In case you were wondering, I’m alive. I did go out on a couple of early morning walks this week, smartly attired in my plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt. By the time Thursday rolled around, though, I was on auto pilot and made a nose dive back into bed. Rude.
But today is Friday, and you know how I feel about that under normal circumstances, but today? It is my very first non-working, permanently retired if I feel like it Friday. Okay, so retired from working for others work. Payroll work. Having to get dressed and go to work work. So how did I celebrate?
I broke in my new ball. I sat on it all day and tried valiantly to do something about the organization of this pathetic looking blog of mine. Nothing has improved on the blog, but at least I’ve rolled and swirled and bounced myself toward a firmer core. Yes, you, too can burn calories while you blog! Of course we may not be able to get out of bed tomorrow, but still.
What else is new?
Not much, but yesterday when I was coming out of the grocery store with one of my green bags I finally remembered to remove from the trunk, a young man with a nice smile and a multitude of those disks inserted in his ears and a few other places I can’t remember right now, looked in my direction. He had a clipboard and a purpose.
“You want money, right?” I began since I’m not very good at beating around the bush when I talk. His eyes even smiled.
“Do you know about Greenpeace?” he began.
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“Of course I know about Greenpeace,” I told him, flashing on images of news footage years ago of ships with nuclear reactors being prevented from entering a port in Australia or something like that. “But do you have any idea how many requests we get each week for contributions? It’s out of control. Even NPR hasn’t been able to peel my money out of my fist yet.” Who do you give money to when everybody wants it? His smile never left his eyes as he let me blather on until I asked if I could make a donation on line. And when he began to respond, I interrupted him realizing that he wouldn’t get credit for the donation.
“I need to be able to show something for my effort her today,” he told me.
“So fine, can I give $15?”
“No, we’re only set up to take monthly contributions,” he told me, explaining that it helped the organization have a more steady stream of cash instead of having to wait until the end of the year for a lump sum.
“Okay. Okay. Okay. Where do I sign? Can I do $10 a month?”
“No, I’m sorry, the minimum is $15. That’s only $5 more,” he added as I looked away from the form I was already filling out, and making it easier for those leaving the store to escape my fate.
“I can add. The math’s not that challenging,” I mouthed off, and he laughed good-naturedly, most likely thinking I was nuts.
“Do you want a sticker?” he continued as used the side of a brown crayon to rub an impression from my credit card on the form.
“Sure. I need something to show for my money, right? And if someone steals my credit card number, Greenpeace will be paying the bills. Make sure you tell them that, okay?” I called over my shoulder after picking up my green bag to walk away. “I’ll blog about you…”
“Thanks!” he said, still grinning. Talk about job satisfaction. Jeez. But I always wonder when I send off a contribution to any organization, just how much of it is eaten in administrative costs.
So when the MoH got home, I asked what he knew about Greenpeace since I joined.
“Great. They float around on a boat and cause a lot of problems,” he mumbled, partly in jest.
I’ll have to work on him a bit more. He’s no where near to being green.
I think by now you know that I have a “maybe like – sorta meh” relationship with this palm-laden place I begrudgingly refer to as Paradise. I know that there are many cities I could live that pale in comparison are much more interesting, but my grousing is about more than the monotonous weather that draws people here.