company’s choice since it was all they had in stock.)

It’s amazing how accidents and happenstance turned me and my life into a spectacle of sorts, which, come to think of it, isn’t a bad thing for someone as self-effacing as I am. Any of these things gives people a reason to stop and chat. And even if they don’t stop, they for sure know who I am.

It does make me wonder what the next thing will be that adds to my persona. I’m certainly not planning on being any more noticeable than I already am, but then, I never planned any of these things. They just . . . happened.