After dinner today Alert Reader Tammy and I were sitting on our porch. Porch-sitting is huge for us ever since we moved into suburbia and the new house. Ha - I typed "hose" just then. That would be silly, moving into a new hose.

The reason that porch-sitting (Ha - I just typed "pooch-sitting" and we don't even own a dog) is so big with us is that the old house wasn't a very good porch-sitting house, for these reasons:

1. There was no porch.

(I could stop now, but I'm on a roll.)

2. If there had been a porch, it would have overlooked our "lawn" which consisted of dirt, gravel from the driveway that had been plowed into the "lawn" the previous winter, weeds, nests of hornets, wasps and yellow-jackets, unexploded land mines, an old tree stump, and two Viet Cong pit traps.

3. Our house was on a mountain road with no sidewalks, set back in the woods a bit, in an area of Pennsylvania where insects actually cooperated with one another. (The Best Team Effort Award would have gone to the mosquitos who would carry and drop gypsy moth caterpillars into your hair. And then bite you.)

So now that we don't have any of these problems, we're quite happy to sit out on the porch and watch people go by. Sometimes we nod that nod old people nod to other people, the nod that says "Well I'm just too dang tired to say anything right about now and the rheumatism in my knees is acting up because that front is moving through." I'm sure you nod this to people too.

Today while we were porch-sitting and nodding we noticed a colorfully-dressed elderly woman walking towards our corner lot. She rang as she walked, as she was apparently decorated with tiny little bells. Bells on her shoes, bells on her shawl, even her earrings were bells. She had snow-white hair, a white you can't even get with bleach, and walked with a cane that looked to be made from an old gnarled beech-tree branch. (Note to self: Look up beech trees and make sure they get gnarled before posting this.) (And take this comment out.) As she "entered" our property I made eye contact and nodded to her.

Well, it wasn't until my nod was complete that I realized that this was a Gypsy Woman. Not only that, but she must have been one-hundred-years old if she was a day over forty. And the last thing you do is nod to a Gypsy Woman, as nodding is considered very offensive in Bavaria Hungary Viet Nam the land of the Gypsies. Alert Reader Tammy, taking all of this in, started to say "Hello!" to distract the Old Gypsy Woman, but it was too late. She raised her gnarled beech tree cane in the air and yelled in a voice that sounded like dry leaves:

"A POX on yer lawn for noddin' at me!"

Then she calmed down and continued on her way. That was the really awkward part, because she was pretty slow and it took her about 15 minutes to round the corner. Even before she was gone, though, I could see my lawn drying up. I went in for the camera, came back and snapped this picture:

As you can see I have a severe case of Lawn Pox. I don't know if I should water it or not. It looks pretty far gone, and I can't find anything about "Lawn Pox" on Chemlawn's site. Still, I suppose it could be worse. There could be unexploded land mines or Viet Cong pit traps out there.

Ha - I just typed "unexploded land mimes." It really could be worse.