It was too good to be fun

BY SARA PITZER
SALISBURY POST

It’s been a quiet week in little Richfield, my hometown. At my house, not one thing went wrong all week.

I baked scalloped potatoes in my newly repaired new oven and it didn’t break. It’s true I forgot the potatoes were in there, so they got a little dry, maybe a touch too black — ah, no, brown — on top, but the oven seems to work OK.

I made rye bread in my new bread machine. It went through all the cycles flawlessly. It’s true, the bread rose a bit too much, so it was a tad coarse — ah, no, open textured — in the middle.

The animals were good, too. Otis and the cats cornered a mouse on the hearth, but they were so busy barking and hissing, each trying to claim dominance in the situation, the cute little guy got clean away. I’m sure of it, because I saw his little ears and the tip of a tail fleetingly behind the kitty litter box, where I think he lives.

Then Otis and the cats found a tiny snake underneath my computer stand. It was no bigger around than a pencil, 10 inches or so long, with an orange stripe down its back. When it moved it didn’t travel straight ahead, it kind of looped sideways. The cats couldn’t decide what to do about it, so Otis took it outside and it looped away.

Otis helped me again when I dropped the box of spaghetti and all the pieces of pasta scattered across the kitchen floor. It was the fine stuff. Sometimes I see it labeled angel hair, but it’s not what I consider angel hair. Real angel hair is even finer. Anyhow, Otis tried to help me clean it up. By the time he’d decided he didn’t like it, one whole corner was clean. I just had rice for supper.

Otis rode around with me in the car all week long, waiting patiently while I went in and out of grocery stores. It’s true that chore took a little longer than usual because all the stores have stopped carrying most of the product brands I buy. But once I’d decided I didn’t care that my laundry detergent was loaded with perfume or that I could no longer get cannoli shells, fine egg noodles or Johnson’s ale, I was able to toss stuff in the basket and finish up in a hurry. Otis didn’t mind the wait. He spoke to everybody who went by the car.

He wasn’t too happy that he had to stay home when I took the car for service, but he waited quietly on the porch. The UPS man said he didn’t even growl.

No problem with the car, either. The guys at the garage did take off the red cork I’d fastened to my radio antenna, so I’m having trouble finding the car in parking lots again, but they didn’t find any unexpected problems that cost me money.

Even my friend Dr. Crane didn’t give me grief this week. It’s true he called a lot, demanding reports on my progress writing a proposal for a book about truck drivers, and he did say that unless I hurried, all the editors with whom I’d been dealing would be dead, but I know he understands I didn’t mean it when I said he was ruining my life.

Even exercising at the YMCA presented no problems, because with things going so smoothly, I only got there once.

Yep, that’s the kind of week a person wants. Just one, long, uneventful day after another.