Email, granddaddies, spiders -- OH MY!!

I've lost control of my email. More than one long term email friend has reminded me lately that my correspondence has fallen off dramatically in direct proportion to my writing of poetry and prose. Since returning to the work force in May, I've lost control of everything.

During my brief retirement, my daily routine was set around household chores. In my case, a clean, uncluttered house produces a focused, uncluttered mind so daily housecleaning was priority one. Of equal importance was keeping in touch with friends and family via email. All that changed in May. I still think about and care about my email friends, just can't seem to focus on writing anything, including an email. So if anyone out there is wondering -- I stopped doing creative writing in favor of catching up on your emails as often as I can think straight enough to do it.

My days are full from before daylight til my nine p.m. bedtime. I spent the last two early mornings, for example, putting water seal on our deck. The granddaddies I saw inside and outside the house served as a warning that winter might come early and harsh. At eye level I could see dozens of granddaddies hunkered down in protected places. Even a large woman wielding a chemical-saturated paint brush didn't intimidate them. I had to physically transplant them to another location. My grandpa always warned that killing a granddaddy caused bad luck so each one had to be moved gently via a piece of cardboard. I hold no such reverence for spiders. Spiders of any size or type scare the hell out of me. But these past two days spent at eye level with spiders taught me a worthwhile lesson. Every spider I saw, large or small, was scurrying towards a hidey hole dragging other bugs wrapped in webs. Storing up winter food supplies maybe. One very large spider took over an hour to drag its burden awhile and rest awhile, before disappearing down a hole ten feet away from where I was working. Outside spiders are safe; spiders with the poor judgement to come inside my house meet swift ends.

Oh, that lesson I learned from the spiders is that the time has come to stock our pantry for winter, just in case we can't get out to buy groceries. We've lived in places where we went without electricity or heat for 7-8 days at a time. I've learned to cook and make coffee on our kerosene stove during such times, and to always have a land line telephone not dependent on electricity to function. It's time to lay in a supply of fat chunky candles just in case. If the spiders and granddaddies are right, the winter will be early and long here. They understand priorities better than we humans do -- food, shelter, warmth. Everything else is a luxury we take for granted.