Monday, June 22, 2020

I don't have a master plan

Some bloggers do. Yorkshire Pudding, for instance, tries to post every single day and his titles always consist of one word. Not the same word. That would be silly. He goes on long walks through the English countryside and he always takes his camera with him, and his readers are the happy recipients of his ambulatory proclivities and his photographic skills.

Not so with me. I never know what I'm going to write about. Sometimes I'll publish several posts close together and sometimes I'll go a week or more between postings. I am nothing if not inconsistent.

It's what makes me so endearing.

I am endearing, you know. To whom is debatable. We won't go there. It could get ugly.

Today is another of those days when I have no idea what to write about. Maybe the lockdown.

What saddened me most about the lockdown was not being able to be with our children or grandchildren, but things took a turn for the better around Memorial Day and now the restraints on socializing seem to have lessened. I think I told you already that just as things began easing up, I was told by two different eye specialists that I should stop driving because of my poor vision. Even with corrective lenses, I'm currently seeing about 20/70 or 20/80, and that is downright scary. Not driving will be more of a permanent lifestyle change than any three-month pandemic-caused sheltering-in-place could cause.

One person said the wife can drive, then.

Well, no, my wife gave up driving about four years ago. So at the moment our car is just sitting in the garage and I'm having to rely on family and friends for EVERYTHING. We live out in the country, and the nearest shopping areas are four miles in one direction and five miles in another. Too far to walk or carry things at my age. I don't own a bicycle. In fact, I never learned to ride a bicycle. Roller skates are out (I'm being ridiculous now). Family are willing, but let's face it, they all work and have jobs. One son lives 12 miles away and the other about 30, and in metro Atlanta you can just about double what you think the drive time would be, so I really don't want to have to inconvenience them more than is absolutely necessary. My daughter, as some of you know, lives about three hours away in east central Alabama, which might as well be another country now.

Let's change subjects.

Bonnie's last post was about how busy June is for celebrations in her family. In our family there are 14 people (the 2 of us, the 3 children, the 3 children's spouses, and the 6 grandchildren), and our celebrations are spread all over the calendar: 2 birthdays in January, 2 in February, 2 in March, 2 in May, 2 in July, 1 in August, 2 in September, and 1 in December. There are four anniversaries: 2 in May, 1 in November, and 1 in December. When all six grands are married that will add 6 more birthdays and 6 more anniversaries. I may have to take out a federal loan to pay for all the celebrating!

Graham Edwards posted a picture of what midnight on the longest day of the year looked like on the Isle of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides of western Scotland, where he lives. You can see it by clicking here . I do hope you will avail yourself of the opportunity and look at Graham's photograph because it is a sight worth seeing. One forgets that Graham lives so far north, about 525 miles from London and almost due west of Oslo, Norway and Stockholm, Sweden. I'm sure it seems normal to him, but it is truly a phenomenon for those of us who live much farther south.

Well, I've managed to waste another perfectly good few minutes of your day, so my work here is nearly done.

It's okay to be done, as long as we're not done for.

I will close by telling you that this is my 1,865th post (since September 2007). 1865 is the year Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and the Civil War ended in the United States, although you would never believe it by events of the last couple of weeks. I read that in California and Oregon, statues of Christopher Columbus, Ulysses S. Grant, Junipero Serra, and Francis Scott Key have all been torn down in the past week by what the American major media outlets call "peaceful protesters".

I said at the beginning that I do not have a master plan. John Wilkes Booth had a master plan, and look where it got him.

16 comments:

  1. Firstly, thank you for the kind words and the link (which, by the way, covers the whole of your post after the word "by".).
    Secondly, I now know a lot more about the assassination of Lincoln than I did before.
    Thirdly, I hadn't realised what an odd word 'assassination' is.
    Fourthly, and these points are not in any order of importance, I can well imagine that the loss of your ability to drive is a much greater change and problem than lockdown isolation. I thing about it occasionally and, until recently, a rural bus service came down to my door, turned around and went to town. Now it stops ⅓ mile away up the road.
    Fifthly, (I'll stop soon) like yours my blogs follow no pattern whatsoever and, like yours, they started in 2007 but for a specific reason.
    Sixthly, I, too, have a lot of birthdays and other events in June.
    Seventhly, I shll call this comment a day and face the gale and go back into the garden to fill my lungs with air for a while before I break for my dinner (in my case I refer to the evening meal as 'dinner' a meal that many Scots call 'tea' - now there's a blog subject).

