New Ways

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Home from Stump’s Corner Market loop de loop. 2008.

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Him: He’s doing makework while they decide on the fate of his big project. Her: Felt great. Rode bike, shopped, cooked, cleaned, tidied, and read. Not a quilt bit to be seen. Ah guilt. Drank one Diet Coke and it was an immediate NoNo for both of us. Today is swim, sew, and dinner with Carrie at , Oh My Gawd The Calories, “DZ Akins.”

Retirement is heaven. Yes, time fills rapidly and when you blink the day is gone. A decision to save gas lets me pause to write menus for the week using the acres of old cookbooks that I’ve been collecting for years. Then armed with a gaggle of cloth bags, I head slowly across the street with my red wagon to the old, small, local grocery store instead of driving to a Von’s.

Cloth bags, when I remember to use them, makes me feel as if I am doing something good for the environment. I remember them more often now, and I look for them at sales and thrift stores. The wagon though is a triumph of the 1960’s space program.

It’s not just a little red wagon, you see, not a Radio Flyer at all. It’s a Radio Astronaut in all its rusty glory.

One of my biology professors from SDSU gave it to me after she stopped using it. Another biology prof had originally owned it and used it often with three children. Now it stands on end, carefully covered with one of those large black trash bags near the washing machine in the garage. It’s old, it’s rusty, but it gets me to the old Alpha Beta store in economical style. It will hold a week’s groceries in its longer bed and not bat an eye. It clanks, clatters, and wobbles, but it still draws admiring looks and remarks. Best of all, I feel as if I’ve done something positive by pulling my Radio Astronaut behind me.