My husband is a light sleeper–it was ever thus—but this week he achieved a personal best. I was eighteen feet away* when I heard him ask, “What are you doing?” His head was still on the pillow.
“Putting on an earring,” I answered. “Why do you ask?”
“I heard a funny noise,” he said. The earring didn’t even have a metal back. It reminded me of Linus asking Lucy, “Am I buttering too loud for you?” in a long-ago Peanuts strip.
My honey then inquired if I’d heard the batwings on the window the night before. It seems he’d been wakened in the darkness by the whispered brush of wings against a window.
“How did you know it was bats?” I asked.
“I could see them,” he said. “They were flying all around. Were you awake?”
Alas, I was not. If the bats ever visit again, he says, he’ll wake me.
The morning light’s been strange, the last many days. Instead of the usual summer brightness, I wake to gloom. It feels like rain, and our little home weather station shows the humidity in the high nineties, often ninety-nine percent. But no rain comes.
We’re in the middle of a drought. The grass is turning brown. This is rare enough in our green and abundant state that the world seems a bit off kilter. Leaves are also falling off the trees. Mostly, a leaf here or there turns yellow and falls to the ground. More and more, though, the leaves are still green when they fall. The trees find they can’t support that many leaves, and divest themselves of what they can’t handle. We need rain.
Speaking of unexpected color, yesterday we saw a county sheriff’s car that was hot pink. Google reveals that numerous law enforcement entities around the country have acquired cars of similar hue and for the same reason: to help raise breast cancer awareness. The cruisers cause some who behold them to wonder about the standing our society accords pink.
Daughter Number Four, who teaches elementary school, has discussions on the matter every year with her students. Boys will tell her pink is for girls, and D#4 will offer them historical perspective. In days of old, not only did men wear pink, they sought it out. Pink was a symbol of masculinity, affluence, and social status.
Daughter Number Two has just taken possession of a new house. It’s quite wonderful, and it goes on and on, to the point I’ve told her, only partly in jest, that I’ll need a map. When my sweetheart and I saw it last weekend, D#2’s furniture had yet to arrive, so the whole house was in a state of potential. Defining all the new spaces should be a happy adventure.
As an extra, added bonus, the new house is on a lake. When we were there, two of D#2’s grandchildren were visiting the house for the first time, too. They’re quite young and ever so quick. The adults learned in short order where all the baby gates need to go.
The kiddies also had to check out the lake, of course. They hadn’t brought their swimsuits, but that didn’t hold them back. Children are rarely constrained by lack of designated swimwear. They would just wade. And we all know how that turns out. When the lake group returned to the house, the little fellow was wet to his knees His big sister was wet to her shoulders. Neither was unhappy with that state of affairs.
Yesterday, a customer at the Thrift Shop asked me if there were some way to test a spotlight-type lightbulb that was for sale. We told him that all such items are tested before they’re brought to the sales floor. He said he’d like to see what kind of light it gave. Whereupon the lady behind him in line told him all about the light, which turned out not to be the kind he was looking for. Then he asked for advice on using some bit of fix-it-type hardware gadget he was buying. The lady helped him with that as well.
“It’s a really good thing you showed up here today,” I told her. “Our customers are the greatest.”
“It’s just that I know how to do these things,” she answered. “I tell my husband, ‘You should be doing these things. You’re the man.’ He just says, ‘But you know how,’ and has me do them.” She didn’t look particularly put out by this. It didn’t sound like her husband is either.
One thing’s for sure, though—we could really use some rain.
14 August 2026
*Distance verified.