A First Monday

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I kicked up my heels today, the first Monday of living alone. I walked to the stop sign with neighbor Joyce, then I took a joy ride in the car. Joy ride is not the right term; I only ran two errands, but I was free to go wherever I wanted. The first leg was driving to the convenience center, more commonly known as the dump. I had never been there by myself, always having gone with John, then David, and last week niece Chrissie. It was great to know that the trash was out of the house and wouldn’t be too unwieldy for me to manage.

From there I went to Dollar General for things I wanted a bit ahead of time. That included toilet paper, toilet bowl cleaner, and dog food. The pet food that Chrissie and I bought last week was going down at an alarming rate, so I bought a larger bag this time. Kacey wolfed it down when I gave her a sample.

Chrissie and I remarked on a young man in Dollar General who was moving all around the store and seemed to be quite helpful. I was the only one checking out today, and he was standing at the register.  He motioned me to come over, that he would check me out.  I told him I appreciated that, because I was new to scanning things myself. Chrissie had watched as I did it, but I much preferred him to do it. I said for the first time in 81 years I was living alone, enjoying it but had no one to shop with.  He beamed and said, “This is the time for you to travel the world and see everything you always wanted to see!” 

I told him I’d seen most of what I wanted to see, and now it was time for people to visit me.  I asked what country he would like to see.  Ireland was the instant answer.  His grandparents had come from there, and he wants to see it for himself.  He was so animated and engaging.  It was fun to chat with him.

After my trash and shopping spree were over, I talked to son John $ for a couple of hours.  We began talking about rotary phones, and I told him the first phone of my childhood had no dial. We would pick up the receiver, wait for the operator to say “number please”, then say the number we wanted. I still remember that the pharmacy was “one”, and my dad’s office number was 29. My grandmother who was born in 1890 had the number 207 and the one born in 1880 had 278. From my description of the telephone, he sent a picture he found on the internet. It was accurate. I found another to send him of a later version. We came back to the present when our stomachs began to growl. He was going to have breakfast, and I was heading for lunch.

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Published by Anne Mehrling

I'm a retiree who loves to write about life in the mountains of North Carolina.

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35 thoughts on “A First Monday”

  1. Oh, my but I enjoyed this story, Anne! How exciting, and keep on kicking up your heels. Heck, you might even strap on a pair of Mary Janes and start tap dancing.

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  5. Is there a time difference between where you and your son live or do you just start your day at different times? I’m g;lad you’re enjoying your independence and are finding things to fill your time, Some of us maladjusted oafs never seem to get the hang of living aloneand rattle about the house looking for stimulating conversations with the budgie or on odd occasions, mirrors. It can be fun after removing a beard and not recognising yourself. Often the highlight of the day can be preparing a meal to go in the ‘bing’ machine.

    Have a lovely Rest of the Week. Gigantic Hugs from Wales.

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    1. Kate is my only child living in the same time zone. She is 730 miles away. John lives in Washington State, the most northwest state, not counting Alaska. I’m in an eastern state, so we are three hours apart. Lise lives in Denmark, with a six hour time difference.

      I laughed at “after removing a beard and not recognizing yourself”.

      Huge hugs from North Carolina.

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  6. I hope you well spent of the day. I’m happy you’re enjoying your independence and are finding things to fill your time. Very nice you sharing spent your Frist Monday. God blessing. Tack care,Anee.

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    1. I think I’m wearing it well so far. I practiced by being head of the household for a year and a half after John died. You started much younger than I did.

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  10. That’s the best thing about someone checking out the shopping – the opportunity to chat and share about life! Haha! What a fun conversation about phones and such short telephone numbers – I guess that meant there were so few people with them? Sounds like a good first Monday on your own, Anne!

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    1. I am wondering now how high those telephone numbers went. They started at 1 and continued consecutively. When I was a teenager, I think the population of the county was 5,000. By that time we had rotary dials on the phone, and we had seven digit numbers.

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  12. It’s sounds like you’re doing well. I only lived by myself for about 6 or 8 months when I was 22. I hope it doesn’t happen again for a long, long time, if ever but if it does I think I would still need a dog.

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  13. You are off and runnin’ … that’s for sure. That’s nice you are back to driving, even short distances. It sounds like Kacey is a good companion. I had my two canaries, not both at the same time and I talked to them all the time. Since I lost Buddy in 2016, I just mutter to myself or talk to Marianne, the rag doll who is on the deacon’s bench in the kitchen. She’s been here since 1985. We had a rotary phone for many years before converting to a digital phone. I think I’m the only one with a landline on the block – AT&T keeps raising my bill and when I lost service for two weeks last April, then raised my bill $3.00, I called and said “no service, then you raise my bill?” The rep acted like AT&T was doing me a favor by giving me service – they have raised it two more times, yesterday to $80.00 a month. The bill was $14.00/month until my mom passed away – I called AT&T to change phone billing records and they raised to about $50.00/month – that was 2010.

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