Uf Da! This weather change has got me along with everyone else racing to make sure all the more pleasant weather outdoor duties are accomplished before the temps go down and the snow starts falling. It actually spit snow for a few moments while I was outside this morning. It’s always a little creepy when outdoors and finding the direction of the wind changing. When I was young and out in the fields, the short calm would happen and then the wind would start. Normally it would be a warm southerly wind changing to a cool northerly. I’m still not in understanding why we’re finding nearly straight line winds blowing from the west in our area. I’m going to blame that on global warming as well.
The very last potted plant came back to my office from a dear elderly person’s front stoop. I’ll try to take good care of it until next Spring when it will be returned to its spot. When I went to pick it up, I noticed a naughty squirrel had dug a hole in the pot. Seems everywhere I looked while outside today there were squirrels. I was telling a worker several days ago about a delicacy in Great Britain which is pan-fried squirrel. He actually didn’t believe me so I went on to tell him that I would eat pan-fried squirrel any day over any of the other wild animals people shoot or trap. He said he tried to skin a squirrel once and found it a real chore. I said, “You just have to develop a knack for it and then you’ll find it easy.” My dear mother must have thought me one of the pickiest eaters when refusing to eat nearly any dish created from game with the exception of squirrel. All the others have that certain discomforting taste which no matter what you try to mask it with, still bleeds through to the taste buds. Ok, I take back my statement. I also like creamed pheasant as long as I don’t have to constantly be on the look-out for bb’s in the meat. I wonder if anyone has ever tried smoking a squirrel since they’re smoking nearly everything else. I’ll have to ask the next hunter I encounter.
When I returned to the office after a late morning appointment and got back into my computer to see if there were any new listings, I had yet another confirmation of how some people can be exceptionally thoughtless. On the screen before me was a new listing of a home which I had visited several times on the request of the owner to give her a valuation of the home which has been vacant for several years. At the time, I had pulled all the recent comparable sales and found the seller to be exceptionally resistive about what I considered to be a fair and marketable price. She absolutely refused to listen to my reasoning. The real zinger of this story is that this now 88 year old woman used to own a real estate office here in Mason City whom I worked for nearly 10 ½ years. I’m not complaining or bragging when I say, “I gave her office my 101% every day I went to work and in those years she became quite financially sound thanks to the number of sales I brought to the closing table while working there. In seeing that listing today, it confirmed my belief regarding people whom’ve been enabled by others yet quickly forget long years of service. I’m sure there’re always those obscure reasons for people to make such choices, but my take on it is that in their “core” they’re either envious, punitive, or pushing their button called “selective memory loss”. Not so very long ago I finally “got it” with people in our community who are chronic takers and make sure I’m walking in an opposite direction and never looking back. Yes, selective memory loss is alive and well and being used all the more often to justify thoughtless actions. Nearly every family has them lurking about and waiting for their own opportunities to take rather than give.
