Tag Archives: life

July 31, 2026 · 6:12 am

Boiled Fly, Anyone?

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

Now, I know that every summer, we are inundated with flies and every summer I whine about hating them. So since it’s summer and there are flies, this column should come as no surprise to anyone!

Most of the time, I’m just irritated by their ability to annoy. They fly in my face, crawl up my clean windows and buzz when I’m trying to sleep at night. The one thing I have not written about, however, is their threat to my food supply. But this week, they even crossed that line.

I was preparing one of my favorite meals which requires a pot of boiling water to cook the pasta pockets in. I made the pockets, got the water boiling and then, took off the pan lid. I walked back to the counter, grabbed a pocket and came back to the uncovered boiling water. I threw in the pocket and then noticed there was something black on it. That made no sense! There was nothing black on the pockets!

That’s right, you guessed it. It was a fly. Now, I’m fairly certain that there was no fly on the pocket when I picked it up, so the only explanation is that the fly willingly jumped into a boiling pan of water! Isn’t that the way they used to execute people in the Dark Ages?

A full pan of boiling water and a pasta pocket that took some considerable work to make: what to do? Should I chuck the whole works and start again, or fish out the fly and pretend it never happened? Now, I’m gonna be honest; a lot of me wanted to do the second thing, but I have not yet been reduced to eating fly residue, and there was no way to be sure that Roy would be the one who got the fly-flavored pocket, so I chucked the whole thing and started again!

I try to be careful when I have food around  and it’s fly season. I cover things on the counter and try to keep the area as fly-free as possible. But those buggers have not gotten the memo that they are not welcome, and they are not particularly fussy about what they will eat.

Especially is it difficult to keep them out of drinks. I think liquid must be the fly equivalent of the Viking Valhalla, because they jump into every liquid imaginable, hot or cold! This must be a direct route to fly heaven and much preferred to being caught on a sticky tape or smashed with a flyswatter.

While I was still teaching, I had the awful habit of bringing coffee into the classroom. Knowing that flies crawling into warm liquid are at their worst in the early fall, you would have thought I would be more cautious. But on one memorable occasion, I was helping a young lady with her project, holding onto my coffee cup, and I took a sip. The minute the saturated fly touched my lips, I knew what had happened, and automatically did the reflexive thing. I spit that coffee everywhere, including all over the astonished young lady I was attempting to help. I apologized, sent her mother a note offering to clean her clothes and dumped that coffee with the fly carcass out the schoolhouse door. However, there is at least one student who does not remember me for inspiring her. She will remember me as the teacher who vomited hot coffee all over her! And it’s all that fly’s fault.

I have read reviews of restaurants where someone complains that they got a dish of something which contained a fly and they will never go to that restaurant again because of health issues, cleanliness failings, etc. However, anyone who has ever been in a South Dakota kitchen as July melts into August knows how easily this could happen…and it has nothing to do with health or cleanliness. Having said that, I would definitely send the fly-enhanced dish back, but I wouldn’t boycott the restaurant—unless I saw the cook stirring the stew with her hands!

And on that note, you are all welcome at any time for a meal at my house. I do know how to prepare most dishes without a fly as an ingredient. I will be very careful for your sake, but I do advise you to keep your eyes open. Cause you never know…the flies might have other ideas!

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July 24, 2026 · 4:10 am

Me and my Shadow…

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

Well, I have taken the plunge, so to speak, and had my left knee replaced. Now, this was a difficult choice for me, but one that I am assured–by everyone who knows–that I will be glad I did…after a while. I’m glad to be on the backside of the surgery, but it has had one unexpected consequence. I have acquired a new shadow.

One of the things you must have (other than a whole lot of ice) when you do knee surgery, is a walker. Now, I have no objection to a walker; I have indeed on rare occasion used one for a sore leg in the past and have been glad of it. However, this surgery has required that I take on a walker as my constant companion, for at least a few weeks.

