Glade of Bliss

[ismo]

I keep waiting for something exciting or interesting to happen, so I would feel motivated to blog about it, but no such luck. Indeed I can't think of a single thing. I've certainly had the most extraordinary amount of conversations over the last few days, and not all of them brought good news. They made me tired, though, and given that I'm not sleeping well, it makes me disinclined to say anything in my spare time. Today I did get out for a walk on a sunny but rather brisk and chilly day. I was happy to see that the dog-toothed violets have started to bloom. I encountered an older lady on the path, who asked me what the golden flowers by the creek were. I told her I had once thought that they were marsh marigolds, but now I feared they were lesser celandines, which some people did not like because they were invasive. She got a very obstinate expression on her face, and pronounced her opinion that science tells us that the fittest survive! So if the invasive plants take over, it is just the law of nature, and they deserve to win. I had learned that she was a retired nun and schoolteacher, so I smiled without demurral. I'm not the person to waste my time arguing with an opinionated elder nun on a bright sunny day. We continued on our respective paths. Hopefully she prayed for me.

Retired therapists can be quite opinionated too. I had my usual outing with Madame on Wednesday. We had quite a nice time. Although she still insists on paying for our lunches with a check, and it is increasingly difficult for her to get the check written. She put the amount in the space for the date, and couldn't remember the date. The amount was 29.36 and she then wrote "Thirty-six" on the line for the amount. She tried to correct it, but in the end there were so many crossings-out that they had to ask for a new check. We had a discussion of how hard it is to believe that it is really 2024 and not some year that begins with 19. Indeed. As we drank our coffee, we observed a dark, slate-colored bank of clouds speeding ominously in from the west. She asked me if I thought we should quickly leave before the storm arrived. I said that, on the contrary, we should stay right where we were until it passed over. This pleased her very much, and she was delighted to stay and watch people scurrying to their cars as an absolute downpour flooded the parking lot. "This is the best place to be when it's raining," she said. "On a day like this, you feel like reading." The sky cleared up, and we browsed for a short time before going home. I yielded to temptation and bought a book--"The Book of Tree Poems." It has some lovely poems I haven't read before, and nice watercolor illustrations. It cheered me up a little bit when I got home.

Comments

[oracne]

It sounds like a better outing with Madame than some!