I belong to three “book discussion groups.”  That’s two too many, but who could say “no”?  For the first one, I waited a long time to be invited to join.  I actually think I had to wait for a member to die, but no one ever actually said this to me.  The second one is a neighborhood group.  We usually walk to each other’s houses and actually often discuss the assigned book before moving on to community concerns, films, and general kindly gossip.  This week, we are walking to the library where Brian Doyle, the author of “our” monthly selection, Mink River, will hold forth.  Finally, I am one of two members of a very exclusive group with an old high-school friend in Corpus, Christi, Texas — and I do know that it is redundant to say “old high-school friend.”  He and I are reading The Island of Vice  but we had to take a hiatus until April15 because he is a CPA.  Playing catch-up now.

Her beautiful mama left last week for Maui and Molokai for her National Parks job (something to do with monitoring plants) and we get to have Lula here with us while her quarantine time plays out.  Here she and Roxie wait patiently in the Subaru for permission to jump out at “The Minto.”  Lots of fetching the ball is on the training regimen.  Lula and her crate must weigh less than seventy pounds for the flight — and Roxie is always just a little proportionally-challenged herself.  And then, there’s me!!!

Yesterday Joannie got our daddy’s TV set out of the closet where she had stowed it when he died two summers ago.  She set it up on her beautiful new red chest and discovered that it was still set to ESPN with the captions on.  We both shed a few tears.