It’s the Fourth of July weekend but the holiday falls on Tuesday, which makes time seem to open endlessly before my eyes. It’s only Sunday and I look forward to relaxing.
The day is windy and cool with a brisk northwest wind blowing across Devil Track Lake. My plans for today are simple. Mulch the lettuce and cucumber plants as they shiver in the cold, pull a few weeds, email a friend.
That was before the stray dog runs through my yard. I recognize her and know her owner. Dick takes her in his pickup and tries to bring her home, but no one is there, so he returns with this lively female lab while I call her owner and leave a message.
Mr. Magoo, the pug, immediately falls in love and begins stalking her. Abby, our big dog, resists her overtures to play and wants out. As I open the door,and she escapes the maelstrom, the phone rings.
On the other end of the line is the adult son of old friends. We haven’t seen each other for 30-some years. He’d left an earlier message so I wasn’t totally unprepared.
I invite him for dinner and silently pat myself on the back for having marinated and then frozen chicken drummies. As I hang up and thread my path through a messy living room to the freezer to defrost the chicken, I realize I’ll need to haul out a can of Pledge and Swiffer the floors before company arrives.
I boil new red potatoes and find my quickie recipe for baked beans. It involves opening three cans of beans and is great for emergencies such as this.
I’m throwing out old magazines and dusting off the end table tops when a surrogate for the stray dog’s owner comes to take her home. As she leaves, I breathe a small sigh of relief.
Magoo is bereft at the loss of his ladylove and forlornly searches in vain for her, but I breathe a huge sigh of relief.
The company arrives, my son and his fianceé join us, the grilled chicken is delicious, and we reconnect with a really nice man and his fianceé. Everything turns out positively and, although I didn’t experience peace and quiet, the rewards are worth the commotion.
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