Wedged for an uncomfortably long period of time in the deliveries door of the News24/680 Redoubt we resolved to lose some extra bodily baggage – and immediately reaped the benefits that come with switching to half-rations.
In lean times, with prices going up for just about everything, cutting back eased immediate pressures on the pocketbook as well as on our bathroom scale. Shedding some poundage and saving money made us feel better on a couple of fronts, enabling us to share our new-found wealth with deserving colleagues and almost off-setting those painful, recent stock market losses.
We’re not sure why we revert to lifeboat procedures at times like this – perhaps it was from all those weeks spent reading The Bounty Trilogy under the covers in our formative years. Whatever is at the heart of our innate penchant to conserve when things go bad, the approach does seem to work. Being without critical elements necessary to life – water, food, money – at various times in our lifespan has only made us more appreciative of their respective place in it.
Our website makes it possible for neighbors to reach us with concerns and thoughts (more than 100,000 of you here every month since June, whoa) and it appears you’re thinking about our pal Vlad and the possibility of a nuclear hellscape, the continuing conflict in Ukraine, Iran, American politics and inflation among other things. We also heard, today, from some neighbors concerned about the county’s approach to caring for sick and injured animals.
Specifically, writers said progressive budget cuts and a worsening economy has fueled a rise in animal abandonment and contributed to a critical lack of response to public calls for help providing humane care to injured animals.
We do know that to be the case and it hurts us, deeply. We happen to believe we’re judged by how we treat others, including our critters, and while the lucky few animals living with us may be spoiled rotten others out there aren’t faring quite as well.
It appears a few of you are getting ready to take things into your own hands and we applaud that kind of thinking. We’ll support any efficient local effort to make that happen.
We’ve also taken note of the oddities and current trends of suburban life, including a pronounced preoccupation with crime and things criminal. We get the need to know if there was a burglary on the block or a crew in the neighborhood looking for your catalytic converter but we’re getting something different – visualizations of kidnappings and shootings and bodies littering the roadside.
As scribblers who have spent a great deal of time in that environment we will say that, yes, bad stuff happens occasionally but that we are nowhere near the level of violence and mayhem a steady diet of true crime podcasts has convinced many among us is out there. We’re getting daily inquiries about “kidnappings,” “bodies,” and other sordid happenings and most of them are either the products of an over-stimulated imagination or the result of a simple visual miscue. Perhaps more time with the Nature Channel and less Moms And Murder? Just a suggestion.
We’ll leave you for now, we’re off to search for an undiscovered bakery or swinging new lunch spot. Things to do, people to talk to.
Here if you need us.
I hope the “deliveries door” is not the doggie door. You really ought not come and go that way. Get an Air, Air, air something, tag for your keys 🙂 and be well!
The Bounty Trilogy! My fave! What else do we have in common, O Mighty Pen?
Seriously? Oh, my. We’ve mentioned the trilogy in passing at dinner parties and other gatherings hoping someone would know what we were talking about (most thought we were talking about paper towels – cementing our reputation as “strange.”)
But we were pretty much raised on sea stories, absorbing Jack London by the light of a cub scout flashlight and listening for Mom and Dad to burst in and send us to bed.
So nice to make contact with a shipmate!