Through the screen
This is the first road trip I’ve taken with a laptop. That would be a bit more exciting if I had Internet access. But alas, no Internet access, and no word processing program so I can at least type out entries for later. It’s this eensy-teensy phone keyboard, or leave-it-alone. Which is why you’re mostly getting leave-it-alone.
Today I did pretty much nothing. I never even left the house. And this works for me. The Sparkette went to hang out with her cousins for a while, and one of them is now here spending the night with her. This works for her. We are both happy with our activity level today…or lack thereof.
The best part of this house is the screened-in back porch. It overlooks a sizable green back yard enclosed by a white fence. There are a lot of flowers around the house, as this is one of my mom’s hobbies. Two moderately large trees shade the porch for most of the day. One tree has two hanging suet feeders for the birds. The other has a freestanding bird feeder beneath it and a squirrel feeder on it. Not that the squirrels limit themselves to their designated feeder. They are frizzy-tailed rat-pigs, snarfing down anything they can shove into their little mouths. They’re rather cute, unless you know better. From the porch one can sit and watch the activity at the various feeders all day long. Woodpeckers of various kinds, cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, juncos, sparrows and finches all stop by for a snack. So do cowbirds, grackles, and other noisy and greedy types of blackbirds, none of which are welcome, and none of which have a single hurt feeling about that. Rude.
There is nothing fancy about the porch. It has a door framed in wood, and it closes by way of a spring. This gives it the classic porch door sound of a screeee as it is pushed open and a boinging slam against the wood frame as it quickly closes. All screen doors should sound like this. It is perfect.
The porch is where one drinks coffee, reads the paper, has a snack, shoots the breeze, watches critters, checks out the neighbors, eats many meals, shells peas, fiddles with things, plays games of Farkle and UNO and whatever else, and reads cookbooks. I think sitting out there must surely lower one’s blood pressure. It’s so much better than medication.
I have one more day to enjoy the porch and those who most often occupy it. I wish I could bring the porch back to Florida with me, but it would lose much of its charm in the suffocating heat and humidity. It’s no fun to sit out in that sort of misery.
Nobody wants to drown in their own air.
