The sun is shining but it is not warm, a bit of a deception I think. The sky is deep blue and beautiful. Lots of birds are taking advantage of the free food at the feeders. There is even a waiting line.

Hunky dory was part of an answer in the crossword puzzle today. It got me thinking. I don’t remember the last time I even heard anyone say hunky dory which is too bad as it has a great sound when said out loud, and it is one of those phrases which defies description. It’s a context guess but a tough one. Answer everything is hunky dory and tone alone would have to give the clue.

I do the crossword puzzle every day, and I’m noticing that many of the answers seem too easy. Most of these are historical, but for me, they’re like yesterday as I lived through them. I can imagine a twenty or thirty someone sitting and mulling. In my day, they’d chew on the eraser and mull. Now, I guess they sit at the keyboard. I can’t believe that sitting at the keyboard gives the same sort of help that chewing an eraser did. I was able to fill in every square, and I also did the cryptogram in a short time this morning. I felt smart.

Rhetorical questions were the bane of my childhood. “What do you think you’re doing?” sounds like a legitimate question but giving an answer was talking back. It took me a while to sort that out. “Who do you think you are?” was another one of those questions to avoid. It was usually asked when I’d already done something wrong, something above my station. My mother was a master at the rhetorical question. As soon as she asked, “And who do you think is cleaning that up?” I headed to get the whisk broom and the dust pan.

My mother was also the queen of quilt. She got us every time. When she’d ask us to do something and we’d say in a minute, my mother went into her theatrics. “Never mind. I’ll do it myself,” she’d say oozing with self-pity and disappointment. We’d scurry to get done what she wanted. Sometimes, though, she’d add to the guilt by saying, “Too late. I’ll do it myself.” That was a heavy burden to carry, and she knew it. My mother was a master at her art.