This really doesn’t sound like that big a deal, I know, but it has required some adjustments. I have to remember each time I get up that I must bring along my four-legged friend. And usually, I am carrying something with me when I move, and this does not make my shadow happy.

“If you are going to carry that glass of tea, who is going to push me?” The walker will demand. “When you are operating me, I want all hands on the walker!”

I have learned the fine art of holding onto the walker and the coffee mug in the morning, both at the same time. Of course, I won’t say all the coffee makes it the whole way in the mug, but as long as I don’t splash the walker, it doesn’t complain!

I have discovered that the walker comes with a long list of demands. If I find a spot to sit in the house, the walker snaps, “That’s fine for you, but where is my spot? And don’t put me in the corner, like you did the last time, it’s so demeaning!”

Leaving the house is even more of a trial. Once I am in the car, what do I do with the walker? Should I put it in the back seat, like a second-class citizen or should I confine it to the trunk like so much luggage? By the time my shadow and I are loaded, it’s taken an extra half hour just to get started going anywhere.

In any public setting, the walker immediately becomes an issue. “Where am I going to sit?” it clearly demands, as it straddles the aisle, or blocks the seats behind it. Since folding it up and holding it in my lap is not an option, it means that wherever I go, my shadow makes it necessary for me to take up more room than usual. It makes staying home more and more appealing.

My walker definitely makes me feel bigger than I was before. By the time I have wiggled all six of our legs and the width of the walker, wrapped around my already considerable width, through a doorway, it makes me rethink that second doughnut I had for breakfast. I need twice the normal space to get around the living room, down the hall and into the bathroom.

While the walker may have problems with me, it has started an all-out war with the dog. She is not excited about my new companion and has attempted to play chicken with the walker on several occasions. So far, the score in that competition is Walker-10, Dog-0 and a well-stomped tail!

Possibly the greatest difficulty in my new shadow is that it does not automatically join me in my travels. Sometimes I forget that I need my mechanical companion and I take off on my own. Especially is this difficult when I wake up. I got up in the middle of the night and went to the kitchen for a drink. It was while I was reaching for a glass that I suddenly had that exposed feeling, like something was missing. That’s right, while I was having a drink in the kitchen, the walker was standing in the bedroom hollering, “Did we forget something…or someone?”

For anyone out there who is worried for me because of my knee replacement, you really shouldn’t be concerned about that. I am in very good hands. However, if you want to worry about the fact that I’m sitting at home having conversations with a walker, now that’s probably something you should worry about…

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July 17, 2026 · 9:35 am

A nurse I am not!

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

The medical world and its workers have always fascinated me. Imagine having that much knowledge of the workings of the human body! And it seems they discover something new every day. For an old hypochondriac like me, knowing that much about my body would be mentally unhealthy. I still remember being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and having my doctor say, “Ask the questions here…don’t Google it.” She had no worries: if I had Googled it, I would have just updated my will and lit candles to wait for the end because I have no clue how to interpret medical data and generally come up with the wrong diagnosis! I will leave it to the professionals.

And now back to these medical professionals. It just so happens that I have made a few observations about those in the medical world myself. A recent stay in the hospital caused me to note a number of phenomena which prove to me that I will never be in the medical profession, because I couldn’t make it.

For instance, in order to be a nurse, I would have to keep an orderly watch on any number of people, made excessively crabby by their infirmities. And I would have to do this with empathy and no slapping the whiners around.

For an example of duties, as a nurse or other medical professional, I would have to touch urine containers, feces containers and highly aromatic bags of vomit, and anything else which might emit from the human body. I can barely force myself to handle a coffee filter filled with used coffee grounds and these people are handling much worse with calm assurance.

Were I to go into the medical field and someone were to hand me bags full of vomit (as I did to nurses this week) my reaction would be immediate. “You’ve got to be kidding! What do I look like, waste disposal???? Empty that yourself!”

They also have to be the kings and queens of optimism. While I am melting down over having to walk or not being able to salt my food, they are following along behind me and my walker declaring, “You’re doing great; you’re looking just beautiful.”

