Illustration by Maria Uszck

You know how everything goes wrong at once?

1. Storm hits garage.

2. Cat gets sick.

3.  Toilet needs to be replaced.

The summer is my favorite time of year, but lately I’ve been taking care of the boring practical details of daily living.

I’m not in charge of the garage.  But I did chat with one of the contractors making an estimate.  Did we want windows?  One, I said firmly.  Did we want a garage door  opener?  I didn’t think so.   Was it all right if they cut down some of the bushes for the two-car garage?  Well, I wasn’t crazy about the idea…

This is not my project, I decided.

While all this was going on, a cat got sick. I walked her in her carrier to the vet.

ME-OW!  She loathes being in her carrier, and she wasn’t happy about being walked down the street. Everybody loves a cat, however, and a driver blocking the intersection mouthed, “Sorry.”  Walk a pet and you make friends fast.   She had to be left off for her tests, and, fortunately, nothing serious was wrong.   “She gave us heck,” they said when I picked her up.  Once home, she spent the evening marking an Amazon box, all tables, the TV, my legs… you name it.

Then there was the toilet shopping.  I was a little vague about the the rows of toilets at Lowe’s and Home Depot.  Would the cheapest do?  Or did we need an expensive one?  I  rode my bike out to a bathroom showroom to get an idea what was out there.  Their best toilet was of “comfort height” and had powerful jets to flush.  The other brand was shorter, so we had a pleasant conversation about how, as we aged, it would be possible to do yoga as we sat down.

Anyway, we ended up buying one at a box store.  I THOUGHT it was the same model I’d looked at, but it turns out you can only buy that one at the distributor.

I AM MUCH MORE COMFORTABLE GOING TO BOOKSTORES.  But here’s the good news:  It has been roughly two weeks since I bought a book.  I went to B&N just to get coffee, and found only one book I desperately need, Robert Hellenga’s The Confessions of Frances Godwin.  It is the fictional memoir of a retired high school Latin teacher.  As many of you know, I used to teach Latin.

But the book will be out in paperback next year.

I have so many books that I am finally learning:  WAIT FOR THE PAPERBACK.