The weekend is well underway. We had a glorious, but cold start here in Maine. When I awoke, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, when my Golden woke me at 5 o’clock, the temperature at my home was 11 degrees, but the skies were clear. That in itself seems to be unusual this February.
Three days a week my wife rises early to prepare for her part-time job. Even though she’s retired like me, she wants the job because she has worked just about all her life and says she’d go “bonkers” if she didn’t work outside the home at least part-time. So she gets up early. That set the stage for our dog. She can’t tell time and I honestly have no idea how she does it, but that 3-year-old has learned when five o’clock comes. She also can’t tell the work days from home days so, every morning at five, we have to get up.
This is a great day to have a fire in the fireplace. The fire is also a way to help keep the cost of heat down. It keeps our living room nice and cozy and a couple of vents also help keep the kitchen warm, too. There is a down side, though, we don’t have a television in our living room. That means that we have to do funny things like have conversations, read, do puzzles, listen to music. They’re all good activities and have worked toward the longevity of our marriage. And since our two kids fled the nest a very long time ago, we can take advantage of the room to just share. Of course the dog is never more than a couple inches away from us.
I don’t do very much weekends. Of course I don’t do very much during the week either. After all, I’m retired. So’s MGD, but she can’t stop working. I do help her around the house by doing some household chores on those days she has chosen to work elsewhere. In the summertime I keep the lawn mowed, but that is the extent of my outdoor work. We have several small gardens, mostly flower but also a vegetable one, which I rarely venture into. My thumb is no where near the color green. MGD, on the other hand, spends virtually all day in her gardens.
In the winter, I look forward to snow so I can convert my lawn tractor into a riding snow blower. I lie. But I do like a black driveway and keep it as clear of snow and ice that I can.
We also like weekends because our daughter visits us. She has a dog, too; in fact, her dog is a sister to ours as they joined our families at the same time. One great pleasure is watching two Golden Retrievers romp and play outside. They get along beautifully and love being together. And that’s another place where both of them know the day of week. Ours begins looking for her sister every Saturday. The daughter says her dog sits by her back door patiently waiting to visit her sister. When the normal time comes, her dog starts quiet little noises to announce the time for departure has come.
So weekends are a fun time for all of us, and I’m glad they come every week.
G.D.
