It's 26 degrees here on the prairie, clear skies prevail, and there's a bit of frost on the ground. The humidity is high at 90 degrees, which wasn't the case last night. A weak disturbance was pushing through our area at dinnertime, but the ultra-low humidity kept the sprinkles at bay, with just a few drops making it to the ground. A mere trace of rain was reported this morning as a result.
Speaking of weather, did you see the video that came in of the tornado that swept through the Dallas/Fort Worth area yesterday? Scary stuff. I've said it before and I'll say it again: We may have the occasional blizzard or flooding situation here, but it's squat compared to the devastation that occurs in other portions of this country. We are very fortunate here on the prairie.
So I just got back from the gulf coast of Florida, visiting the father for the past week. I had an excellent time, most of it spent either at the pool or preferably on the beach. I read "The Hunger Games" with my toes sticking in the warm sand. The weather was fantastic for my entire stay. Pops splurged with tickets to the Jays/Twins game at their spring training camp in Dunedin and that, too, was lots of fun.
When my dad isn't in Florida, he's living here on the prairie with my husband and me. I think that Dad's take on the world stems from the fact that he was orphaned at a very early age, raised in a series of foster homes and running away from most. Being born a few years before the Great Depression, he was seen by his foster 'families' as cheap farm labor and wasn't treated very well in most cases. It's almost an obsession with him, this desire to please others and yet to be wary of ulterior motives at the same time. He is a survivor in the toughest of situations, which would include being a snowbird in the Sunshine State.
My father was outside, sitting in a lawn chair when I arrived at his condo last week. I told him to stay seated and I would put my suitcase inside and be right back to begin our week-long visit. I walked into the living room and there, on the floor, sat a paper clip. I really didn't think anything of it. I put my bag onto the bed and on the way back through, I picked up the paper clip and took it outside to my father.
"Here, Pops," I said, handing it to him. "I found this on the floor."
"Oh, let me show you the idea I came up with," he replied.
Uh-ohhhhhhh.
Back inside we went. Strategically sitting on the floor were OTHER paper clips, placed just so in the grooves of the ceramic tiles.
"A GREAT idea of mine," he explains. "This way, if one of my paper clips is disturbed, I can tell if someone's been in here."
Trust me. The only thing that's going to go wandering through my dad's condo is one of those stupid, pesky chameleons. There are millions of them scurrying about, everywhere you look. It would seem that their troops are well fortified.
Okay, back to the paper clips. But let's not call them paper clips. They are highly technically-engineered tracking devices and land mines, rolled up into one. Yessir, it's downright dangerous in that Over-55 Condo Association and it would seem that my dad's unit is particularly at risk. Maybe it's because it sits around the corner from that perilous shuffleboard court. And who knows what lurks behind that palm tree?
Next he shows me this long curly-Q wire that he has sticking out from under the television cart.
Yup, he's a survivor, that one. Eighty-six years young, Pops is still slicing his way through this dog-eat-dog world with a paper clip. Really, I'm so glad that I went down to check up on him. I had been concerned about him a little bit, but I can easily see that everything is normal.
At the same time, I have decided that it would be best that I keep my copy of "The Hunger Games" out of his hands. He doesn't need any more ideas floating around in that head of his.
No comments:
Post a Comment