Mundane Life=Contentment

I don’t know what we did to deserve the summer we have been enjoying. The nights have been so delightfully cool. My central air conditioning has been inactive for over a month now. Things cooled off enough to where I actually slept under a sheet last night and had little Daggy curl into my chest around 3:00 a.m. When Daggy gives loves in that fashion, it is the harbinger of a good day.

Debbie called at 5:15….. she was too beat to do our morning walk, and had to be in the shop at 8:00 for some “clients from Hell”. That gave me the excuse to cook up a batch of red potatoes and onions into the homefries I love so. Nothing smells as good as a mess of onions cooking down in real butter in a cast iron skillet.

After breakfast I watered down the plants in the front and back yard. Stumpy was napping on the front porch in the wicker rocking chair. It was so comfortable maneuvering the water hose wearing just flip-flops and my Utilikilt! The bird feeder got filled and the “Flintstones” limestone birdbath was topped off. That birdbath is quite shallow, it does not take a lot for the water to get splashed out: it gets a lot of use in the hot afternoons.

My great grandmother on dad’s side loved birds. I just checked back through some of her old books to identify the brown bird that has the best time splashing around in the water. If I’m right this happy guy is a Brown Thrasher. I get such a kick out of those birds in the back. Mercifully the cats leave them alone. They are old enough to it is not worth the aggravation for them to hunt. They would rather sleep!

My Ron had the best saying when we would work in my backyard in Lockport. He loved gardening so. We would spend all day messing in the back. I’d be working with bricks and flagstone while he would work over the plants. When finished we would sit back with a glass of “yard wine” and soak in the work we accomplished. The bees would be all over the honeysuckle, the birds would be flying over head, and “Kittybelle” the cat from behind me would stop by for a visit. Ron would say, “Jimmy, I love your yard, it is so full of LIFE.”

"Kittybelle" enjoying a treat of milk. I loved to spoil this little girl!

Enjoying "yard wine" Joe, Jamie, Ron, David: Summer 1989. Ron died of AIDS just about three years after this picture was taken.

When I sit back now a days with a glass of wine in the same manner, I know I’m not alone. Ron’s spirit is everywhere. According to the medium I saw at Lillydale, he is happy I’m in Alabama, but is exasperated at my fussiness with my bricks! Another one of his sayings was, “That Jimmy is like a squirrel in a cage, he just keeps going round, and round, and round!”

My mundane routine is my reward for the years spent in the factory. I am happy: Life is good.