Best Part Of My Day?

Tomorrow, I'm heading to the capital building to meet with speaker of the house Craig Hughes. The meeting is at 3 o'clock in the afternoon which means I have to hang around here at the apartment all day until time to meet for the Speaker. Actually, since the capital building is downtown I could go downtown and do all kinds of stuff. I could visit folks at my workplace at the DD Council. I can do a drop-in at 211 and see who is still working there, or go down to the library and just hang out. I guess what I am saying is that I can do just about anything I want and I should!

This morning I ran into the postman as I was heading out of the building committee meeting. He informed me that he just left a package in the big mailbox for me. I knew what the item was something I did not need to worry about right then. That evening had grown dark and cold by the time I got home from my Thursday afternoon reading group. I dropped off my things in the apartment then decided to go back and get my package from the mailroom. The early evening crew were meeting in the front of the building.

I know these guys meet every evening it seems. Some have “rat” dogs and some just gather nightly as a means of socialization. I like all participants but it just is not a conversation I want to get involved in most of the time. I wouldn't have participated to tonight except I'd been seen. I smiled and entered into the conversation as best as I could. I told them briefly what I've been up to over at the library. I discussed the low front which is passing through and had dropped the temperature significantly and provide a few snow flurries for me to roll through on the way to the bus on my trip home. We all took part in a brief discussion about how the young people of the day don't know what hard times are. We all smirked, shook our heads and nodded knowingly. Big Jim, who is one of the few other men at this facility, dropped off a handful of candy bars, real candy bars – not the baby candy bars which passes for real candy bars these days – Jim is always dropping off something. I think most of the women have a crush on big Jim. Big Jim is not fancy, Jim is a real straight shooter, a longshoreman from New Jersey and he sounds like it. Big Jim is an elder version of their midlife fantasies. I dallied about 20 minutes as I let the local news run its course before the national nightly “fake news” started. I said my goodbyes and took off. I'd paid my dues for the evening. I shared with the group my best input from my day. I would love to have set a hidden microphone somewhere to have caught the conversation after I left.

I don't go down every night that would be way too painful to share with these seniors, some of the last minutes off some of thier last days.