May had a peaceful finish

The bumble bee buzz of cars going around and around in a circle is the background noise of a Sunday. Most of the Indy cars will have circled the track for 500 miles before the day is done. The winner will be rewarded with a bottle of milk, more money than I will make in a lifetime, bragging rights and a whole bunch of other stuff.

The stands appear to be packed. Even if this proves to be the last days of the pandemic, and even though the people are outdoors, I would still be uncomfortable around that size of a crowd. I have had the vaccinations but am not all that sure they work as well as they should.

The chilly weather we have experienced lately has finally been chased away by the warmth of the sun. I am hoping that the weather will cooperate and stay nice enough to get the painting done outside. Thankfully, that involves painting window sills and porch railings and not the whole house.

I noticed that it is time for the second round of me versus the grass that would rather grow in the flowerbeds than in the lawn where it belongs. One of these days I am going to win. Maybe.

After being told to keep away from other people for more than a year, most of us are tired of not being able to see and touch our loved ones for fear that we will either spread the disease or contract it ourselves. Those restrictions are slowly loosening.

I check the news from the other side of the country. I am rewarded with videos of grandson Jacob at his first band recital. He plays the trombone. I thought they were great. I even turned the sound up on the video. Other pictures and videos were of grandson Nicholas along with various cousins and friends all in mid-jump in front of a No Diving sign. Still others featured the boys playing baseball.

There were still pictures of granddaughter Emma. As always, I wasn’t sure if it was her or her mom in the pictures. I always have to look closely to tell the difference. 

The images remind me that we live so far away from them and that is not likely to change in the near future. 

This year my daughter, Beth, took photos of the kids’ first and last days of school. Nicholas looked about the same. Jacob was markedly taller and thinner than he was at the beginning of the school year. Emma also had changed to look more and more like her mom.

Closer to home, our niece, Margaret, who lives in Amelia, Ohio had a recent business trip. Her two little girls, Isabella and Mackensie, stayed home with their daddy. Apparently they both participated in an “unauthorized glitter accident” in the basement. Later that afternoon Daddy turned his back “for only a minute” and Mackensie grabbed a popsicle out of the freezer and was gnawing on it before Daddy took it away from her and called poison control. The cold packs that Mackensie had grabbed were not toxic. Their day ended with the girls putting their dolls to bed. Their beds were remote controls. The dolls sleep in the nude. When I checked out the picture I wondered when they started painting underwear on dolls. 

That was a snapshot of my weekend. Nothing earth shattering happened. It was a peaceful end to the month of May.