I find this a particularly endearing and brave comment for them to make considering that they are making a statement like that and sounding sincere, while what they are most likely looking at is my bare behind sticking out of the back of my gown as I go limping along. That is positivity!

Medical professionals are required to look at you with a straight face as they inquire about your poop output, and the quality of your urine—and they must look as though the answers are not going to gross them out. They are required to check out our mouths, our ears, our eyes and other orifices less pleasant so they can draw their conclusions on our health. I am never more aware of things like bad breath and the otherwise unwashed condition of my body than I am when someone has to check me out. They must explain to a horrified patient where they are going to check for body temperature and then proceed to do it—quickly—before the patient has time to consider!

One of the things I find most amazing is their dealings with drugs (nothing illegal implied). They can look through my list and discuss medications with me that follow no writing or speaking pattern. They pronounce the names with skill, overlooking the fact that the words defy any phonics or any alphabetical rule out there. What’s more, they know what these drugs do and whether or not they play nice with other drugs. Unbelievable. “Ma’am, do you take ****** (word unpronounceable)?

“I don’t know,” I stumble over a reply. “Is that the one that controls my blood pressure or handles my indigestion?” They keep good records of that and it’s a good thing, because the medicines confuse me considerably—even if I could pronounce the names.

I think the thing I most admire—especially in the nursing staff—is their ability to maintain an emotional balance. They must operate somewhere between too much sympathy (Oh, is that making you upset?) and the attitude of a prison guard in the 18th century (Suck it up, buttercup, it’s only going to get worse.) The fact that they can be both practical and encouraging says a lot about them.

Knowing as well as I do that I am not going to make a good nurse, it only remains for me to thank the nurses, nursing assistants, doctors, ect., for being willing to take on the job for me. Without them, there would be no one concerned about the state of my bodily functions and certainly not a soul who would want to help me with that vomit bag!

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July 11, 2026 · 10:44 pm

Missing in Action

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Missing in Action

Jackie Wells-Fauth

I have a recurring nightmare. In this nightmare, I am wandering in a thick, dense forest (could be a jungle; I’m not sure). In any case, it is obvious I am not going to get myself out alone.

The worse part of this nightmare? I know, in the way that dreamers do, that the only person who knows I’m lost and is looking for me is Roy. Now, don’t get me wrong: Roy would do his utmost to locate me if he could—most days. The problem is that Roy is not good at locating things that are missing, so unless I am two feet from him and singing the Star Spangled Banner, he’s never going to find me.

I make this criticism even knowing about myself that I lose many things as well. Sometimes I spend the greater part of a day just looking for my phone or my purse. But the difference between Roy and I is that I eventually find them…sometimes in weird places, but I find them.

Roy has been known to stand in front of the desk and lament, “Why can I never find a black pen in this house?” When I go out to help him find it, he will be looking down, searching the surface of the desk, while an entire pencil holder will be sitting at his eye level on the shelf in front of him, packed with black pens!

“Honey, can you go and get the electric skillet?” I will ask as I’m working in the kitchen. “It’s in the hall closet.”

“I can’t find it,” comes the frustrated answer as he looks wildly through the living room closet.

Of all of his many and useful skills, finding anything that is not out in plain sight and clanging a bell, is not one of them.

Today, I went to take care of some financial business for him, since I’m always ready to help. “They have the document,” he told me. “I looked in my files and I don’t have it, so they must.”

I relayed this information to the poor clerk at the front desk. “Uh…we don’t have the document,” she said, looking carefully at her computer screen. “Perhaps you really do have it?”

“Of course not! Roy told me he couldn’t find it,” I said confidently, sure that someone else was at fault.

“Maybe look one more time?” she suggested.

In a huff, I marched home and looked through all of the documents we had. No, the needed document was not there. And surely, he had looked through the whole drawer, even where the documents were not filed, but I would look again. Of course, there it was, having accidentally slipped behind other files, but in clear view…if you looked for it! So, I had to go back and sheepishly admit that I had the document all along. But I made sure to throw Roy under the bus for it.

