Things that Followed Me Home

by Pa Rock
Weary Traveler

It is Sunday afternoon and I have been back in Arizona almost two complete days.  Somehow I managed to return with both a cold and the cold.  I am sick, sicker than I can remember being over the past several years - with a runny nose and hacking cough that could wake Jimmy Hoffa.  Every time I almost get to sleep, the cough reminds me that I am not worthy of sleep.  My nose is running to the point that a complete stranger in a store stepped up and offered me a tissue – which I took!

The weather when I first arrived in Missouri on Thanksgiving Day was crisp, clear, and beautiful.  By the time I left last Friday, Kansas City had a light dusting of snow and very cold temperatures – and the other two communities which I had visited on the trip, West Plains, Missouri, and Rogers, Arkansas, were buried under ten or more inches of ice and snow.

Now, back in Arizona, things are also cold – by Arizona standards.  It is jacket and coat weather.  The temperature tonight is supposed to drop down to thirty-five degrees – a far cry below the 118 degrees that we suffered through for a week last June.

Gilda Radner said it best:  “It’s always something.”

(Another great Gilda line, which she said while portraying Miss Emily Litella, was. “What’s all this I hear about Presidential erections?”  When Chevy Chase corrected her and said people had been talking about Presidential elections, and not erections, she replied with a very flustered, “Oh.  That’s very different.  Never mind.”)

A local retailer in West Plains was supposed to install carpeting in my home there tomorrow.  I’m guessing that won’t happen – unless they bring it in by sled!  The good news is that I don’t have to trudge out through the snow to give the chickens water that isn’t frozen – at least not this year!

One thing that did not follow me back to Arizona was the power cord for my laptop computer.  I forgot it in Kansas City, and Tim has shipped it out here by FedEx – where a two day delivery will only take four.  (It sounds like FedEx truly is trying to compete with the U.S.Postal Service – on their level.)  The cord is scheduled to arrive on Tuesday afternoon.  The charge on my little computer will expire later today or tomorrow at the latest – so don’t be surprised if the Ramble doesn’t go up tomorrow.  I will call it my vacation!

But in the meantime, enjoy the cold – and know that Professor Limbaugh is using these uncomfortable temperatures as proof positive that global warming is a hoax!  (And so is he!)