Posted tagged ‘missing mittens’

“It’s true, I’ve become one of those grumpy older women.”

November 10, 2015

This morning I had a meeting at 9. When I got home, I went back to bed and slept almost three hours. The clouds and the dampness don’t seem to engender high spirits and frivolity. I’m tired and I’m grouchy, and I pity anyone who crosses my path. Luckily, though, I’m in for the day so the rest of the world is safe from me.

Working in a high school meant dealing with people, mostly teenagers, all day long. I was generally pleasant but occasionally had one of those days. When I did, the news about my mood spread like wildfire among the kids. They knew this was not a day to be tossed from class. This was a day to walk on egg shells and be especially polite.

Nothing will be accomplished by me today. The laundry sits in the hall as testament to my lack of energy and my lack of interest. The other day I went through the closet to find all my winter hats and mittens. I knocked down some games, some books and a couple of coats. I found almost everything except two mittens are singles. Somewhere are the other two. I, however, choose not to tackle the closet again as I expect that what I put back is tenuous and might just fall again. Usually I would be obsessed with the need to rejoin the couples. Not today!

I do have some napkins which need to be ironed. They have been piled on the desk chair for a few months, okay maybe even a bit longer than that. I’m thinking I might just iron them today. It’s an easy task, unlike the laundry which necessitates up and down stairs a few times then folding the clothes and putting them away. With the napkins I can sit down and use my table as an ironing board. I can even watch TV. This day might just go down in the annals as one filled with accomplishment.

Tomorrow I have a doctor’s appointment. He’s keeping an eye on my cholesterol and checks it every six months. When he asks me how I’ve been feeling, I don’t think he’ll take grouchy as an answer, but I might just give it to him anyway. After all, he did ask.

“The three little kittens, they lost their mittens, And they began to cry…”

November 3, 2014

The wind has stopped. Today is cold but sunny. I went to the deck to fill the bird feeders and noticed the table had been blown as had all the chairs. They were flush against the deck rail, and the chairs were lined up in a row. The whole deck is covered in leaves and pine needles. I checked the yard but only one small limb didn’t survive the wind which reached 60 miles per hour. Some parts of the cape had snow but we had all rain. It was a mighty storm.

My guys are here to close down the deck. Soon it will resemble a deserted house with the furniture all covered. All the candles are off the tree limbs, the umbrellas closed and covered and the clay pots put away. The only things left are the bird feeders swinging from the branches. This is one of the sad days, the day I start to hunker down, the day I admit that winter is coming.

I don’t remember complaining about the weather when I was a kid. It was just part of the day and had to be tolerated. My mother made sure we dressed accordingly. If left to our own devices, we would have gotten soaked or frozen to death. Nothing is worse than wearing pounds of clothing during the winter. I never admitted to being cold even if my lips were blue.

Mittens and socks have a lot in common. Both cover digits and both seem to get misplaced, lost. Even now I have one sock downstairs on the washing machine waiting for its mate. I’m hoping it will appear when next I do laundry. Mittens too seemed to get lost one at a time, never in pairs. I didn’t ever understand that. The mittens were always together either on my hands, in my pockets or up my sleeves in my coat hanging in the cloak room. Maybe it was a borrower or a mitten elf or some creature from a different dimension. I had no explanation and my mother was never happy when a mitten went lost. By the middle of the winter, we were wearing unmatched mittens, but that was no big deal to us. At least our hands were warm until the next one disappeared.