In talking to other couples over the years, I have discovered that in most cases, there is one partner who can find a needle in a haystack and another partner, who needs someone to find both of their shoes and their keys and sunglasses. And I’m going to lose all my male readers when I make the gender-biased observation that the seeker is in most cases, a woman. And no, I haven’t got research data to back this up, so it is merely my opinion!

So back to my nightmare about getting lost in the forest and Roy being the only one to go looking for me. I finally shared this nightmare with him and his response was a little different than I was expecting. “That really might have an upside, you know.”

Now I’m really worried. I’m depending on the rest of you seekers: if I disappear into a heavily wooded area, don’t let Roy be the only one looking for me. I may have provided him with the incentive not to go search at all!

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June 26, 2026 · 2:25 am

Through the Ages

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

Before you even read this, I will have turned 70. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that one, because as most 70-year-olds will tell you, SEEING 70-year-olds and BEING one are two entirely different things.

“Look at that woman over there, she looks so old! I bet she’s at least 70!” I overheard a young woman snicker to her friend. I paused for a moment in righteous indignation for the woman they were talking about but looking at the rest of the people in the ticket line, I didn’t see a 70-year-old around anywhere. That’s when I realized they were talking about me! Now aside from their bad manners, there was the problem of me looking 70 years old without having accepted that fact.

I decided to own that moment, though. I stooped a little bit, hobbled over to where they were standing in line and said, “Pardon me, but would you two lovely young girls mind letting an old lady in ahead of you? It’s so hard to stand on my old legs!” They let me in the ticket line ahead of them and I refrained from skipping when I left, (I couldn’t have anyway) having purchased my tickets before them!

I had a friend ask me, “How does it feel, turning 70?” That was a hard question to answer, because the real answer is that it feels a lot like it did when I turned 30…only with more arthritic joints. My mind is still a happy-go-lucky ten-year-old, but the body says, “Reality check, lady!”

Over the years, I have frequently written about my birthday, and recently, I did a search back to see when I started. The first one I can find that is me, whining because I am getting older, is when I turned 35. Now, I have read that column many times before and every time I read about what a “bummer” it is to turn 35, I want to go back and slap that 35-year-old right in her bummer! (Yes, I actually used the word “bummer” to describe getting older!)

It occurs to me that aging goes through specific stages. For the first 19 years of my life, birthdays just meant a cake, pictures and presents. Birthdays were fun! And they never came around soon enough. This was to change…

Between 20 and about 35 (when it becomes a bummer) birthdays come around with great frequency, but I don’t think we pay as much attention to them. We are busy, establishing a career, taking mates and raising children if we wish and we accept the passing years with a great deal of passivity. It’s when we reach about 40, and we’re letting the children out the door and the dogs in, that we begin to think, “What is that twinge in my back and when did my knee start hurting in the weather?”

It’s between 40 and 50 that birthdays become less fun. Yes, we are celebrating that we have made it one more year, but we are also noticing that we don’t run as fast as we used to (or at all) and some of the signs on the road are written in awfully small print! But still, life is busy and pretty good.

By 60, we are starting to wonder how that birthday comes around so fast every year. People begin to wonder what to give us for presents, because we already have what we want and usually the cake has to be gluten, sugar, and fat free and I would just as soon let the candles burn it up, in that case.

And now, we have arrived at my 70th birthday. “We need to do something special, to celebrate your 70th,” my children told me. Please, at my age, getting out of bed without my back and three other joints going out is pretty special! My hair is thinner, but that’s okay, because it’s also going gray so no one will notice. My eyes keep needing bigger print and if you want me to hear you, an airhorn might get my attention!

Still, it really isn’t so bad achieving 70 years. I’m pleased with so many of my accomplishments and I still feel like I have some things to contribute. So, to my 35-year-old self: I would say that 70 birthdays have made me much more appreciative of life’s joys than I ever understood as a 35-year-old.  Bummer for you, huh?