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    1. Graham, thanks for pointing out my lengthy link! I changed an error in the html from /i to /a and everything miraculously changed for the better.

      In the U.S. we don't have 'dinner' and 'tea' but some people have 'lunch' and 'dinner' and other people have 'dinner' and 'supper' (and never the twain shall meet).

      I'm hoping that a long comment from you means that you enjoyed the post.

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    2. I enjoyed it immensely. Indeed I always enjoy your posts (leastways I can't think of any that I haven't enjoyed).

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    3. Graham, thank you! I wasn't digging for compliments, really I wasn't, but I appreciate receiving one from you. I think your blog is super. We are awash in mutual admiration.

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  2. I could imagine you on one of those Segway things. You'd have something to blog about every day if you got one of those.

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    1. Tasker Dunham, you can just go right on imagining. I'm not getting on one of those things!

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  3. I agree about master plans. It might be good to have one but yiu must allow a little fluidity.

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    1. Emma Springfield, fluidity, that's the ticket! I mentioned in the post that John Wilkes Booth had a master plan. Afterwards I hought about Adolf Hitler having one too. He managed to do quite a lot of damage and evil with his master plan. In his case it certainly was not good to have one.

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  4. Thank you for the mention of my post. Your family is twice the size of mine as we currently have 7 total but that will change whenever the grandchildren get married.

    You blog well without a master plan. Before I started blogging last January I had all these plans to be so organized and post on certain days, etc. Well that sure has not happened. In fact this recent post was two weeks after the previous. But like you, I march to my own individual drummer and tend to be a bit more informal in how I do things. Congratulations on 1,865 posts! Wow! I've done 29. Maybe there is hope for me yet.

    I've had concerns for you with your driving situation. I can imagine how difficult that could be, especially if you live out from the city. These days you can order almost anything online but still, people need to get out once in awhile! I don't have any answers but I will say that I believe when one door closes another door will open. I just hope it opens soon for you!



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    1. Bonnie, I guess the best-laid plans of mice and men and Missourie bloggers oft go awry! There is certainly hope for you as you are a very thoughtful and caring blogger.

      I like what you said about when one door closes another door will open. Thank you for the good thoughts sent my way. If not a door, then a window, something, anything. My stepmother always used to say it's always darkest just before the dawn. Dawn must be near at hand.

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    2. I agree with your stepmother. When I have been in my most difficult times I always got by with "Let Go and Let God".

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    3. Bonnie, one of Mrs. RWP's favorite things to say is, "This too shall pass"....

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  5. Me neither.
    That was to be my comment. I don't have a master plan, more a survival plan, to just get through today and deal with tomorrow when it arrives.
    As for your new situation, I've already commented on that so I will just say everything will be alright in the end. It's just matter of getting a workable idea about the end.
    I had to look up John Wilkes Booth and that from someone who supposedly studied Modern American History in her final year of school, mid last century.
    And who are Junipero Serra and Francis Scott Keys? The first most likely to be a troublesome Spaniard.

    I should have stayed with my first minimalist comment...
    Alphie

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    1. Alphie Soup, the troublesome Spaniard you speak of was a Franciscan priest who founded 9 of the 21 Catholic missions in California, in places that became San Diego, Monterrey (or Carmel, I'm not sure), San Gabriel, San Luis Obispo, San Juan Capistrano, San Francisco, Santa Clara, and Ventura . Maybe you have hard of some of these places. Francis Scott Key was a Baltimore lawyer who wrote the words that became our national anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner", while being held on board a British ship during the bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814 during the War of 1812, which didn't end until 1815, go figure.

      Sometimes minimalist is good and sometimes it isn't nearly enough. -

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  6. I'm sorry about the changes in your eyesight. Getting older isn't for the faint of heart,
    Have you checked out the transportation services from the area agency on aging. Some offer bus service if you request in advance. I don't know if this link offers service to your area. https://townelaker.com/10175-2/
    You and your Mrs are in my prayers.

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    1. Kathy, Mrs. RWP says "old age ain't for sissies"! Towne Lake is about 15 miles from where we live; it's a bit west of the town of Woodstock. We do have Cherokee Area Transportation Services (CATS) which has two fixed routes within the towns of Canton and Holly Springs that cost 60 cents a trip for seniors and $1.25 for everybody else. CATS also offers "on demand" transportation for people who live in other parts of the county but the cost is much higher. Taxis and Uber and Lyft are expensive too. I'm sure we'll figure something out eventually. A couple of neighbors have already offered to help out if we need them to. I do thank you for your concern and especially for your prayers.

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

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