That was quite an Alberta Clipper type of wind we had last night. I was surprised we didn’t have more branches down than there were from the onslaught of those great gusts. It looks like after tomorrow, we will have a respite of warmer temperatures without the wind. Someone from the State of Oregon who’s going to be working here over the next six months asked me today what our winters are like and I quickly responded, “Some are cold yet tolerable, but others can be downright evil.” A client mentioned how many nuts were on the trees as well as the number of squirrels running around gathering them which he believed to be an omen of a hard winter. I teasingly said, “I just think we have too many nuts in this town along with an over-population of squirrels.” I’ve certainly seen my share of road kills lately. The craziest of things happened when I was pulling up to a home several days. There was a squirrel standing in the middle of the street watching me pull up to the curb. It was likely thinking I was going to keep driving forward so kept a keen on on me. Unfortunately for the poor creature, it wasn’t paying attention to a truck driving from behind and just as it realized it was in harms way, jumped in the wrong direction and ended up under the wheel of one of those big tires. It was a nasty sight but while walking up to the house I thought, “Isn’t that just the way it is with humans? When we focus too much on one specific event in our lives, we end up finding ourselves under the wheels of a proverbial “bus”. Stepping a bit farther back while keeping an eye on the whole picture affords more of an opportunity to see what’s coming towards us on the peripherals. We’ve all been in times where people are overly focused on the minor things while the bigger more important problems go unsolved.
While in conversation with that gentleman from Oregon, we ended up on the subject of the number of Meth addicts there are in North Iowa. He asked if we have a problem with it here and I said, “Yes we do just as the entire country has.” I was shocked to hear him say one of the suburbs of Portland has one of the highest percentages of Meth addicts in the country. I would have never guessed a highly desirable metro area such as Portland’s to be plagued by Meth addicts. I said, “If our citizenry doesn’t get this drug problem under control, we will have destroyed our country from within.” I’m fully aware of the amount of thievery that takes place by those addicts in attempting to feed their non-stop craving for drugs. Believe me, I know they’ll do nearly anything for money.
Gray days are meant all the more for us to find something to smile or laugh about. A clever chap who seems to arrive about once every six months or so darkened my office door today. He caught me just as I was walking up to the front office while swallowing my last bite of a light lunch. He couldn’t help himself by teasing me about eating in the office. I said, “We all have to eat sometime don’t we?” With that remark he said with a twinkle, “People should be like me and eat a little much. I eat only when I’m hungry and when I do, I eat about half what most would consider sufficient. I even wake several times in the night and eat a bit of this or that and go back to bed so I can keep my strength up for my wild roller-coaster dreams.” He thought he got me, so I said, “Looks like you’re one of those time sensitive progressive eaters.” The look I got was my laugh.