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June 12, 2026 · 1:02 pm

Wanda and Me

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

We were sitting in the living room the other night when suddenly, from the stairs leading to the lower level, came what my grandmother would call, “an unholy racket.”

“What is going on?” Roy, startled from his reading, inquired.

“That’s nothing,” I replied, “it’s just Wanda.”

“We have a woman named Wanda rattling metal in our basement?” he said, astonished. “Why did no one tell me?”

“Wanda! Knock off the noise!” I hollered. “Don’t make me come down there!”

But I was just posturing. Wanda and I both know that when she is making those noises, I’m going to have to go down eventually and slap her around a little. It happens every time.

You see, Wanda and I have known each other for about ten years now. That’s how long she has lived in my basement, washing my clothes.

“Wanda, since you don’t seem to know, is our washing machine,” I told Roy in a rather superior voice.

“You’ve named the washing machine Wanda?” He seemed neither entertained nor surprised.

“When you work as closely as Wanda and I do, you get personal,” I explained to him.

And it’s true. Wanda and I have been together long enough to understand each other. We share more secrets and quirks than coffee klatch buddies.

For instance, I understand that if I want my underwear to not end up wound around the base of the washer, I will wash it on a gentler cycle. That way, Wanda won’t sling it around like she’s a stripper on a pole and twist it irrevocably into the inner workings of the washer.

When I put clothes into the washer, I understand that Wanda is a delicate and well-balanced flower. Therefore, I must lay the clothes in the washer with the precision of a master brick-layer. Because if I don’t, Wanda gets out of balance and throws a very noisy temper tantrum.

Wanda knows that when she does do the “jump and shout out of balance dance,” I will be down to jerk her back into place with a few choice words of my own added. To tell the truth, I think she enjoys my temper tantrums because I often think I see her hiding a smirk in the laundry soap bubbles!

And that brings me to the biggest argument between Wanda and me (outside of “what did you do with the other sock this time?”). We can’t agree on a laundry detergent. She favors the big jugs of liquid, the more additives the better.

I have tried everything (to avoid that). I even went to the pods, but she would chew them up and spit them back on the clothes so that nothing short of a hurricane could get them off. Finally, I thought, “Well, let’s try one of those environmentally friendly sheets or tabs. That should be good.”

Wanda scoffed in disdain. “I’m sorry, but did you mean for me to use that excuse for laundry soap?!” We have ultimately agreed to disagree—meaning we do it her way.

Roy has finally recovered a little from me giving the washing machine a name. “It’s a good thing the dryer is new, you haven’t had time to get hostile with it,” he joked.

“Dougie the Dryer? Oh don’t get me started! He eats so many socks, he makes Wanda look like she’s on a diet…”

If you see Roy at the laundromat, tell him Wanda and Dougie say hello.

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June 5, 2026 · 1:50 am

Rat in a Trap

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

It should have been so simple. I mean; most problems I encounter have simple solutions; if only I stop to work them out. Then, no problem, right?

But on the particular occasion in question, I couldn’t (okay or didn’t) do that. And consequently, the problem quickly became complicated.

My cousin was out of town but had graciously offered me the use of her house on the occasion of my needing a place to stay for a couple of nights. She is so sweet, and her lovely house was just the place for me to crash at night.

She gave me the garage door code and after my usual struggle with any technology, I was able to enter. I spent a relaxing and comfortable night and was so very grateful for the hospitality. Then, it came time to pack up and leave.

I had no key, so I couldn’t leave by the front door with its deadlock. I also couldn’t leave by the back deck door and lock it from the outside. This was a real pickle. How did I exit this beautiful home and lock it with no key?

Don’t worry, I found the perfect solution. I would just outrun the overhead garage door and get out that way!

Now, nobody has told me and I have never learned on my own, that you can actually close a coded garage door by simply stepping outside of it and punching in the code again. The door will then shut and everything’s locked up tight.

