Minutiae

 Dear John,

September is going to be a busy month.  My oldest sister is coming to help me go through the baseball cards.  S is going to homecoming.  I have to schedule various beauty appointments for that.  S will be working, but she also has started managing the volleyball team.  And she wants to go out with her friends.

Last weekend, she went to her 3rd Quinceanera - I would never have thought she'd go to one, let alone 3.  This weekend, she wants to go to the Goodwill outlet to go through "the bins."  I guess it's a TikTok trend, but she's been wanting to go for a while.  I'm just glad she has someone to go with - I am not a huge thrift store fan, and she loves to spend time there.  Speaking of which, this boy who's been trying to flirt with her for months wants to go thrift shopping with her.  He wants to change his style, but needs encouragement.  S says he's a player, so she's not interested, but I don't know whether she is or isn't.  She said she doesn't really want to continue flirting with him, because she might start having a crush and then end up disappointed.  I guess she's inherited her parents' approach to romance, which is...don't bother.

Your prediction of the chaos in the house has come true.  However, in my defense, I'm very sad and that makes me unmotivated.  It took me a month to take the gas container for the grill to be refilled.  In the middle of summer.  I need to finish the laundry and sweep the floors, but I will probably only get one of those things done.  

We went to the dentist last week.  I don't know if you remember, but our hygienist's brother-in-law died in a manner similar to yours.  If I remember correctly, her sister went wild after that.  She was very sad to hear about you, and it was hard for me to go there.  Whenever I see her, or the receptionist you went to high school with, I'm just so overcome.  But then I saw a picture of the hygienist's younger son, who is sporting quite the mullet, and I laughed.  Then we talked about how her older son is on the golf team and that is not exactly the path she thought he would have taken.  Now she has to hang out with country CLUB types instead of country types.  It's definitely different.  We were supposed to have dinner with your mom afterward, but she said she wasn't feeling well and put us off.  She had dental work done in the morning, I guess.  Anyway, S and I went to the expensive wood-fired pizza place and got a potato and bacon pizza and some wings.  I suppose it's good for us to do things that you would never have done.

The dogs are doing OK.  The puppy keeps running into the couch - I think he's going to give himself a TBI, if he hasn't done so already.  They bark a lot - you would hate that.   But they're very funny and the pup is cuddly.  S cuddles the old man too, but he gets a frightened and pained look on his face when she does.  

R, next door, passed away.  Not sure what the fire department EMS is going to do, now that they've lost their best customer.  I am surprised that he lived as long as he did, especially through Covid times.  But it's good that he's no longer suffering.  I hope that means there will be no ambulances in the cul-de-sac for a long time now.  I did not like seeing that one ambulance here.  On the plus side, the VA seems to have paid their fees, since I haven't heard from them again.

Wishing you were here to discuss all this in person...

Love,

A