Rambling Today

More than usual, but I think it's going to be okay.

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One frigid early morning I ran out on my deck in my bare feet in order to catch the moon before it lowered into the trees.

I’m not at my home in the north woods and I think that’s my problem. I think better there. Not that that’s an excuse for what’s not been going on here lately, but this lassitude happens every year around this time, when the north is too cold for us old people and we head south, sheep-like.

Except we’re snowbirds.

I saw a bumper sticker down here along the Grand Strand a few years ago that read, “If They’re Snowbirds Can We Shoot Them?”. I laughed at that, but I’ve been wary ever since.

If you’ve read any of my posts lately—and I sincerely hope you have—you know the state of the country is first and foremost on my mind. I try not to get involved, but things keep happening. I’ve lived in this country for what seems like forever, so I have a major stake in what happens here, what with children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews and cousins and multitudes of people I love and like, and strangers who seem to need a lot of help and aren’t getting it—all of us trying to avoid a creeping (and creepy) enemy that can’t be caught and refuses to go away.

I can barely think of anything else, and because of where I am (at the beach but in the city full of potential germ throwers who refuse to wear masks), I don’t get out to those places that would normally distract.

COVID still hovers, menacing, even though we’ve been vaxxed and vaxxed and boosted. We’re among the vulnerable and just don’t want to take the chance, so we’ve chosen to stay put, indoors, looking out the windows at the beach and the ocean.

Why, you ask, am I indoors when I could at least be walking on the beach? Because it’s COLD OUT THERE. Yes, even here in the damn Carolina low country, it’s parka weather.

Ugly stuff going on across the country, weatherwise, too, so I’ve been glued to the Weather Channel, watching the progress of the storms from Texas across the breadbasket into the lower Great Lakes and onto the all-important Eastern corridor. Jim Cantori and his amiable cohorts stomp around in the snow, taking to heart the need to describe snow’s properties on any given hour: Wet and heavy (proven by making a snowball), light and fluffy (proven by not being able to make a snowball), more than expected (woo-hoo!), not as much as expected (this comes with a kind of embarrassed apology, as if they had something to do with turning the snowmaking spigot on or off), or right on the money (Aha! See? We CAN be right!).

At the Weather Channel the same car slides across the ice many times an hour. The same truck lies on its side on the freeway, blocking traffic for miles—that same traffic the Weather Channel had been warning not to even think about going out in that storm.

During these ‘Monstrous storms’ (a quote directly from their crawl), the reporters raise their voices a few decibels to TV car salesman level, shouting as if they’re out there in the wind, even when they’re back in the studio.

It’s exhausting.

But every day, first thing in the morning, I choose Wordle and, if it goes right, it calms me down. Or maybe it energizes me. Whatever it does, I love Wordle. It’s plain and pure, it doesn’t take a lot of time, there are no gimmicks, and I can’t spend endless wasted hours going on and on with it because once I’m done, I have to wait until Midnight to play it again.

There’s no app for it. Click on the link in the first sentence in the paragraph above and you’ll be there. You’ll see six rows down, five boxes across. They’re blank. You fill in a five-letter word at the top—any word will do but try to include two or three vowels—and hit ‘enter’. The letters to the word you choose will either be green, yellow, or grey. Green means the letter is where it should be. Yellow means the letter is in the word but not in the right place. Grey means the letter isn’t in the word. (Never use it again. Not in this word, anyway)

Try another word, this time keeping the green letter where it is but finding another place for the yellow. Any grey letters get tossed. But you don’t have to remember any of this because the keyboard at the bottom tells you which letters to use and which not to use. The grey letters you’ve already used are in blue there. Remember not to use them.

And that’s all there is to it. It’s a process of elimination. For a while there I was on a streak where I was getting the word in three tries. Sheer luck, I know now. I haven’t lost yet, after around three weeks of Wordle, but I almost did last week. Six tries. Whew!

After three tries I finally got the last four letters. Only one to go. How hard could it be? Ha!

I tried ‘right’. Wrong!

I tried ‘might’. Wrong!

Then I was sweating it.

It could be ‘tight’ or ‘night’ or ‘sight’ or ‘fight’ or…

I chose ‘light’.

And got it!

The other thing you can do with Wordle is brag about your conquests. This, I’ve heard, drives people crazy 😉, but it’s hard not to do. Once you get the word, Wordle shoves the brag link right in your face. They practically beg you to get out there and brag. It’s how they’ve grown so big without advertising. We do their peddling for them.

And now they’re so big the New York Times has paid big bucks for the rights. So, any day now it won’t be just a pure, simple game but will go the way of other victims of corporate takeover and we’ll either have to pay to play or will barely recognize it.

So, see? Something else to worry about.

I’m going to go bake something from scratch now. Something plain. And pure. And warm. And friendly.

Y’all come back now. Ya hear?

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