But since I didn’t know this, the neighbors were entertained by watching me hit the opener switch by the house door in the garage and then run for all I’m worth, trying to get under the door as it closes and not get caught, making the door automatically go back up again. It didn’t work. The door re-opened every time! I couldn’t leave with the garage door hanging open. Now what?

No problem, though. They have a side yard. I went out the back garage door carefully re-locking it, of course, and went around the outside of the garage. That’s when I discovered that when my cousin and her husband installed a high wooden fence, they enclosed ALL of the backyard–including the space on the sides of the house. I returned to the back garage door. Yup, I had locked that thing up tight.

I was boxed in and locked out. It was ridiculous! I couldn’t be trapped! But I was. I considered calling out, but what do you say?

“Can anybody hear me? I’m trapped in the backyard of this house that doesn’t belong to me! Could you help?” Talk about alienating the neighbors. They would be avoiding my cousin for years after that, telling each other that her relatives were nuts!

What to do, what to do? I should be able to reason it out. There were some supporting rails running horizontally along the inside of the fence. For one wild minute I considered climbing over the top, but I didn’t like my chances getting up on the backside, let alone surviving the sheer drop on the other side.

It was while I was on the back deck looking through the windows at the inside of the house like a stray cat, that I finally faced the fact that I was going to have to call the police and hope they believed my story and didn’t arrest me for trespassing. And it was at about the same time I remembered that my phone was in my car…on the other side of the fence.

Now I got out of that backyard on my own power, but I would rather not tell you how, because I want you to still think of me as a person of reasonable intelligence–and no prison record.

But I will tell you this: An overhead garage door will both open and shut by using the code. I can be taught!

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May 29, 2026 · 11:10 am

Calendar Girl

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

I am a person who is devoted to calendar watching. I have to be, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to remember what day it is, let alone the month or year! When I get up in the morning, I chant to myself, “Today is Thursday, May 14 in the year of our Lord 2026.” Okay, I don’t say, “year of our Lord” but it sounds elegant and sophisticated.

I am a devoted calendar girl. I always carry a large, book-sized calendar and when I am making any kind of appointments or plans, I have that calendar in front of me to write it all down. I refer to it fondly as “my brains.” And because of all this care and attention, I manage to make it to about half of the things I have scheduled!

I do try. I check it every day at breakfast and then hope that I will still remember that I have a hair appointment at 2:00 that same afternoon! People give me those little appointment cards, and I am grateful for them. But if I don’t transfer that information immediately to the calendar, I’m in trouble. The cards accumulate in my purse and get used to make other notes on, or to mark a page in a book, or just to pick my teeth, but I must have the appointments they proclaim written down on the calendar or I will be getting a call: “Yeah, this is the eye doctor—just wondering if you remembered your appointment that is like, now!”

It’s disconcerting: I have had to rush to massage appointments in my sweaty garden clothes or the dentist’s office with sticky caramel desserts still on my teeth! This year, I even tried putting together two calendars: one for carrying with me and one for my desk at home. Surely that would make me more efficient. It doesn’t. Now, I just miss half of the appointments on one calendar (that I didn’t write on the other one) and half of the appointments on the other calendar!

My children did not inherit this problem. In particular, Tracie has developed her father’s strong sense of organization. She is, of course, using a calendar that is on-line and she refers to it as “the family calendar”—each and every time she gently (or not so gently) reminds me of an event that should be there.

“I didn’t realize that you guys were going to Colorado next week,” I whine. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s on the family calendar,” she replies (somewhat smugly I think) “Haven’t you been checking it?”

“Oh, sure! That’s right, I just forgot about it,” I say, even though we both know that I probably couldn’t find the family calendar with both hands, a flashlight and tech support.

So, I decided that it would be good training for me to try to use the calendar on my phone. Then, when I have mastered that, I could go on to tackle “the family calendar.” I got out my paper calendar and began entering events on my phone’s calendar. I was so excited when I got it all done! It was so easy! I might be ready to master the family calendar after all!

