Day 322; Footnotes of Done, Done and That Was Close.

Today was probably our last warm weather day for a while. Several of the weather notifications I’ve seen made mention of a severe weather front moving through. While here it won’t be as bad as further north, I’m still going to miss the warmth. But, I have to accept that it isn’t summer any longer.

My son and I both were expecting packages in the mail today. I was supposed to go to the church to help change the sign. I was beginning to believe I was going to have to leave before the mail arrived. As I was gathering my stuff to leave, the mail jeep showed up. I waited until it finally came back up the road and walked up the drive to see if everything had came. Both of the items were small. The boxes they came in were so large they barely fit in the mail box and I have the largest mailbox one could purchase. Placing the boxes inside I headed for the church.

The lady I was helping was already there when I drove up. We removed all the letters and went to where the box containing the letters was stored. I got all the letters we had taken off the sign separated and in the box then helped get everything needed for one side of the sign. Once we had everything, we went back to the sign and got the messages in place. As I was closing the cover I noticed that one of the screws was missing. That meant it was on the ground somewhere. Amazingly, I was able to finally find it and get it in place.

As I was heading home, I noticed a truck hauling either a mobile home or half of a double wide. It had turned ahead of me so I didn’t get that good of a look. What I did see made me wonder why it didn’t have a lead vehicle.

When I got back home several things happened. Mom had reminded me that I needed to check and see if we needed anything for Thanksgiving. Dad has a large building where we gather together. Plenty of room and mom doesn’t have to worry about her house. After walking down there we took an inventory and saw what we need. Now to see who can help with those. After returning home, I went out to my storage building to dig out my Christmas lights. I got them to the house but have yet to check and see if they all still work and how tangled they are. Then, I decided that I was going to attempt to put together a garden wagon I had purchased weeks ago. I moved the box from the back of the carport to my front porch where I had more light. I got the box open and began checking out everything in the box. It took me less than a minute to decide that I wasn’t going to attempt doing that today.

Instead I decided since the temperature was cooling down, I’d get some firewood in the house. Using the old wagon, I moved wood from the pile beside the driveway down to the gate. I then walked over and got some of the smaller wood from the main pile and added it to the wagon. Moving it into the yard near the porch I went back to make sure the wood was covered in case we got the possible rain. As I stretched and reached across the wood to anchor the tarp, the piece of wood that I obviously was standing on, rolled away. I then proceeded to slide down the stack of wood. I may have bruised a rib but otherwise with the exception of possible bruising where the firewood thumped by I think I’m good. Annoyed at myself, but good.

I poured a cup of coffee and went out to sit on my front porch. The dogs get all excited when I do that, as if they think I should spend every moment petting and loving on them. It took a few minutes but I managed to get them to calm down and allow me to enjoy the moment of daylight fading away. As I sat there sipping coffee and watching the day ending, my mind wandered into the past. I sat there remembering all the times I sat there with my husband. All the times we watched nothing happening. All those cups of coffee, all those days battling mosquito, all those days.

Now, hours later I am sitting inside the house. Outside fully dark and cooling down quickly. I’ve heard the cats out back playing in the leaves and the dogs out front pushing their bowls around on the porch. Determined to make sure they don’t miss a single bite of food. Content in that things were accomplished, happy in that I didn’t pull that stack of wood over on top of me, pleased that my sweet Bella made sure that even though I didn’t want her climbing on me, she stayed close to me. Always my emotional support.