Dick's Hideaway

Dick MacKenzie - www.dickshideaway.com

A whopping good day

Now, this is more like it. When we arrived at camp yesterday afternoon, less than an hour after cruising into our driveway at home, the chickadees met our boat at the dock, sat on the branches of the tree beside my ATV, and chirp-murmurred as we loaded the trailer to drive up to the cabin.
They followed up the short path and sat on their feeding platform only inches away from the sunflower seeds I poured out. Hard to tell who’s happier - them or me.
And, here’s last night’s sunset. Pretty cloudy, but pleasant, as the storm that brought a bit of snow overnight approached. I sat beside a bonfire on the palace deck and watched the night arrive, contented as a kitten with a catnip mouse.
Only a few hours earlier I had witnessed the sunrise through the window of a hospital waiting room 250 miles away. Several of us who had arrived in the dark, sat in the tiny room with our pupils dilated, waiting to be called. As we lounged quietly, in our own little dazes, the sun peeked in the window, and slowly intensified. It was a good sunrise, bright as a firecracker, and aimed directly at my face. For a few minutes I tried everything I could think of to minimize the discomfort of a bright light shining into dilated eyes, even through closed eyelids.
Eventually I crossed the room and sat in a chair beside a nice woman who broke the silence by saying she wondered how long I’d take to move, as she (and a couple others, as it turns out) noticed my obvious discomfort.
My reply was that staring into a bright light with dilated pupils must be like feeding Viagra to a eunuch.
For the next few minutes a stranger in the hall might have mistaken our little group for a family reunion. The good cheer and gallows humor rang in a pretty cool new day for a bunch of us who would all rather have been somewhere else.
Matter of fact, we were having such a nice time, despite the hazy vision and growling bellies, that someone had to nudge me and tell me the doctor was at the door calling my name.
Once in the hall, on the way to his office, Dr. Dookeran smiled big, introduced himself, and shook my hand. “Sounds like you guys were having quite a party in there,” he smiled.
And that was the beginning of a whopping good day.