Except when I started checking events, every one of them was listed as starting at 9:00 pm. Birthdays, anniversaries, appointments of all kinds—every one was on that calendar at 9:00 pm. Well, that’s ridiculous! What good is a calendar where everything is automatically at 9:00 pm? You’d think they would have some way to set a time…oh, there it is. I forgot to make that little spinny thing turn around to the proper time. So, I spent another hour trying to make that ugly, uncooperative time wheel spin correctly. That little bugger spins really fast and now, not everything is at 9:00 pm, but there are a couple that stopped spinning at 1:00 am! And I decided I would just be fine with that!

All right. So now, between the appointment cards, the two paper calendars and the phone calendar, I’ve got my schedule all down. No more missing appointments or forgetting birthdays for me! It takes me an hour and a half to check what’s going on for any given day, and most of them don’t sync with each other, but I’m on the right track, okay?

So now, all that’s left is to tackle “the family calendar.” I either have to figure it out (without direction from the Microsoft corporation) or I have to admit that I can’t make it work. And that’s going to be a little tricky.

“Mom, I heard that you are planning to visit next month. I don’t see it on the family calendar,” Tracie said this last week.

“About that, I’m sending you a letter through the US mail complete with stamps and everything. Be looking for it. It’s called, “Confessions from a failed Calendar Girl.”

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May 15, 2026 · 7:03 am

Take a knee–please!

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Jackie Wells-Fauth

If anyone asks you in the next month or so, what I am up to, be so good as to tell them that I am having a baby. That is all they really need to know.

And of course, no I am obviously not having a baby. But it is a better story than what is actually happening and that is knee replacement. There, you see, the minute I say knee replacement, you immediately think of some horror story having to do with knee replacement! Or if you don’t, I have a few hundred that have been related to me every time I tell someone I am having a knee replaced.

So, until the operation is over and hopefully successful, I am just telling everyone that I am having a baby. No one has horror stories about that because most old women such as me don’t have babies. It’s a simple psychological trick so I don’t have to wonder, while listening to one more sad knee replacement story, whether I should stay with what I’ve got.

I assure you, however, that I have no desire to stay with what I’ve got. Ever since the doctor gave me the sad face a few years ago, “I’m afraid you’ll be facing knee replacement—on both knees,” I have known that this day was coming.

There were some false starts. The first stage I went through was, “Oh, well, I come from hardy stock—I can make do with the knees I have.” Then my knees began to formally protest any time I climbed up steps. Okay, I’m getting my knees replaced, and I’m starting with the right one; that’s the worst.

“Oh, my grandma had her knee replaced and they put it in backward. She never did walk right after that!” Okay, I can hold out a little longer.

Next, came shots. Now, those shots did help a little bit, but after a while the knees began to send up signals that the drugs were no longer doing the trick. By send up signals, I mean they would crack and pop like a bowl of Rice Krispies everytime I bent down to pick something up. Okay, I’m getting my knees replaced, and I’m starting with the left one because it sounds more ominous.

“My great aunt had knee surgery, and they had to go back in twice and readjust things.” No, I don’t know what that means and what’s more, I don’t want to know! I’ll just hang in there and suffer a little.

The next phase was braces. Just wear those elastic bands on your knees and everything will be fine. Except the braces wore nasty welts on the back of my legs which caused parts of my knees that had never created issues to start hurting. That’s it—I’m having my knees replaced, and I’m definitely starting with the right one because it protests more when I sit down or stand up.

“I don’t know…when my sister Carol had her knee replaced, she landed in the hospital with heart problems, and her knee hadn’t even healed yet at the time of her funeral.” Okay, if you insist, I’ll stick with the knees a little longer and put off that funeral as long as I can.

Now we are at the “I can no longer pretend that my knees are going to cooperate for the duration of my old age.” I crawled into the surgeon’s office (crawled is metaphorical—I haven’t been able to crawl on these bumpy joints since my last child left home) and announced, “Okay, okay, I give up! The knees have sued for separate living accommodations, and I am ready for them to go! Take a knee, please!”

