Opinion

Twenty weeks ago I wrote about using my wife’s hair blower to finish drying myself off after showering.  About three weeks later I discovered another use for that amazing device.

We had two trucks last night, yet this morning we only had seven pallets of new freight; usually it’s around fifteen. Four were charcoal, one was skyrat food, one was solid-packed with weed killer, and the last was six feet of various boxes.  Later, Senor Cargador pulled another eyebrow-high pallet of mixed items from the annex.  We worked on freight all day, and when I left at three, half of the annex pallet was still on the patio.

I watched the IPL (India Premier League) Cricket games which, as far as I could tell, took place in only three stadiums in Saudi Arabia.  I don’t know if there were other games being played elsewhere, but only IPLs were shown on Willow, Spectrum channel 835.  

Peeking over the Corningware mixing bowl, my 5-year-old eyes watch as my 55-year-old grandmother allows two tiny drops of dark-colored vanilla extract to fall into the deep mixing bowl. 

“A little bit goes a long way, sweetie,” she says in her thick southern accent as she glances my way, “that’s all you need.”

Four black men have been honored with the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize in the past century. Each was a man of faith who advocated for peaceful protest in pursuit of equal justice for those of any race.

Such an advocacy has been a prominent part of Black History Month in this country since President Gerald Ford made the February observance official in 1976. 

When I was in the military, my GI pants had buttons.  I didn’t like it.  I was used to zippers.  Later, after snagging myself in those little metal teeth on a pair of civies, I was convinced buttons were better.  Besides, a broken zipper is impossible to fix, while a button requires simple sewing.  But try to find buttoning pants at Exwork!  However, that’s not the kind of buttons I’m now fixated on.

Frauline Alles-Uberal and I worked together almost all day, in Garden with freight and in Seasonal with Valentine plush.  She kept making me laugh with her grumblings of frustration at how every time she turned around someone had messed with the plush, knocking them off the shelves, mainly the larger stuffed animals.  (Those things are top-heavy anyway, hard to stock, and don’t need much help to fall over.)  She started talking about getting a hammer and smackin’ shoppers.  “Don’t touch it unless you’re going to buy it!” she wanted to say.

Item: The wooden rocking chair in my living room rocks more and more these days.  But there’s no ghost sitting in it.  It’s my wife’s male cat, whom I call Stirfry, resting a paw on the right back runner.  I think he’s discovered that he can move what is to him a large object with just a gentle push, the chair is so well balanced.  It used to be, when he was a teen cat, he sometimes fought behind that chair with his sister; ears back, tails twitching, they rose up and jumped