Little Things

Ginny spliced a couple of vacation days onto the Fourth of July holiday to give us an extra long weekend together. So naturally yesterday she spent the day working in one room and I in another.

We’d take breaks to drink coffee together, otherwise we might as well have been on different planets—True Companionship.

We each concentrated on little things.

She repaired a zipper, rolled coins from her change jar, sorted a boxful of brochures from historical sites we’ve visited over the past couple of years—Little things like that, things she’s meant to do for ages.

I also concentrated on little things.

Little things which can infuriate me!

For instance, the automatic em dash function on this new computer. The stupid thing changes what I feel to be the correct formatting of the em dash into one that looks unprofessional and wrong and cheap and amateurish and tacky!

Tacky! Tacky! Tacky!

Now, not everyone knows the difference between en dashes and em dashes; but when you look at a page where they are misused, you get this vague feeling that “something doesn’t look right”.

The fact the this new software “improves” my writing style by automatically changing the way I use an em dash right into a wrong use of this punctuation—and will not let me change it back—drives me nuts.

And I can’t find my AP Style Manual to check.

I spent a couple of hours obsessing over this problem yesterday.

A pox on all their houses!

Ginny says to ignore this little thing and get on with my work.

She says she hopes this is the biggest computer problem I ever face.

No sympathy from that quarter.

But I think small things are important.

I believe it was John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress, who said that while we may avoid “big sins” like murder and such, but that “little sins, respectable sins” usher us into Hell by the backdoor.

In the Bible, the Prophet Zechariah asks, “Who hath despised the day of small things”?

And remember that poem, about the kingdom being lost “For want of a horseshoe nail”?

Anyhow, Ginny and I each worked on separate small things all day Monday.

In the afternoon as we floated on air mattresses in the pool, we noticed another little thing:

No less than eight birdhouses surround our large backyard.

Not a bird lives in a single one.

And we paid good money for those cute little houses.

Stupid birds.

But, Saturday, after finishing up yard chores, I hung my gardening hat on a nail where we hang pool towels to dry…

Under the watchful eye of the lizard on the downspout, guess what a couple of wrens did…

See the rascal?

In my hat!

Here’s an enlarged photo:

Reminds me of the imortal words of Dr. Seuss:

My teeth are gold.
My hat is old.
I have a bird I like to hold.
And now my story is all told.