June 2021 – Vintage Chicks LOL

I’ve gotten crazier in the last year. I blame the pandemic.

All of that time I had. Secluded. Social distancing. Avoiding people.

A good time to work on the many projects I hoped to finish: Write a book. Sort through bins of mementos and organize them into scrapbooks. Design and sew a wrap skirt like I had in the 70s. Learn Spanish. Lift weights and sculpt some dope (… working on my Millennial Slang) Baby Boomer biceps and triceps. Take an online woodworking course and build a breakfast nook. Find friends I haven’t seen for decades and reconnect. Read all the classic novels that I have yet to read.

I did none of that. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

What I did do was watch every single season of Schitt’s Creek, Shtisel, Frankie and Grace, RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Handmaid’s Tale. Those titles will tell you, and my therapist, everything you need to know about me.

Oh yes, and I did eat. And did I eat.

And eat. And eat.

No weight lifting, no working out. My upper arms are still flapping in the wind like an old weathered flag against a osteoporosic pole.

No Spanish. Except nada. And perezoso. (lazy, sluggish, slothful)

I never got through the first of many bins full of old pictures and mementos.

Was I ever really that young? OMG, my parents appeared to be so young at the exact same time I thought they were so old. A 5-year old son’s letter to Santa, asking for a mousetrap, rope and a screwdriver. Another son’s handprint turned into a turkey, with the feathers giving thanks for Family, No Homework and Fried Potatoes. A picture of my daughter and her brother in matching outfits I sewed for them with my son sporting a bowl haircut and cute little embroidered shorts (which he would later blame for his career as a Marine Corps Scout sniper).

I had to stop. I was a dry-heaving nostalgia-sobbing mess. My husband was dialing 911.

What I did do was find some old friends and reconnect with them, albeit through the obituaries and visits to the funeral home.

And, oh yes, I bought copies of George Orwell’s “1984” and Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina,” which I read and re-read.

That’s a lie. They’re both right there, by my bedside, stacked with the others. Waiting. Maybe I’ll get to them during the next pandemic.

Abby, an employee of Blackburn & Green, a law firm with multiple locations throughout Indiana, had just left the Fort Wayne office and was heading to the parking lot when another employee called out to her. It was early May and a bit chilly and Abby soon discovered what her co-worker was so excited about. Two baby squirrels huddled together on the pavement, obviously in distress. The mother was nowhere to be seen.

Abby reached down and one of the baby squirrels crawled into her hand. That was all it took. She wrapped them up and took them home.

After visiting a pet shop and getting a baby bottle feeding kit for kittens, she proceeded to bottle-feed the twin squirrels, whom she named Lenny and Squiggy, which was right in line with her two houseplants named Laverne and Shirley. She also gave the baby squirrels bits of assorted fruit.

For a while, it was an around-the-clock effort to keep the squirrels fed, but the babies began to flourish. Abby bought a large birdhouse and placed it outside on the ground so Lenny and Squiggy could get used to it.

A few nights later, when she thought they were ready, she placed the house up in a tree once the squirrels were snuggled inside. As of June 1, they are settled in their new home and scurrying up and down the tree with ease. Abby goes out and gives them fresh fruit and they will still take a bottle of milk from her. They are timid, which is good, Abby said. She plans to buy a second bird house and said she is hoping both will make her tree their fur-ever home.

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