The sun was just peeking up over the horizon and the sky was a soft pinky-blue and I was all set to go for a walk.
Well, not all set. I still had to lace up my shoes, pocket my Chapstick (Don’t leave home without it.), and grab my trusty phone.
Oh, and my step counter. I have taken to tallying my daily steps, which, depending on the day, range from a leisurely stroll to wearing through an entire layer of shoe leather. Also, my daughters and I are step buddies, meaning that we’re in fierce competition for step dominance. Let’s see, so far today, I had…nothing. The battery had died. There was no way I was walking for free, so I ran down to the garage for a battery back-up and spent the next several minutes getting back on track. Now all I needed was a tissue, but it turned out to be the last one in the box, so I went back to the Mom closet to get a replacement. (Always take care of Future Susan.)
I was almost to the front door when Harold yelled up from the man cave. Would I stick the power bill in the mailbox on my way out? Sure. Back to the kitchen, where I noticed a small spider walking nervously around the sink. I took a glass from the upper cabinet, chased him around until I caught him, then went through the recycling basket until I found one of those pull-out subscription cards to use as counterbalance. I opened the front door and deposited the spider on the front step, where a multi-tiered formation of ants was moving steadily up the side of the house.
Now, I will stop to relocate a spider, but the ants and I descended into a state of perpetual warfare after they converged on a cream cheese coffeecake last Christmas. Down the stairs again to retrieve the bug spray. I turned on the overhead light and the light bulb popped. Future Susan hates to pull into a dark garage, so I dragged out the ladder and changed the bulb before I lugged my trusty sprayer back up the stairs and sprayed the house, the sidewalk and the curb perimeter, stopping only when I reached my neighbor’s driveway, where I figured I did not have permission to attack.
While I was redepositing the sprayer, the phone rang, not the cellphone in my pocket, but our dinosaur landline. I raced back up the stairs, grabbed the receiver, and whispered, “Hello,” in case it was not an actual person but one of those scam things where the IRS is giving me my final notice or my unnamed credit card company needs to talk to me immediately. These jackals have outsmarted caller ID and now run their fake calls through my real area code. Well, two can play at that game. I discovered that if you say “hello” very softly, it does not trip the message censor. If it’s a real person on the line, they will say, “Hello? Hello?” If it’s a robo-call, there will be silence and you can hang up, which I did.
By now, the pinky blue was gone and clouds were gathering for rain. Rats.
So what have I learned? First, I need to live in a one-level house. More importantly, when my feet hit the floor in the morning, I need to lace up and run out the door because pinky-blue waits for no woman. Do you hear that, Future Susan?
