Flypaper thoughts

Fall back edition

• Time to turn the clocks back

• There’s not enough daylight to save

• Think this is the year I’ll set mine back to 1982

• Back to when I didn't know what was going on in the world until the paper came at 4:00

• Folded on the doorstep

• Only the emergencies that fit above the fold

• Or the news, in the TV I could see from the dinner-making kitchen, went on at 6:00

• Speaking of that number

• I had a friend with six kids, the last two, twin boys

• Enough said.

• We had a deal, if anything important happened, I was to call her

• Back to 1982

• When I need a recipe I will look at the index in a cookbook

• I will turn on the car radio

• Iron before I put it away

• In my mother’s memory, I will dust

• Has anyone else noticed that the same society that tells us mindfulness fixes everything is the one that connects with us when mindlessly scrolling?

• I will read a book from the library

• You know I have my father’s last overdue notice

• He died before the internet, never saw it

• He was reading the history of China and the story of women who got the vote in Western Canada

• He was a science teacher who showed children how to make terrariums in pop bottles

• He made his own bagels

• He had time to do that

• I’ll sit on my front steps and knit, undistracted

• And the only people in the world who annoy me

• Will be who asks, when I’ve lost something, where did I put it?

• Or anyone behind a counter who says if we do that for you we’d have to do it for everyone

• I mean, why not?

• Everyone else gets a pass

• I will worry about them just as much as they worry about me

• I will give myself myself back

• Not rent it out to my phone

• I will live like my cat

• Not try to improve myself

• Go about my day

• It’s here for me to enjoy