Leigh's Views

A friend and I were having coffee yesterday. I made the mistake of asking her how her weekend went. She turned to me and said, “It went so good, it finally gave me proof my husband has lost his mind.” Uhm, okay. She then proceeded to tell me what happened Saturday. She left to do some errands while her husband was out tinkering in the shed. When she returned home almost 2 hours later, she found him sitting on the front porch. While she found that odd, she, at first didn’t think much of it as she pulled into the garage. He followed her into the garage, thumped on the roof of the car as she was getting out. Then he started telling her all about how she had locked him out of the house. Which was very bad since there wasn’t any drinking water to be had and no food. And apparently, worse of all, no bathroom, which for an older gentleman with prostate problems was a major no-no. As she’s telling me this, she’s really getting animated – her hands are swinging all over the place, her voice i...

So yesterday I was having coffee with a group of friends. We were having a nice chat, when one of my friends asked if any of us knew how to forward emails to a new address. We all sat in stunned silence. Nope, this is one of those things you need a teenager for. She went on to explain she was considering getting a new email address because her husband hated hers since it had her former last name in it. Uhm, I don’t think the problem here is the email. Why are she and her husband not having face to face conversations? Or at least phone calls? Or, heaven forbid, the dreaded texts? Anything more personal than an email. However, there was no way I was going to point this out. Anyway, our conversation morphed into how we ended up with our email addresses. Several also had an address which contained a last name which was either a maiden name or from a previous marriage. One’s address was an unfortunate nickname from college which had seemed funny at the time but now, some 30 years later,...

I have a friend who hates shortcuts if they involve country roads. Not because these roads are often narrow or because the speed limit is a little less. Nope, it’s because he thinks they are so boring that they must take longer and aren’t really shortcuts at all. For example, I know about this one shortcut because of someone else. It cuts almost 30 minutes off the drive between these two towns which people in this area tend to travel to and from on a frequent basis. So the first time I was taking this trip with this particular friend, I directed him to turn at a certain point. He was like, ‘Huh, why?’ And I explained about the shortcut. He gave me a rather funny look but complied. After about 15 minutes, he looked over at me and said ‘We’ve been out here for over an hour. This isn’t a shortcut.’ Uhm, okay. He could see the clock on the dash just as well as me and surely could see how long it had actually been. Right? So, I corrected his thinking. He started arguing with me over how...

A while ago I got this text from a number I didn’t recognize. ‘Praying for you.’ Uhm. Okay, what do I do with that? It was weird, there were storms all around, severe weather warnings for the area I was in. However, the number the text was from had a code from a different state. I blamed it on an odd coincidence because of the weather and ignored it.   But the next day, another text from the same number. ‘You have …’ Okay, now is the time to tell this poor person they have the wrong number. They need to remind the right person about this event, not me. However, I also mentioned about the first message coming at a rather opportune time. And that, I thought, would be that. Until yesterday. Yup, you guessed it. Another text from this random person again. ‘Is Simone going to be there tonite?’ And, nope, just for the record, I have no clue who that is. Fine, after a few moments of pause, I dash off a quick ‘Wrong number again’ reply. But then I have second thoughts. Maybe we were ...

So I was at the grocery store the other day. Stocking up on the usual – milk, eggs, butter, you know. But I also wanted to get a few items from the international foods section to make a few dishes I had when I went to Spain. However, there was a cart stacked with boxes blocking the shelf with the items I needed. I hesitated for a moment, unsure if I should try to move the cart when a young man came down the aisle. Since he was wearing an apron and a name tag, it was clear he worked there. He apologized for the cart and moved it. I said no problem. Then he asked what I was planning to do with the items I was selecting from the shelf. Thus, I explained what dishes I was going to make and why. He got all excited and told me about his trip to Spain over spring break. We ended up having this great conversation about how neither one of us really speaks Spanish. Which is an issue as in Spain not many people speak English. We shared a few laughs about what words and phrases you absolutely ...