Barbara J. Hamby

Morning Dilemmas

Why do people who are apparently walking for exercise take a shortcut through our parking lot and go past my kitchen window? Maybe the sight of me in the morning is a rude awakening?

If I believed in evil spirits, I’d be sure this place is haunted. At 1:11 a.m. today, I was just drifting off to sleep, when I heard all the noises of signing on to the internet and the loud AOL “Welcome, you’ve got mail.” I had not only signed off, but closed the AOL software before I went to bed. I tried several times to shut it down, then gave up and shut the computer down totally so I could get some sleep. Later this morning, much later, when I got up, I tried to sign on and it took forever.

Today, we arranged the furniture in the living room. I was the director and Al was the actor or grip or whatever. He moved all the remaining unpacked boxes onto the balcony so we could move things around. When we had everything where we thought it would work best, he brought the boxes back in and stacked them against one wall. Most of the boxes are filled with books, so tomorrow we will be stocking the stacks.

I’ve been trying to talk myself into getting a new toaster oven and microwave, but couldn’t really justify doing it all right now. Last night the toaster oven developed symptoms of failing health and filled the apartment with smoke. Fortunately, I was able to get enough windows open and fans going to keep the smoke alarm quiet. Today I bought a combination six-slice toaster and convection oven that I had seen and admired a couple of weeks ago.

While I was in the store making that purchase, I sneaked a peek at the stacked washer-dryer combinations and was happy to note that their big sale results in the unit I bought being the same price as the unit they delivered, which is larger. So I’ll quit worrying about their mistake and enjoy the new appliances.