Oh my.

Okay. I did it.

They will be delivered Monday.

I spent about twice as much as I thought I would.

What else is new?

I've had buyer's remorse, and I could swear my washer spoke to me today as I put a load in. "I'm good, " it said. "I'm still good."

Randomness

Don't you think it's kind of weird that my neighbors across the street are named Quick and my neighbors behind me are named Click?

I do.

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If you ever need your face cut, as in skin cancer surgery, I can recommend Dr Funke. I think my scars will be not too bad.

That is a recommendation, you know, because she had to do a lot of cutting to get all the cancer--a hole the size of a dime, and that's big when it's over your eyebrow. And stitching. Twenty-three stitches, actually.

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The cold weather is here, not winter, but a darn cold autumn. Not one day warmer than low 50s this whole week. I don't like running the furnace, dries the air, you know. I turn the thing off at night and scrunch down in my bed with lots of covers then turn the heat back on in the morning. So, is it costing me more money to run it that way? I really need to know.

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Yesterday I ate an entire artichoke for my lunch. I mean, that was lunch. It was good enough, but I don't think I need another artichoke for a while. Maybe a whole year.

Hmmm, What to do

My dryer makes noise. Loud metal on metal noise. Really loud. This noise has been happening for a few weeks, and it might be getting louder. Like, by the day. Maybe.

It makes me think I need a new one.

So I went to Sears yesterday, looking. I thought I'd stick with Kenmore. But why? Kenmore is made by Whirlpool--and so is Maytag--so why bother? And I've learned over the years not to buy fancy features, like the little shelf you can stick inside for delicates, or the 300 fabric settings, just in case you might need that. No, I am looking for basic. Just something to get the job done.

Anyway, at Sears I could get a Kenmore/Whirlpool dryer that looks good. I mean, one that does the job, has a pull-down door, no fancy stuff, for $500. Plus $79 for delivery and installation. Plus $28 for the hose and hook-up gizmo and other stuff. Oh yeah, and plus tax.

I told Ann. She said, "Have you thought about a used one?"

I said. "I have a used one."

She said, "You know what I mean." I did know, and, no, I hadn't thought about it.

Lucile said to go to Home Depot or Lowe's. Maybe cheaper there. I will go there this morning.

My dryer is 22 years old. As old as my house, a year older than my granddaughter Anna. Not so old for a person. Pretty old for a dryer, and I wish I had a nickel for every time someone--sales person and regular person--has said, "Well, you'll never get that much use out of a new one." Okay, another reason to keep this one. Noise or no noise.

You may be thinking I have my money's worth out of my current dryer. Twenty-two years. But here's the thing. It still dries the clothes. I can shut the door to the laundry room and leave the noise behind, well, some of it.

Just a Part of Growing Up, You Say

My father used a hatchet to chop off the heads of chickens. Why I watched I don't know. I couldn't have been older than five or six.

No doubt there was blood, but I don't remember it. Just now I wonder if Daddy washed the hatchet blade after each kill or if the blood of all the chickens he killed mingled on the blade. Oh well. What I do remember is being sad and sorry about the chicken. I have never liked the idea of death, and seeing it close up made it more real than I expected. I don't know what I expected. I was a child, remember.

Of course, I later ate the chicken with the rest of the family. That's why Daddy killed them, so Mama could cook them for our dinner. I wonder if I put it all together then.

I do not know what I was thinking as I watched that hatchet come down and hit the neck of the chicken. That was a hard thing. The hardest part, though, was seeing what happened after Daddy chopped off the head. I am sure I thought that would be the end of it--you chop off a chicken's head, and it's dead. No. It's not dead yet, or it doesn't know it's dead. It runs around the yard until--until what? Until it can't run any more, I guess.

Such a scene, such an event was shocking, perhaps even traumatic for a little girl. I don't know how many such executions (harsh word, I know) I saw. Maybe only one. And, again, I do not know why I was watching. Where was my mother?

We also had rabbits. I don't think I ever saw how Daddy killed them, but I know he did because I remember seeing their skins stretched across those wire frames. And I remember eating the rabbit Mama cooked.

Don't get the wrong idea about my dad. I can say with full confidence that these killing chores were just that--chores. He was not a blood-thirsty man. Far from it. He was a provider, and that's why we had chickens and rabbits, because they fed us. Someone had to do the killing. It was Daddy's job. I suppose I understood that all those sixty-some year ago. I suppose.

(I know we also had goats, but we didn't drink goat's milk and we didn't eat goat's meat, so I'm not sure of their purpose, except to eat down the grass and weeds in the vacant lot. But that was before we moved to Santa Monica, which is where we had the chickens, at least the ones I remember.)

The chickens. The killing of them has stayed in my memory all these many years. I can still see that headless chicken running wildly around the yard, soon to be followed by another. And I wonder if a small girl witnessing such a thing didn't file away what she saw and keep it as just one more reason to be afraid of things.

The Owl Has Flown

I'm in my writing room. Duh.

I just heard the finches outside my window. Last night I heard crows in the back yard, not that I love crows. And, yes, the squirrels are back, jumping on the trees--especially when they see me coming--running around my lawns, pulling up mouthfuls of grass. Nest building, no doubt. And, no, I don't much like squirrels either.

Clearly, the owl is gone, and the other animals know it. They are risking the return, coming back home.

I can't help how that sounds--too, too sweet, like I need to get a life. Tough.

I could go on about how this is really MY home. But why bother? It does not good.

And here's another perspective. I was standing on Jan's front step last week when that one squirrel came running over to her yard. He began doing all the little tricks and poking into things as I have seen him do many times in her absence.

I said, "He thinks this is his yard."

She said, "It is his yard." And she seemed quite happy about it.