Ten-Finger Exercises

I could have been blogging...

Bill wants me beside him as he looks over his emails re the plane for sale. He's been at work for two days, not feeling well, and is being meticulous about this task, posting the date and substance of each email from each person in a spreadsheet. We have two offers currently, three if you count the Hellhound. We need to respond.

For some reason this is very hard for him. Maybe it's like selling his firstborn. He sighs loudly every couple of minutes. I brought the laptop in here because I was bored sitting here doing nothing but being support. I guess it's like the support I give my patients, it often feels like doing nothing.

He started to mind the laptop, but when I said I was looking up something on carbs, which I was, that was okay. Then I closed it up to save the battery. Seeing that it was nearing the witching hour, I couldn't think of any good reason I couldn't be writing something in this space. So, as my three-year-old granddaughter says, even when she's done something naughty: Ta-DA!

I spent two hours with a family planning a funeral. Those are often the best hours I put in, and that was so tonight. The wife and two daughters talked and talked about the man, the auctioneer, who was their man. They interrupted each other, dragged out old newspaper articles about him, and played me a song they want to use. Can't remember the name of it, but Dolly Parton sings the harmony, and it's something about flying with the angels on raindrops and not wanting anyone on earth to cry. They don't want much religious in the funeral because they weren't religious at all. They do want the Lord's Prayer though, and maybe Ave Maria on the piano-- an odd choice, it seems to me. Or maybe Stardust. They haven't decided.

They told me all about how they helped their dad sort cattle for the sale yard. It was very interesting. He'd be on his horse, or on foot in the later years, and would yell "Sale" or "By"--as in, let this one go by. When they were kids, if they'd work with him all summer, he'd pay them with the sale of a calf for each of them.

They said he told them before they ever came to an auction that they had to hold onto the chair with their hands, and if they wiggled or waved or scratched their nose, they'd be buying a cow and he wouldn't pay for it. They were terrified to move in their seats the first few times. Now they laugh at how easily he got them to behave.