Umbrellas

My back is aching once again, but I am not nearly as a) exhausted or b) hungry as I have been in the past week or so.  I brought a half pint of blueberries to snack on today, and ate them at my afternoon break.  They seem to have done the trick -- I'm not even thinking about dinner! 

I am, however, thinking about my back, which is coyly leaning toward a spasm, but lingering on the edge, just to remind me that it has all the power in this relationship.  Uncomfy -- think I'll run a bath when I get home.

It was a pretty good day in the office today -- I was sort of worried, since I had my first solo junket this weekend, and it had been fairly freaky on Saturday morning, with emergency power outages and all the staff people being involved.  But everyone indicated to me, in their various ways, that I had done just fine.  Even Corrina, my immediate supervisor, who is very young (23) and very smart in a certain kind of way, and very determined to have everything done her way or know the reason why, only intimated that there was a better way to do almost everything that I did, but she supposed it was my first weekend.  And then about half an hour later informed me, out of the blue, that she got upset thinking about anything that was out of her control.  So we're going to have a great time working together!  No, really,  I just need to remember to be immediately obedient and never sulky or offended about anything, and she can control me to her heart's content.  Shouldn't be a problem.

In the bus stop this morning, a person approached me and said," A very good afternoon to you."  I looked up, ready to smile at this very mild joke, and saw a man (couldn't tell for a moment if it were a man or a woman) with a large, round face, and a large, round belly, and grey hair falling to the shoulders in carefully brushed waves, with curly bangs coming down to the glasses.  He shook his umbrella at me, and asked,

"Do you need an umbrella?"

I indicated the umbrella I was holding.  In my hand.

"Nope!"

He said confidentially,

"I seem to have two."

And although I could see by looking that he did not have two, I replied, "So do I!" pointing to the little collapsible in my bag pocket.

He sat down on the bench, and remarked,

" I usually wait at the coffee shop down our way, but there's all that construction going on, so I had to come and wait here."

I said, "Really?  What coffee shop is that?"

He said, "Oh, I don't think it's yours.  No -- at least -- I'm almost certain that it's not."

I stared at him a moment, trying to figure this out, and he added, "Unless -- are you a relative?  A member of the family?"

And it progressed from there.  I talked with him until my bus arrived, very much cross questions and crooked answers, and then he did not even get on the bus!  When I stepped forward to climb on, he said,

"Well, it was lovely to talk with you!" very much like a well-brought -up five-year-old.

So I've still got it!  Whatever it was that beckoned to all the crazy people on earth to come and chat, is still blinking on and off above my head