It is Sunday, December 12, 2021: early afternoon. I have already cleaned out the standing planter’s pot… I’m going to buy some kind of plant, today. Don’t know what kind of plant. It may be the South,, but it is still winter. – It still gets cold at night. On occasion, it snows. I don’t think there is anything that has flowers that woiuld survive. But I really want a plant. Or, I just want something to do outside while the weather is nice.

Messing around in the dirt is something I’ve been doing since I was playing with RAMBO toys & wearing short pants.

During the spring & summer, pulling weeds was something of a test of your grit. There always seemed to be a China Man from Hell holding onto the roots of some of the weeds. After college, I moved to Houston, TX, taking a job with a Permaculture Design company, which is just a fancy way of saying I played in the dirt, planting bushes, spreading gravel & installing “water features”.

My Special Lady Friend had to drop an order off to one of her customers. Beef & Pork.

Now: I was tired.

I had spent almost all of Saturday Night/Sunday Morning messaging an editor I met online – trying, unsuccessfully, for her to be my Literary Agent.

I wanted Sunday to be nice, though. I want ALL days to be nice. This Sunday I wanted very much to be special. As the days get closer & closer to me going back to Ohio to visit family, the more emotional I get. Putting more & more meaning to my days has become a requirement. It’s like I fear I won’t be coming back to North Carolina. Like I will be left in Ohio.

I know that will NOT happen. Never would happen.

Now: I have expressed several times the beauty within the people of the South – how warm their souls seem to be with a certain resposibility of expressing joy at making others feel welcomed & special. Ms. D__ is VERY Southern. Not only did she take an interest in me & my work (writing – she said she would start reading me) she had homemade chocolate cookies ready for us when we pulled up to deliver her meat order. Little, puffy, powdered-sugar chocolate cakes that melted in your mouth.

They were delicious!

Afterwards, lunch was in order. – It was that time. And both of us were REALLY hungry. I think the cookies just exacerbated hunger.

But they woke me up. Being around Ms. D__ woke me up.

We decided on Applebee’s. Not only was our mood good, but our server’s mood was good, as well. She told us about “collecting” liquor bottles. About how she did not drink the booze, she just thought the bottles were pretty. At the end of the year, she throws a big party for her & her friends. As long as they leave the bottles, she’s happy. I HAD to give her a hard time about THAT line of B. S. Or, maybe, it’s not B. S. Maybe she does save that booze all year long.

It must have been 2:30 when we were at the restaurant. Our server had been there since 11:00. She did not get her first customer until 1:30.

We tipped her well, wishing her a Merry Christmas on our way out.

Next trip: Shopping! And I was not worried about it the way I would normally worry it. I was actually looking forward to it.

(I got to have a say in something My Special Lady Friend was buying that almost FORCED me to overlook my anxiety in Public Places: her undergarments! Her unmentionables! Her particulars!)

What made the trip to Walmart worth the wait of the check-out line was Our choice of plant: A Christmas Tree! A Dwarf Alberta Spruce. We have not figured out where we are going to plant it. It maxes out at 15 feet tall; growing two-to-four inches per year.

It’s going to be OUR Christmas tree; hopefully, it will thrive. That we will decorate it for years to come. This year, we chose red as the principal color.

Who knows what next year’s colors will be…?

That’s something no one knows.

What the colors will be.