As the day began to dim I was looking out at our garden while washing the pots and pans. I saw a familiar streak zip past a bunch of pink petunias. We’ve been waiting in vain for hummingbirds all summer. I scrubbed furiously as I searched the garden. Then sure enough a ruby throat-ed hummer hovered over the flowers. I dried my hands and hurried into the living room to tell Claudia that all her work planting hummer food had finally paid off.
I was going to hurry up after the dishes to enter this breath taking news into a blog post but I was so tired I laid down for half an hour to rest. When I got up I took an advil to sooth or mask the stiffness from carrying a forty pound grandson for a mile on my back during today’s %K Amberwing ColorRun. Or something like that. My daughter had bought a set of family tickets and there was one left over for me.
I’d planned to visit my Mother and sing to her. Ditto yesterday. Didn’t work out. We had grandkids and a wedding reception most of yesterday and today’s 5K. I was wearing jeans and had no inclination to join but I’m a sucker for a good time and by the time I’d parked the car I had reconsidered. While walking to find my family I dictated the beginnings of a new Reader Weekly column into my amazing Samsung phone. I’d brought my computer to type it in during the run but with the Samsung that wasn’t necessary. I just dictated a long email and sent it to myself.
Then I began my slog. Tanner and I were in the fourth wave of the several thousand runner. I kept up with him and then after a mile he realized he was thirsty. This slowed him down as I kept assuring him there would be water ahead. Instead we got profusions of rainbow colored chalk dust tossed on us. I carried him much of the way home in the heat and sang to keep up my good temper. Must have missed the singing for my Mom.
Gee, this is strictly Harry’s Diary stuff. I make it a general policy not to post pictures of my family in the blog. I write enough personal stuff in here without singling them out visually. Trust me I’ve got the pictures to prove we were a rainbow sherbet when we got home. We all took long baths or showers to scrub ourselves back into normalcy.
My PVC gave me a call after Claudia started grilling a six pound chicken – singing chicken she calls it. PVC (who really deserves a name reported on the latest phoning. He’s gotten to the end of my list and added quite a number of lawnsign locations for me. He needed a ride to Wallgreens for some items. (He lives without a car) It was a good chance to catch up as I’ve been hiding behind grandparenthood for most of the last week.
I grabbed one of my old books from 1992. I’d published over 5,000 of them with a mind to sell them to finance my campaign that year against Congressman Oberstar. I sold 300 and only began recycling all the clutter a few years ago. I’d set another 200 of my rapidly dwindling pile of them out to recycle and they had gotten rained on. I plucked a damp one out of a box to toss to my PVC. I told him the book was about me and that it was written before I was really ready to write or publish a book. That caught his interest.
To my surprise he texted back an hour later to tell me he’d been impressed with the speech in the book that I had delivered to a booing Republican audience. I thanked him.
My PVC has no clue how unorthodox my politics has been through the years. It seems to endear me to him. That’s fine with me especially if he keeps making phone calls on my behalf.
