Ate a Jack’s bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit on the porch this morning while watching the birds and admiring the beauty of the day coming to life. Had to take Penelope to get a shot for her itching at middle brother’s vet clinic. She loves to go there. Gets so excited. That girl dog can scratch up a storm when she’s got the itches. While she scratches herself one leg beats on the floor like a snare drum. Wakes me up at night with her drumming. When went through the window at Jack’s to get me and Stew a biscuit, the lady at the window gave Penelope a chicken finger. Penelope was so happy. It was too hot so she had to wait till it cooled down. She sniffed and snorted on the napkin holding it all the way home. Such a nice gesture from the lady at Jack’s and another perk of living in a small town.

The resident hoot owl decided to visit my large oak tree today right at sunset. I kept hearing this strange bird call so I walked out in the yard and looked up in the oak tree. There sat Mr. Hoot in all his glory being dive bombed by two mocking birds. He just shook his head each time they pecked him. He’s large and so handsome with his mottled brown and white plumage. He stayed a long time and just ignored the mocking birds. Never heard a mocking bird make that noise I heard. And Mr. Hoot never hooted.

Ordered a new printer. It came today…man was it ever hard to connect up to the internet for wireless printing. I spent a morning trying to figure out which printer to get so Stew and I could share using it. He has several novels he’s finishing so we decided on a laser printer. I worked for an hour trying to connect to our wireless internet. Then Stew worked for an hour. We could actually connect to the internet next door but not to us. Finally after 21 sheets of error messages (seriously, I counted them) we tried one more time and it worked. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition! Can’t wait to get some letter writing going. My handwriting is almost illegible. I can’t even read it and it cramps my hand and fingers to write.

I’m not the only one who is technology challenged. My dearest friend had some how managed to block my number from her cell phone. I had been trying to call her several times and the call wouldn’t even ring. I called her at work and told her I couldn’t call her. She had no trouble calling me, though. She asked her granddaughter to check her phone this weekend and her granddaughter saw my number was blocked. We pride ourselves with our friendship of over 40 years and never having a cross word so I was crushed she had blocked me. Just kidding, like me, she didn’t even know she had done that. Don’t know what us oldies would do without our technology savvy grandchildren.

Saw the neatest clouds yesterday. Looked like Father Sky dropped his paint brush and it bounced all over the blue sky canvas before he could snatch it up. Not sure if they were cirrus or altocumulus clouds. The sky was a dark cerulean blue and the clouds were a bright bleached white. No definition to the edges. Then I thought, maybe they were white places on the blue sky canvas not yet painted in by Father Sky.

Actually saw a turquoise cloud yesterday at sunset. Never seen the colors I witnessed yesterday in a sunset. Maybe that was a masterpiece painted just for me. The Lord knew I needed a smile to end the day. The turquoise cloud was brief, but so beautifully contrasted with the reddish orange ball of the sun. Passed too quickly for a photo. I have become a nephophile (lover of clouds) and an opacarophile (lover of sunsets). There have been some glorious colors in the sunsets the last few days. Don’t know how you can see these beautiful scenes at twilight and not believe in a Great Spirit.

I love Maya Angelou, studied her at Wesleyan. She wrote a powerful novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I love her quotes. This is one of my favorite ones. “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Words are cheap and hard to remember. Once they’re said, you can’t take them back. It’s not what you say but how you say it. Your tone of voice can turn the words around and misconstrue their meanings. We need to think about how we impact people we meet on a daily basis. We need to live each day deeply with kindness and compassion and treasure the people in our lives.

“Close friends are truly life’s treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves,” — Vincent Van Gough.