Flypaper thoughts: June in Nova Scotia edition

• Of the things I am grateful most for this pandemic season
• At the top of the list has to be the neighbourhood animals
• The two orange cats who run our street
• I think they have a schedule
• They take turns circling the houses
• Coming to the back doors and staring into the kitchen
• Confusing Daisy
• The white cat with three legs who doesn't move aside for anyone
• And Bailey
• The young Golden
• My dippy 89 year old neighbour bought for his wife after her twin spaniels died
• Nice thought but not if you need a walker
• So the neighbourhood is bring Bailey up
• A most walked dog anyway
• And the new puppy next door
• The cheerful conventions being held on that lawn
• Social distanced appreciation of that much joy
• Six people cheering when he pees outside
• Such a good boy
• I am also doing a lot of Greek cooking
• A lot
• Have planted the backyard with more herbs
• Going through a lot of mint, oregano, and dill
• I think plants like people move towards the light
• Need this kind of time to appreciate that
• Also appreciate my neighbour behind me
• She runs and she gardens
• All day she gardens 
• After she runs
• She raised three successful boys
• While her husband worked 30 years of double shifts
• She didn't garden, or run, until that job was done
• I look out my kitchen window and enjoy the view 
• And her enjoyment
• All her hard work gives me flowers to share
• I have to get silver polish
• I am letting the kids have tea out of my grandmother's teapot and in her teacups
• This must be what she was saving them for in her china cabinet
• Dusted and behind glass
• Now on my back deck
• I am assuming they still carry silver polish at the grocery store
• Haven't checked that since 1972
• My mother was big on polishing the silver
• When company was coming you had to either do that or clean the bathrooms
• I am old enough now to have had a father who used to say he didn't need a dishwasher because he had five
• Four daughters and a wife
• So happy to know that my kids would never believe he said things like that
• Don't remember him doing the silver either
• These weeks it seems to me to be a time that we clean out our cultural attics
• Just because you don't use something now doesn't mean it isn't being stored
• There should be a curbside pickup day for wrong assumptions
• And old crap you used to hear
• Yesterday the car stopped at the drugstore and I went in and took a box of semipermanent off the shelf
• The kids thought it was a great idea
• And after I was redder the oldest cut my hair on the deck
• She's 10 and knows what she is doing
• I was interested to hear all her opinions and views on hair cutting
• You learn a lot on the head of an American girl doll
• If you have been stressing about what to put on my eventual tombstone
• Can I suggest
• Anything for a laugh?
• I should add
• That the same father typed out my honours thesis on a tiny Royal typewriter
• With a return and ribbon
• Down in the basement late at night after work
• Undoubtedly there was no curbside pickup in his day
• Times were changing
• Even then