By Rosie Preston
The past week actually threw me for a loop. First, I fell over a box on Saturday. We were moving furniture, and I’ll never know why I failed to see it. I hit my head, left shoulder, elbow, knee and foot, leaving me with half of a body. I couldn’t help with the actual moving, so I decided to supervise four guys. They managed to clean out three storage buildings and fit in some furniture we were moving from Phil’s parents’ house. You never know how much you are dealing with in a situation like this until you experience it. Sadly, all the family members who lived there have passed away.
When the guys brought an antique five-drawer chest to my bedroom, I felt so blessed. I’ve never owned one as beautiful as that one. I’ll get the dresser this next weekend. Phil was happy to get his headboard and bedside table to match. We may be getting older, but it feels great to feel a sense of gratitude as some nice furniture had a new home in my house. It’s also a sentimental attachment in knowing that the furniture came from a beloved family who used the piece for many years.
Shock No. 2. A friend who was helping with our yard came to the door and showed me a black snake he had just killed. The part of the snake with the head still attached went under the house. The rest was still struggling and moving around. That’s when I dropped my phone and broke the protector on it. I’ve seen several snakes slither through our yard, but never this close. I now watch every step I take, when in the past I never looked for anything!
The yard friend then told me he found a hornet’s nest when he started to trim some limbs off a tree. Believe me, he left pretty quickly, and I called a pest control service. I’ve probably worked in my yard around those hornets without knowing what to look for. I do know it’s expensive to have them killed.
Shock No. 3. We received a call from my granddaughter to go to the daycare and pick up Ella because they were quarantining there for safety reasons. So now we have little Ella, who is almost four years old, with us for a few days. This was a shock because I was not expecting places to start shutting down because of COVID-19 since I had not heard it on the news. However, Googled “new viruses” and found the following article. It blows my mind to be more informed than before I read it, and I’m trying not to have a freak-out attack.
“Beyond coronavirus: the virus discoveries transforming biology”
“SARA-COV-2 is just one of the nonillions of viruses on our planet, and scientists are rapidly identifying legions of new species. In 2020 alone, the ICTI added 1,044 species to its official list, and thousands more await description and naming. This proliferation of genomes prompted virologists to rethink how they classify viruses and helped to clarify their evolution. There is strong evidence that viruses emerged multiple times rather than sprouting from a single origin.”
Shock No. 4. As I was working at my computer earlier this week, Ella was playing with two dolls and pretending to give them baby bottles when she put them to bed. She asked me to bring her something to cover the dolls for their nap when she said, “I guess you know I have these babies because I have been pregnant.”
Ella is one of many comedians we have in our group of little girls. I’m still laughing. Her baby sister is six weeks old, and all the changes have not been missed by this little girl!
Keep smiling, Rosie
Please e-mail me at rosie.preston@yahoo.com.