I'm Just Saying

So...did you feel the Edgefield, earthquake last week?

Paul didn’t.

And the subsequent aftershocks?

Paul didn’t.

And the huge thunderstorms that just rolled through?

You guessed it.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

So said, according to Wikipedia, the ancient Greek work of Herodotus, translated by Prof. George Herbert Palmer, Harvard University, describing the Persian system of mounted postal carriers c. 500 B.C.E.

We’ve pretty much all had this experience: You have a disagreeable encounter with someone who raises your hackles, and frustrated with your own lack of eloquence to explain your point, you turn on your heel in an impotent fury, leave, and on the way home in your car, smack the steering wheel with the sudden realization of what you should have sa

I’ve never been more grateful to have been tucked up in my own bed (despite becoming rapidly untucked every 15 minutes owing to the norovirus) this past snow day throughout the Carolinas.

I had one of those moments last week where a conservative, suburban mom popped right out of my mouth.

It was astonishing. And most disconcerting.

It was during our Saturday night tradition of watching our favorite recorded “Brit-coms” with a generous gin and tonic each that my phone rang and I made the motion to answer it.

“Why don’t you turn off the ringer?” Paul asked, slightly annoyed as he put ‘Doc Martin’ on pause.

Never before in all my born days have I been more grateful to be a middle-aged broad than this past week.

It was only a few summers (three?) ago that I ruined Paul’s well-deserved afternoon off by hauling him from the couch and requesting both his emotional and physical support in a spot of goose wrangling.