Monday: one day in the life of

Yes, we're watching it, the cone has shifted east and south, and it's working up to become hurricane status soon. Yesterday, when it still seemed to be headed here, after church to Grocery Outlet for our evacuation supplies - - water, food in containers with pop-off top, so no can openers required. While there I made a detour past the sausage case and picked up a package of boudin, which I first had in Louisiana some years ago when Walt still lived there.

Cajun: a different culture and even civilization, you know that? We've been eating on a huge pot of gumbo that Linda made for Thursday, starting the beautiful roux from scratch. We made sure to have plenty leftover and we made it in two pots: one regular, with lots of okra (there's file' gumbo in the pantry though), peppers, onion, andouille sausage, chicken thigh meat, shrimp added at the last minute to cook and still be tender and luscious.

My second pot, which is even more scrumptious, is the regular plus a quart of oysters and their liquor (also added late so they're not shriveled up little gray prunes), more of the liquid from the boiled shrimp heads, and a can of cream of mushroom soup stirred in with a whisk. There may be enough for another meal, which will be for me only because it's the oyster variety, which Linda thinks may bei from my growing up among the marsh-wiggles, and, as Puddleglum suggested to Eustace and Jill, "food for wiggles is poison for humans."

Linda pretty much won't eat anything I cook. I didn't trick her, but she did like the andouille. She won't try the boudin though, and certainly not my enhanced gumbo.

For breakfast, another mug of hot & black, and maybe the last andouille sausage on a slice of brown bread, with mayonnaise and French mustard.

This is not a food blog.

Sunday evening supper was two chunks of cornbread, buttered, toasted and covered with Steen's cane syrup. I had forgotten how good real cane syrup is. What I remember is from the late 1930s and 1940s, my father bringing home dark cane syrup like this in a one-gallon tin bucket.

The best ever, I have four pints of Steen's and plan to give Robert one the next Time we get together, if he likes dark cane syrup.

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Idalia is forecast to be "no Hurricane Michael" which one recalls is what was said about Hurricane Michael, and we woke up that morning with a category 5 hurricane offshore and strengthening as it barreled toward us. We expected a category 2 hurricane at worst: no more "expectations," just Be Prepared, eh?

Excitement of last week. Thursday evening the kitchen cabinet began to flood water onto Linda's feet. Garbage disposal giving up. Thursday evening research. Friday morning call Peaden's and a quick trip to Lowe's for a replacement, and also for a new faucet spout for my bathtub shower because the shower diverter was worn out. The technician from Peaden's turned out to be a first class master plumber who did a beautiful job for us. He and his family, wife and four children recently moved to PC from Alabama, where he ran his own plumbing company for years. Friday happened to be his daughter's birthday, so, being most pleased with his work, we tried to help him celebrate.

At this age and stage, a new garbage disposal and a new bathtub shower faucet spout are an adventure.

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Exciting news from Tallahassee included that granddaughter Charlotte now plays trumpet with the Seminole Marching Chiefs. I'm gonna have to wear my FSU hat more, and work on my tomahawk chop.

Don't know how it is at the Spinks home though, as I wouldn't wish the first months after the last daughter goes off to college on any daddy - - for me it was the worst Time in all my life, there were even Times when I was very sure that I wasn't going to make it; and yet Tass was happy, thriving and growing into her own self.

Everything that happens in life is a learning experience, though, including that when Kristen went away to college ten years later, I knew from my own life history that I could make it.

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Life as it evolves more and more into retirement: St Andrews Bay outside one window, downtown St Andrews outside the other window. Ospreys, gulls and pelicans, ships arriving and leaving, fair weather and rainstorms, walking not nearly as much as I should. Lots of FuroForty days. On a given day, writing a blogpost if I want to and not if I get busy with something else, reading online or a favorite magazine or from a book although books less and less, playing free solitaire games online; watching documentaries about WW2's European Theater - -

I've not figured out why the Pacific War interests me so much less. I've even accused myself of there being something racist about it, IDK - - maybe because my formative years, our wartime propaganda made such a big ugly thing about the hated, treacherous, yellow, slant-eyed, buck-tooth inhuman little Japs, IDK. Racism can be insidious.

But Monday: doing "one thing a day" is our motto and commitment to ourselves. That is to say, doing one thing involving venture outside 7H. Doing more than one thing brings each of us and both of us to falling down exhaustion physically and mentally. What'll it be today? Dropping off Linda's car at Bay Town Tire this morning for overdue oil change and check the brakes, plus make appointment to bring Kristen's car in for whatever. Monday and Thursday are our days for visiting Malinda at Pruitt Health mid-afternoon. For octogenarians, that's two things today, believe it or not, but it gets us out of the house! Maybe drive to the downtown post office and check the mail, three things.

Keep an eye on the storm and work out tentative evacuation plans, although the probability seems to be fading.

Phases of life: first forty years Mondays were a nightmare. Second thirty years Mondays were my day off. Third nearly twenty years, Mondays are just one more Beautiful Day in the life and Times of an aged Narnian marsh-wiggle.

RSF&PTL

The Marsh-wiggles were, hopefully still are, a race of humanoid creatures that inhabited the marshlands near the River Shribble in the northern parts of the World of Narnia.