Last weekend, we hung out with our cousins up to Claudette and Roger’s camp on Moose Megantic Lake. We try to do this once a year, just for the heck of it. Not all of us can make it, usually, but this year it was a full boat. What a hoot! Sure, some things have changed. Instead of talking about what we used to talk about (which honestly, I can’t quite remember what that was), we talk about retirement, grandchildren, and, if we’re lucky enough to still have them, our aging parents. We may even engage in an organ recital. That’s when we describe our aches and pains and replacement parts (new hip, knee or …

The 19th annual Antique Tractor and Engine Show took place up to the Bouchard Brother’s Farm last weekend. Hoo, boy! Charlie was like a kid, he was so jacked up. “Three more days ‘til the tractor show, Ida!” Both men and women love this event! Men, because there are tractors, of course, and all them old engines, “antique” tools and the like. (Me? I think “antique” is just a code word for “rusty.” But beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, right?) Women love it because the men are occupied and out of their hair all weekend. It’s a win/win situation. I go to the pancake breakfast Saturday morning (Well, who doesn’t like a pancake …

Charlie and me were out for a Sunday drive, and happened to pass Agnes Brown’s place out on Duck Pond Road. “Slow down, Charlie. Look, Aggie’s got ladders up!” “Ida, them ladders been up over a year.” “No!” “Seen them there last winter, under a foot of snow.” “There should be a law! You are not allowed begin another home improvement project ‘til you’ve finished the last one.” “Or in Aggie’s case, the last ten or twenty projects.” “Wow! What a way to live!” “One year, Ida, I kid you not, I think she put up one shingle.” “Come on!” “Really. Billy Pritchard told me. He lives in the grey house over there. Keeps an …

Last Wednesday (I remember the day because it was so traumatic), I’m tidying up in the morning before work, when I suddenly look down and see my arm in the sunlight. What the heck? I’m thinking. The skin was all strange and bumpy, like an alien creature. My other arm was fine, but my left one was looking really weird. I stared at it for a minute or so, trying to make sense of it. Have I come down with some strange disease in the night? That’s the arm I got my Covid shot in (two months ago). Is this some kind of side effect? Should I google it? Then, the penny drops. It’s just …