Keepers Shortlist One Fine April Morning

Ok, some would say that this is not such a fine April morning. It is grey outside, overcast, windy, the sky showing no promise of the sun ever breaking through. I am happy to be here though, at the dining room table in my Florida winter home, happy to be sitting at my laptop, typing,  my mom to my left with a newspaper, my sister to my right with her own computer, my dad grumping about leaving his glasses on his bedside table: “Oh crap, I forgot my glasses. Now I have to go all the way upstairs …that really makes me mad”.

Today’s shortlist of happiness:
• One liners: What might brother suggested I do with the the burned off pot-bottom:“Bottom is now a frisbee – lethal, mind you.” My brother is, and always has been, a comic genius, like most of my extended family.

• Dry walkers ™ – these bulky grey slippers fit over your shoes, thus allowing you to walk into the house with your muddy workboots on. These are especially useful it, like me, you have a chest-nut sized bladder requires frequent emptying. Also, you can kind of skate in them if you have ceramic tile floor. You can buy them at Lee Valley.

• MS-Outlook ® reminders – OK, admittedly, I misuse these. Everything is an appointment to me: “pick up kids from school”, “change furnace filter”, “books due back at library”. I think of Outlook as a replacement hard drive for my brain which, ever since I had kids, has been running kind of glitchy. My husband wanted me to put “have sex with mate” as a daily recurrence at 5 pm, but I resisted. Acts of nature just can’t be scheduled.