Lettuce

In my perpetual search for fulfillment, nutritional and emotional, I'm sure, I set aside a spot in the garden for growing lettuce. Mixed lettuce, of the "designer" kind that you eat as little baby leaves. The kind that looks just like weeds.  See where I'm going?  My garden is not the weed free sort.  So this morning I was out there, pulling almost randomly at growing little things, putting some in my mouth and trying to figure if they should be eaten by me or the goats, or maybe not at all.  We have jimson weed here. They have some type of hallucinogen in them.  Maybe I'm just dreaming that I'm typing this.  In any case, maybe this New York style fancy garden experiment will come to an abrupt halt, and I'll just add some more squash. There's no mistaking a zucchini for a crab grass.

.

Helicopter age!

So, today is my birthday, and yeah, sure, I'm feeling a bit older than last year this time, or even older than yesterday. What I'm really getting at, though, is that my oldest friend called with his congratulations.  He is, as he himself says, ninety-two and a half years old.  After he was done asking me about my health and well-being, I got to ask him how he is and how he's feeling. He told me he'd grown to see the budget age and now is in the helicopter age. My question mark must have been loud.  Well, the budget age is when the doctors don't bother repairing you anymore,  because you're not going to live that much longer anyway. Sigh, yeah. Now, the helicopter age, wow - this is what he said:
"You know how, when flying an airplane, you can let go of the steering and just let it coast, while in a helicopter you have to constantly engage hands and feet to stay on course. Well, when I go down to the mail box in the mornings, it's getting to become somewhat of a mission just to get there and back. I have to focus."

When I grow up I want to be like him.  Learn to fly a helicopter when I'm almost a hundred years old.

Oh, and this man lives alone in a two story house, does his own care and cooking, just gets help with cleaning the house.  On his night stand is a television set, turned on its side, so that he can watch TV in bed without straining his neck.

I really, really want to live my life like that. Flexibility and imagination..

.