Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88290 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“Who are these people?” Dane asked.
“This is like a soap opera,” Aja said, having caught all the pertinent details in my story when I explained the first time. She was really good at keeping up when I moved quickly from one subject to another.
Sam gave Dane the bullet points of the situation.
“There, that I understood.” My brother glared at me.
I rolled my eyes at him.
“So Steve was happy to hear from her?” Aja asked me.
“He was.”
“Oh, that’s so nice,” she said.
“Steve and his wife—they divorced five years ago—never had kids, so he’s very excited to meet Robert.”
“This is a really good story,” Aja affirmed, smiling.
I thought so too.
Once they were gone, Sam and I were in the kitchen together.
“I’m so glad you remembered all of that for Linda,” I told him.
“Yeah, well, I feel bad that I only remembered it because of the letters and because I didn’t believe Mario.”
“Speaking of, did you call him?”
“Yeah. He’s coming to Chicago for some seminar in September, so the three of us are gonna have dinner. I called Janine too, and she and her wife are gonna join us.”
“So you get a trip down memory lane. How fun.”
“They’re both good. You’ll like ’em.”
“They’re your friends. I have no doubt.”
He sighed deeply.
“What?”
“You realize if the boys don’t like Dane’s goodwill gesture, God help us.”
I hadn’t even considered that, and he must have seen it on my face.
“Yeah, see. That’s how I feel. We’ll just hope for the best.”
We certainly would.
That’s all for July. Have a wonderful rest of the month, all. See you in August!
AUGUST 2023
Hello, all, and welcome to He Said, he said August 2023 edition.
First off, something disgusting. Do you all know what dog vomit fungus is? I did not. I do now. It looks like dog vomit, if you have a large dog. My Chihuahua has never created anything that big. At first it looks super gross, but then when you try to use your hose nozzle, set on jet, and get rid of it, low and behold, it turns into dust that rises up in the air. I might have overreacted just a bit when I thought it was something an alien left in my backyard. My nice new neighbor, Josette, she moved in with the Teruyas to the right of us, she’s Mrs. Teruya’s mother, explained that she used to get it in her garden in Knoxville all the time.
“Best to let it dry out on its own,” she told me. “It’s because of the mulch. Don’t worry.”
She then took me inside and we had tea. I told you; I might have sounded a bit frantic outside.
“You scared an elderly woman into bringing you into her house at seven a.m. on a Sunday morning because she thought you were having a panic attack,” my daughter said, judging me when she caught me walking back into our yard. “My God, were you screaming?”
“I was not,” I assured her. “I’d just never seen it before.”
“Which is inconceivable to me since I’ve seen it in your flower beds.”
“You’re just lying now to make me feel bad. I already feel bad because I startled her,” I confessed. “Poor thing threw her tea cup and saucer in the air, and I scared Milton as well.”
At which point my daughter got a visual in her head of that—she told me later after she stopped laughing—and lost it in the backyard.
It was a weird morning.
As you all know, we have been on the great apartment hunt of 2023 for a bit now with no end in sight. My brother, Dane, who always likes to be, if not asked for help, then at least asked for his opinion, gave us a wonderful lead on a condo for rent in Hyde Park. Now, when he said courtyard, I’m not going to lie, I was thinking Melrose Place. Sadly, not at all. But the place is very cute. You walk up to the entrance on a cobblestone path. and there’s a lovely wrought iron gate that fits snugly into an arch that you have to use your fob to get into. Once you’re through, there are more cobblestones and then a small courtyard with a lovely fountain covered in Talavera ceramic tiles. There are several large mature trees around the property, and each condo has a small backyard. The whole place has the same wrought iron fence around it as the front gate, and when I first walked in, I was struck by the sound of the wind through the trees and how lovely and quiet it was.
The condo itself was clean inside, which was a change from many others the boys had seen, the floors were all the removable tile that looked like wood, which made sense in a rental, and there was a gas fireplace and central heat and air. With two bedrooms and one and a half bathrooms, they couldn’t say yes fast enough. It was privately owned, no company to put in an application to, simply Dane’s word that Kola, Harper, and Jake were good guys and would take care of the place. They got the keys, three for the front door, one for the mailbox, and three fobs for the gate a day later. It was a bit more than they wanted to spend a month, but it was worth it to have nice neighbors and a quiet place to come home to.