I told my daughter, a stay at home mom to two of my four grandchildren, that she has to get out of the house more often. She told me that was the old mom calling the young mom stuck in a rut.

Since entering semi-retirement, I haven’t ventured far from the comforts of my country confines during these past winter months. I even managed to take all of my degree courses online this semester and the thirty-five mile trips to have lunch with a friend and do a little shopping have dwindled down to none.

Even the lure of spending less on groceries and other necessities doesn’t tempt me the way it does in summer months. But the recent warming temperatures that promise spring and hint at summer bring cabin fever. So when daughter called to say she had a childless afternoon on her hands,it was all the prodding I needed to agree to a chicks’ day out.

You know the chicks have been cooped up too long when they get lost in not one, but three shopping area parking lots.

My hubby tells me that the alarm on the key fob works like a charm for locating misplaced vehicles. Of course, that’s after he asks me why I don’t make a mental note of where I park when I get out of the car. His mistake is in assuming that I don’t. Like cheap sticky notes with inferior glue, my cerebral reminders just don’t stay put.

Besides, pressing that little button is way too close to having one of those “Help me I’ve fallen down and can’t get up,” alarms dangling around my neck.

I mentioned the car alarm trick to my daughter and she asked why I wasn’t pressing the button. What? And draw attention to my forgetfulness obviously brought on by advancing age?

She agreed that the two of us wandering around a parking lot shouting to each other from two lanes away didn’t draw attention. She gets her sarcasm from me.

“I guess you had your eyes closed when we parked.” I said.

She responded that she never pays attention to where she parks. Why would she? The vehicle her hubby and she chose to accommodate two active kids and all their trappings is so large she can spot it from a block away. I practically need a step ladder to climb into the monster and elevation nosebleeds can’t be ruled out.

She can be smug now, but she only has a year left of her twenties. It won’t be long before her eyesight goes the way of her size skinny jeans and she won’t be able to rely on the crutch of clear vision any more.

Things change as we get older. We become more thoughtful, we develop a desire to make a difference, we hone in on the important things in life. I like to think that my preference to keep my business local is based in those maturing values.

Things have become less important to me than people. Community is like a family. I like chatting with my neighbor who works the checkout at the grocery store. I like seeing the familiar faces of the couple that owns the hardware. I like being greeted with a smile and called by name.

It seems like a lifetime ago that I could wind my way around any expressway cloverleaf, make a fast lane change to an exit or entrance ramp, and find an access road to arrive at the Mecca of a suburban shopping mall. Now, it just doesn’t seem worth the effort.

Okay, so maybe the truth is that I don’t like driving in “the big city”. But by navigating my way through the maze of traffic lanes and poorly planned parking lots of an urban shopping center, even one as tame as that in our nearest city, what can I find there that I can’t find closer to my rural home?

Obviously not my car.

. . . . . mid

What were the Gods thinking . . . or the Goddesses for that matter? If they were going to create men with a propensity to emit snorty, snoring rumbles from the time their heads hit the pillow until they shake themselves awake, why on earth did they make women light sleepers?

Oh sure, it’s great to have an acute sense of hearing if you’re a mother. Most of us hone in on the changing rhythm of our baby’s breathing before she or he can even muster up the 2 am “feed me” cry.

And as time goes on, just let those demon-teens try to slip out of the house unnoticed, or sneak back in late at night.  The sound of a door hinge creaking or a window sliding open will wake me from a dead sleep at 100 yards.

So lying next to Mr. snort-a-lot is like trying to sleep in a culvert with a locomotive rumbling over the top of it. He tells me that, on occasion, I snore too. What? Okay, maybe so, but my little burbling, murmurs have never woken him up, let alone kept him awake an entire night.

My father was a snorer. My sister’s husband is a snorer. My daughter’s husband is a snorer. Along with my hubby, they have all made wisecracks about how the women in our family aren’t exactly morning people.

That’s a nice way of saying that our silent, piercing stares leveled over cups of hot, black coffee, shine with a murderous glint.

“Stop singing!” I tell my hubby when he feels musical in the morning. “You don’t know the right words anyhow!” Any other time I find his creative lyrics wildly amusing.

He offers to make breakfast. “Just coffee,” I growl. “I would think you’d know that by now.”

He sits at the table with the morning paper “Do you have to read the newspaper in here? Can’t you go into the living room?”

I don’t know why he insists on saying I’m ornery in the morning. I just like it quiet for the first few hours . . . for contemplation and meditation. Silly man, he thinks that we should greet the day together, all cheerful and lovey-dovey.

I try to circumvent such nerve-jangling morning rituals by replacing them with others. Like dragging my exhausted body out of bed an hour before he awakes so that I can dose myself with caffeine (and maybe a little sugar) in the hope of shape shifting back into a human.

I found this great little gadget, like a wristwatch, that supposedly stops snoring by sending a light electrical impulse to the snorer, training him (think Pavlov and conditioning) to stop snoring. All I can say is don’t let a blurry eyed, sleep deprived wife at the controls or her snoring hubby might get more of a shock than he bargained for.

Now that I think of it, my friend has a taser from her law enforcement days.  I wonder if she’d let me borrow it?

I’m starting to go deaf. I know this because I hear things that just can’t be. I gave my sweet grandson a sock monkey for Christmas. He’s at that babbling stage, where he carries on entire conversations with himself, and those of us listening can make out only about half of his words. Come to think of it, maybe I’m the only one who can make out only half.

One day he was waxing on and on and what I thought I heard put me in a state of shock that was broken only by my own uproarious laughter when my daughter reassured me that he said funky monkey. “It’s a song, mom,” she assured me.

More and more of my everyday conversations have an added element of surprise. “Can you straighten the hose?” hubby asked me when I was sitting on the deck finishing my manicure. “There’s a kink in it.”

“You want me to paint your toes? Pink Peppermint?”

Well what does he expect?

The irony is, that no matter how bad my hearing gets, his snoring is going to be the last thing I can still hear.

Maybe we were designed that way; a primitive security system that let an aging cavewoman know she could sleep safe and sound because her caveman was still there protecting her. . .

 . . .if she could squeeze a wink in edgewise between snorts.

. . . . . . mid