July 11, 2024 It's Nothing Memorable

    Last night, I went to bed particularly sleepy. Then, just as I closed my weary eyes, I realized that I had failed to write a blogpost for Thursday. “What will all our (half-dozen or so) readers do without a Wannaskan Almanac feature to read first thing in the morning?” Knowing all of them were likely fellow Wannaskan Almanac writers anyway, including Mr. Hot Cocoa, I decided to tackle it in the morning, and see what I could concoct right out of the box. Here goes:

   Our morning was spent per tradition. The wife and I eat breakfast together, played our two card games/shared a laugh or a growl (Hey somebody has to lose). Discussed the weather, figured out what there was to be done and what we could put off. Then, there are concerns about the weather. It's not like summer is anything new to us at our ages, except now 'The temperature's too high for old folks," or "The Air Quality is too low for old folks or those with immune-deficient respiratory systems." Or the mosquitoes are horrible." "Was it always so windy?" Didn't we just ignore that stuff a few years ago?

 

   I had to go to the bank in the afternoon at an appointed time, and after that spent a good hour of it visiting with a younger friend there. Generally, we just leisurely talk about what interests we have long had in common, people who we know, and things we have done since our last meeting. No, he is not the mental health therapist.

 

   Then I had a short convivial visit in the Produce aisle at Super One with Winnipeg Pete, who I saw was building the ingredients of a tossed salad using Hellman’s dressing. He assured me he had indeed found his boxer shorts at Tractor Supply two weeks ago, just as he hoped. https://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2024/06/27-ogmhios-2024-fast-forward-by-sven.html

 

   And, upon driving home 18 happily uneventful-miles, I listened to my new FM find of 105.3 https://www.wrln.com/ that features an Ojibwe Phrase of the Day and some honky-tonk CW music that included a poignant song called, “Almost Home,” by Craig Morgan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8aEVJQhyOg

 

   Arriving, I slipped off my shoes, unloaded my small bag of groceries, two large envelopes of bank statements, and mail. I greeted my wife briefly, opened a package of semi-frozen mild Italian sausages, started my propane grill outside my door, opened my first of two semi-cold beers, and initiated a lengthy conversation with an old school friend in Carlisle, Iowa, as I tended the sausages on the grill. 

 

We talked 'way back to the 1970s and how cars and homes were so less expensive; and talked about past relationships, etc, etc -- like old friends are likely to do, when a lone muskrat wriggled downstream tight along the opposite bank and created excited peals of recognition from my wife at the picture window a floor above me; a show stopper for sure.

And there it was, and here it is, Thursday July 11, 2024