Lovely weekend

Cliff and I got on the motorcycle yesterday with intentions of riding to Versailles; that's a nice, two-hour ride from here, and Cliff has relatives there we can visit. We like to turn on blacktops that seem to head it the general direction we want to go, and that's how we started. Unfortunately, the blacktop we took at Holden ended up going north and west... the opposite directions in which we needed to go.

On the motorcycle, that doesn't really matter; we bikers often say, "It's all about the ride."

After about forty-five minutes of wandering in the wrong directions, we ended up back in Holden and Cliff took a road that would have taken us to Versailles. However, we decided we'd had a nice ride and there were things we could be doing at home. So home we came. We'd been gone for about three hours, which really is a nice little ride. It was about 1 P.M. when we got back.

My daughter said, "Of course you ate out, didn't you?"

The timing would have been perfect for that, but honestly, there's so much to prepare and eat here at home, I just couldn't bring myself to spend money eating out. I reheated some Harvard beets and some leftover casserole from the fridge, and we were just fine. Then I canned more tomatoes.

There are enough small cucumbers in the garden, I think, to make another batch of fourteen-day pickles; I haven't decided whether I will do that or not, although Cliff thinks it would be a good idea (but only if I want to). I have some very large cucumbers I will probably use to make cucumber curls, a delightful, sweet treat that children love.

I'm loving these cool mornings.

And yes, my house is still a disaster. At my age, I often decide to do what I want, rather than what I should. That reminds me of a song Iris Dement wrote:

THE WAY I SHOULD
Iris Dement

A cold wind against my shoulder woke me up in the middle of the night.
An Autumn leaf was scraping against my window
like it was trying hard to get inside,
and then a ghost that I had met before kept me up 'til dawn
and everything I thought was right was suddenly all wrong.
He said, "Your score is looking pretty bad"
and then he asked me what it was that I had to show.

So I went running down a list of things
some were real, but on some of them I lied.
'cause I felt I had to justify each breath that I'd been breathing in this life,
Then I realized I was playing into someone else's rules,
trying to keep my score up in a game I did not choose.
Then I looked that ghost straight in the eye
and said "You'd better not be coming back by again"

And it's true that I don't work near as hard
as you tell me that I'm supposed to,
I don't run as fast as I could;
but I live just the way I want to
and that's the way I should.

October's leaves were dancing 'round
like angels dressed in robes of Red and Gold;
but November's come and gone now
and they're lying in the gutter out along the road
They're gonna make their way out to the ditch or someday to the sea,
they'll get to where they're going without the help of you or me;
and if each life is just a grain of sand
I'm telling you man, this grain of sand is mine.

And it's true that I don't work near as hard
as you tell me that I'm supposed to,
I don't run as fast as I could.
but I live just the way I want to
and that's the way I should.
but I live just the way I want to
and that's the way I should.