It got pretty late pretty early the other day. It’s that daylight savings time. Without the telltale streaks of a setting sun saying, “Go home,” I can end up having dinner seriously fashionably late.

Seeing the time, I decided that it was a good night for a-pick-something-up-on-the-way-meal. I called Sig for a quick consult. He didn’t answer. 

Freed from cooking, I went into the bookstore since I was so close and ended up spending another 30 minutes looking at books and checking out what was on sale.  I called Sig as I left the store but he still didn’t answer. 

I decided on KFC for dinner. (Ever since the Colonel started selling grilled chicken in addition to their original deep-fried, I am a born again fan. With green beans and coleslaw, it’s not a bad little meal.) By this time, it was close to 8:00. I called Sig one last time as I waited in line. When he didn’t answer, I decided that he had surely eaten something by now and only put in one order. 

He was sitting on the porch finishing up a chicken taco and a burrito.  

“There are a couple of tacos in the house for you.” 

“Thanks, I stopped and got some chicken. I called you a few times but you never answered.” I said. 

It reminded me of the O Henry story about the wife who cuts her hair and sells it to buy a watch chain for her husband, only to find out that her husband had sold his watch to buy a hair comb for her. Well, correction, Sig reminded me of the husband in the story. After I finished eating my chicken, I made chocolate pudding for him.

At the front door today, the buzz is not UNI defeating KU last night as you might expect, but rather the hisses and sighs of having to dig out of the snow when almost ready for the ball called spring.  March is roaaring in the neighborhood.

I’m torn between going on a bike ride and just staying in wearing my bike clothes. I’m addicted to HGTV right now and Frank is getting a re-do of his outside entrance and it’s difficult to leave without seeing the results of our team’s hard work. (He seems to be a bit of a control freak, so is having a hard time not getting the vision.)   

The next door neighbors, three guys in a fairly plain but nice split level, got feminized. Window boxes and plants, pillows and drink tables on their porch and a cooler disguised as a planter. (Why do these guys live in this neighborhood?)

We are leaving for Kansas City tomorrow. I have to pack all of the accumulated housewares from our nearly 3 month stay. And there’s a lot of other things I’d rather do. Gotta go, Frank is choosing the color for his front door — he’s got otter (lavender grey), burnt sugar (brown) or siren (deep blue red). Unbelievable tension.

Update. I biked to the gulf, the marina, the park and wheeled into a garage sale. A good day so far.

Hints from Heloise is a column I remember reading years ago. It was a way to soak up the most unbelievably useful advice on doing things like keeping mold from growing on parmesan cheese, keeping flowers from wilting and how to fold a cloth napkin into a swan. Try as I might, I generally forgot the tips before I had occasion to use them but for a moment or two,  Heloise made me feel much more equipped for life than I had been.  

One of the papers that I can buy in Port Aransas carries the column.  A lot of it is now reader’s tips with “thadda girl” comments from Heloise. “I don’t like to put wet tea bags in the garbage, so I decorated a coffee can with foil,” wrote one contributor, “and put it on my counter. I put used tea bags in it during the day, and then dump them all in the garbage at once.”

I probably will never do that.

Birds are plentiful in Port Aransas, Texas where we are spending part of the winter. Went to a  morning birdwatching hour put on by the parks dept that drew serious birders with arm length telephoto lens and suitable hats.

Learned that “Bird on the wing left!” means you look up to the left of the person who hollered to see a bird flying. What follows is an optional participatory discussion about a) kind of bird and b) what the bird is doing. I left before it was quite over. 

Later we were eating lunch in the car on the marina. I said to Sig, “bird on wing left”. But he had missed the birdwatching session so didn’t  know what I was talking about — wasn’t much of a follow-up discussion.