So it seems to have come down to this: pleasant evenings on our patio enjoying music and a glass, while watching two orb weaver spiders ply their evening artistry.

My first major in college was Psychology. I didn’t make it past the first year. When we reached the chapter on psychological disorders, and I identified with every one of them, I came to the realization that I had declared me as a major. I went to college, so I could become someone other than me, not to make me my own life’s study.

I have to lose a few pounds. Actually, I have to lose a lot of a few pounds. In my long distance running days, I never had to worry about my weight. Running forty miles per week meant everything I ate and drank converted immediately to fuel. I could walk around the house with a Dove Bar in each hand and a stupid grin on my face. Running for me was an obsession, quite possibly an addiction, but without a destructive physical or emotional element. As with all my obsessions, however, running, too, wound up on the ash heap of my history.

I have empathized with and celebrated what parents have faced and triumphed over during this pandemic as it applied to their school aged children. Thinking back to my school days, I try to put my parents in the current predicament to imagine how they might have handled the situation as admirably as their children’s children have been. After picking myself off the floor, my sides aching with the laughter this image provided, I began getting specific.

I’ve always been an uneasy patriot. The country was founded with all its barefaced contradictions written into its very declaration of independence and constitution. It’s hard not to stifle a smirk when reading “All men are created equal,” knowing it was written and nobly approved by…

Before Carol and I met in person two years ago, she wanted me to know she wore hearing aids. I guess she viewed it as some sort of disability or infirmity that I should be aware of in case I had any second thoughts.

While the coronavirus lockdown has been – for me anyway – a walk in the park without the walk, I could see Carol’s edges fraying like an overused couch. Six months without a planned trip for two people whose relationship has been defined by travel, Carol was itching to get on the road again.

Carol insisted I put the phrase “making homemade bread” in the first sentence of this blog, if I intended to keep the title as it is.. For New Orleanians, making bread is more of a quest than a kitchen hobby. The famous “french bread” of the New Orleans po-boy sandwich is as critical to Crescent City cuisine as Slap Yo Mamma crawfish boil. I

Carol noticed a cobweb stuck to my shorts and opined it had formed naturally from a recent, lengthy stay on the couch. Today, I’m going to provide my most devoted readers with a peek behind the curtain of what a writer’s mind looks like when there isn’t an idea present anywhere near it.

The negative test result came Monday afternoon to Carol’s great relief. She didn’t show it (she’s always sunshine on a cloudy day), but the prospect of contracting coronavirus weighed heavily on her. Margaritas all around Monday evening!