So, in a very short time, I will be getting my knee replaced and every time I say that I am having my knee replaced, someone cheers me up by sharing a knee story.

“My uncle had his knee replaced—he’s permanently in a wheelchair now.” I don’t care! I’m having my knee replaced—I mean, I’m having a baby; and I’m definitely going to start with the left one!

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May 8, 2026 · 7:15 pm

What are the odds?

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What are the odds???

Jackie Wells-Fauth

Picture the following: there are three very good books in excellent shape lying on the table. Two are books I own; one is a book borrowed from the library. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a glass of iced tea is overturned. How do we know for sure which book will lap up that iced tea like a thirsty tourist? Odds are, it will be the book that isn’t mine.

I have lived with these odds my entire life. Some people call it Murphy’s Law—whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. I just call it “odds are”. And odds are if I borrow a book from the library, I’ll end up returning it explaining how that tea got on the bottom of the pages or how that mark appeared over the picture on the jacket or how there appears to be teeth marks and a bite out of the back cover. Don’t ask.

Most times the odds aren’t for anything too serious. I can live with the fact that if I drop a glass, it will break and glass shards will scatter across the floor like flour in a windstorm. But odds are that whatever was in the glass will not be water—it will be tea to stain something or orange juice to live forever in the crevices of the carpet or worse, the very last of the soda.

I’ve never had a serious car accident, but if I bump fenders against the post in the parking lot, it’s going to leave paint marks…and they will be of some garish color that I will never convince my husband came from a careless child walking by. Not too long ago, I bumped the good car (that’s right, we have a good car and then there’s my car) against a wooden work bench in the garage. Now normally, the odds would be that the car would get a serious dent, but this time, odds were in my favor and the car bore no mark. No need to mention it to Roy, right?

Except that a month later, when he moved the work bench for some unknown reason, he found it to be slightly embedded in the wall behind it. What are the odds that he will believe that the bench has been sitting there so long it just became naturally embedded? My odds stayed steady, because he had the temerity to ask me if I might have hit the work bench with his car! Can you believe it?

If I’m printing something important, odds are I’ll run out of ink or paper (probably both) halfway through. If my bank account doesn’t balance, odds are always that it’s in the bank’s favor, not mine. For a woman who figures the odds, I don’t do that well with numbers!

I realize that my little troubles tend to be pretty minor. Most of the major events in my life have turned out well, but that has allowed me to focus on the little, annoying things; like the odds are pretty good that if a light bulb burns out, I’ll have every type of light bulb in stock except the one I need. And odds are always that if I go to write a check while out shopping, I will mess up the check—and it will be the last one I had with me.

If I schedule or plan entertainment, odds always are that something will come along that pushes my schedule off balance. “No, you can’t go to the doctor for a medical emergency when I have scheduled an evening with friends. Just put some ice on that bump on your head and let’s go.” Odds are, someone out there is going to think my attitude is pretty heartless.

If I paint a room, odds are that I will run out of paint on the last wall…that is if the paint roller doesn’t break or the ladder doesn’t fold while I’m at the top. Odds are that if I really am looking forward to a meal, I will burn it and if I try a new foot cream I’ll break out in hives.

I really don’t think I would have had any better luck if I had been born in another time. Odds are if I had married a king, it would have been Henry VIII, or if I had climbed to the top of the highest mountain, odds are there would already be a flag planted there.

If I had been one of the travelers heading west in the pioneer days, odds are I would have been with the Donner party. I’ve never been able to decide whether it would have been worse to die and be eaten or to have to survive that way. Odds are, the Donner Party didn’t feel too lucky either way!

By now odds are that you are really beginning to be irritated by my whiny little rant, so I’ll have to cut it out now. But I’m telling you, odds are as soon as this gets in print, I’ll have thought of twenty more things that didn’t go in my favor! I have to go now anyway to return that book to the library. Odds are the librarian won’t believe that those pages are just naturally brown and stuck together!

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