We were on our ways to Meals on Wheels this morning and hadn’t made it more than half a mile from our house when Butterfly blurted out, “Look, vultures!”
I glanced to my left and sure enough, there were turkey vultures perched on the fence. This is really no big deal, as they are quite abundant where we live. They are always soaring in the skies, looking for their next meal. I always tell Butterfly when we are working in the garden that we’d better pick up the pace or they’ll mistake us for carrion.
I’m always impressed with how quickly they clean up the road kill. Usually they’re bright enough to drag it off the road so they can work on it safely on the side of the road. Butterfly told me she actually had to stop the other day for a very determined vulture who was not about to stop feasting on a dead squirrel in the middle of the road. I guess I shouldn’t worry about them since I’ve yet to see one hit on the road.
This morning I was able to actually catch one drying its wings. I’ve seen them doing this plenty of times, but haven’t been lucky enough to catch it with my camera…until today!
When we arrived at the Seniors First kitchen, where the meals are prepared for us to deliver to the homebound people on our route, Butterfly’s eyes lit up when she saw an untouched cake on the center table in the dining room.
The local stores donate bread and desserts to the dining room. Butterfly prefers the desserts, of course.
“Are you going to cut into that cake?” she asked Nancy, the woman who works in the dining room.
“I guess that means you’d like a slice before you go on your route?” Nancy laughed, knowing Butterfly all too well.
“If you give her cake, she’s not going to eat the sandwich I made for her,” I chimed in.
Butterfly, the human vulture, lives by that well-known rule: life’s short – eat dessert first.
About an hour later, as we were driving along on our route and eating the sandwiches I had made, I could see she was not going to finish hers.
“Hey, it’s not even a very big sandwich! Finish your lunch! You shouldn’t have eaten that piece of cake,” I told her.
She snickered as she put the remains of her sandwich away. “If you must know,” she said, “I saw the two little Milky Way candy bars you put in the lunch bag and I’d rather eat one of those.” Kids. They’re a scream. So that means she started and ended her meal with dessert.
After we’d finished our Meals on Wheels route I asked her if there was anything else she could think of that we needed to in town before we headed home.
“Well,” she said, “you could take me to the St. Joseph’s thrift store. There is a pair of cowboy boots there in my size. I saw them last week. But it’s all the way at the other end of town.”
“First of all, why didn’t you buy them when you first saw them? You know they won’t still be there! And second of all, you want me to take you all the way to the other end of town? I don’t know about that. That might take us 5 minutes.”
“Also,” she added, ignoring my sarcasm, “I don’t have any money with me.”
“Of course you don’t. Why would you bring money with you when you leave the house? You have me.”
The boots she’d had her eye on were, as I’d predicted, long gone.
But she did find these in her size. They cost more than the others, but since I was paying, we bought them.
We also found earrings for her and bracelets and a necklace for me in the jewelry department. When it came time to purchase them, I was delighted with the way our purchases were packaged.
The volunteer helping us reached into a box of old dress patterns they had under the counter and used the tissue to wrap our jewelry.
“Oh my gosh!” I told her as I took out my camera and starting clicking away, “my sister is going to be so upset when she sees this!”
“Why?” she asked, “what else are we supposed to do with these old patterns?”
“Sew a dress from them! My sister treasures these things! I can’t believe this!”
“Why are you taking pictures?” she asked.
“Because I feel a blog coming on,” I told her and handed her one of my business cards. Despite that, or maybe because of that, she clearly thought I was nuts.
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I never thought of using a pattern for this
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Our jewelry was carefully packaged in tissue paper that was formerly a Simplicity pattern. Do I see a recycling pattern here? I crack me up.
