A Spectrum Sort of Day

 

This beautiful rose which Annie gave me for Mother's Day has decided to put on a fall show.  

This is the first of several blossoms to come. 

Since I posted this picture earlier this morning, we have received about 30 raindrops.  Still, hardly enough for a much-needed washdown. 

Even amidst all the dust, this little rose burst open yesterday with its clean and fresh beauty. 

Yesterday I was telling my friend and editor Helen over the phone (the landline model) that I had typed a note for a sympathy card. 

I went on to explain that my penmanship has returned to horrible these days (In second grade I received a couple of U's aka Unsatisfactory for penmanship, mainly because I was left-handed). 

So, if Hazel Lunn were still around to grade me, she'd be in her glory handing out a few more U's. 

This time the horrible handwriting probably has nothing to do with my left-handedness.

Instead, it stems from the fact that I rarely use my left hand to write any more.  I use both hands and ten fingers to do all my writing on a keyboard. 

So, in short, the left-handed penmanship that actually got to looking fairly nice is totally out of practice. 

The muscle memory of using that pen has faded away along with my short-term stuff.  

Well, Helen agreed.  She says if a card requires more than two sentences, she'll probably type the message. 

That discussion led off to an episode of anecdotes about typewriters and carriage returns and even a typing teacher who had his tie cut off by the school secretary. 

We also talked about the various models we still had stored away at our respective homes and from that, we moved on to our husbands' battery hoarding. 

I started off my photos today with Helen's
"Quiet De Luxe" Royal cuz hers appears to have had better care than those of ours.  

Then, comes the Royal with a few missing keys that I brought home when they were giving them away at Sandpoint High School. 

Obviously, it probably fell short in getting complete messages across, unless the typist was a bad speller and didn't really care which keys got used. 

During our conversation, Bill piped up and said he still had his Underwood. It's been in a case out in the barn  tack room for 17 years alongside my royal. 

Since Helen was taking pictures of her typewriter, I went out last night to take pictures of ours.

When I opened Bill's, I observed that the mice have been having a great time inside that case. I don't know if any of them have learned to type, but they've sure spent a lot of time doing something with it.

Could be it might last for sometime on the  giveaway bench if we were to take it to the Colburn Mall. 

'Cept for those missing keys, my Royal doesn't look too bad, and it does always remind me of Mr. Ray Gapp. 

He was our typing teacher during sophomore year at Sandpoint High School. 

Like Ben Stein in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," Mr. Gapp tended to be repetitive with his monotone voice each morning at the beginning of class. 

"Leave your machines alone please," he would announce quietly. 

The ringing and the slamming of carriage returns would continue through two or three more "Leave your machines alone, please," finalized by a third or fourth uttered in a slightly louder voice. 

We did learn the basics in Mr. Gapp's class including the need to treat those carriage returns more gently. 

But we never typed very fast.  We knew that because many kids in Miss Thalenhorst's class reached the upper 60s and 70s while we pecked along at maybe 45 words per minute. 

I still thank Mr. Gapp though because our slow and steady typing course armed me for life, especially as a journalist. 

Well, Helen and I talked typewriters and somehow got on to the subject of Skip's battery drawer, which is difficult to open because it contains so many and such a variety of batteries. 

That was a revelation for me because my husband loves batteries too, along with flashlights. 

The only problem at our house is that the batteries are stored in piles of packages, some open and some not, in a cupboard directly above the washer. 

So, when one needs a battery, it can be a life or death situation cuz you reach up there to grab some out of a package and that package or another with its unsecured contents comes flying out of the cupboard and crashing on the washer or maybe even your head. 

We do need a battery drawer just like Skip's, and it appears that maybe two drawers would be a good idea with these guys' need to keep such abundant supplies. 

That discussion led me to tell Helen about my TV now telling me that the remote's batteries are getting low. 

That happened this week, so I opened the battery compartment, removed the Double A's and went to the cupboard. 

Nothing fell on my head or even on the washer, but once I removed two new batteries and held them a second or two, I forgot which hand had the new batteries. 

Those Double A batteries all look alike, so instead of two new batteries, the remote required four this time---with two unknown new batteries and two old going in the wastebasket. 

Maybe that will explain why these men think they need to keep ahead on the battery supply.  

And, so Helen and I hooted through our respective typewriter stories and battery gluts.

That's our story and we're sticking to it, wondering how often this stuff happens at other households.  

 

A sad note this morning. 

Bill and I want to thank our next-door neighbors, Steve and Leslie for informing us that they had found Sunny yesterday in the ditch near their driveway.

  They also took care to bury her. 

Good and wonderful neighbors. 

I hadn't seen Sunny for a couple of days, and there was no sign that she had been eating from her dish, but after her absence for several weeks and sudden reappearance, I wasn't too concerned.

Leslie surmised that maybe it was her time. 

It's definitely been a roller coaster and a continued mystery the past several weeks in relation to both Sunny and Mooch. 

Shockingly ironic and sad this morning to say the least. 

RIP, Sunny. 

😢😢😢😢😢

On any given day, we experience a range of emotions. Today is no exception.