Last fall, we had the inside of our house painted — at least most of it. Since we moved into our house in 1993, we painted the kitchen three or four times. All of our bedrooms had been painted at some point. But the rest of the house was the color of dirty snow, the same color it was when we first walked into the house. Our painter — whose name is decidedly NOT Mr. Bainter — was extraordinarily competent and thorough. He arrived every morning promptly at 8, unless he had to stop at the paint store. He left every evening promptly at 4:30. He worked in our house so long I was beginning to think he would show up at our Thanksgiving dinner.

At long last — after nearly a month — he finished. Our house was beautiful. The inside of our house at any rate. Unfortunately, the outside needed paint, and we knew another paint job was inevitable.

The time arrived this past Monday, when our painter — whose name, remember, is not Mr. Bainter — arrived to begin power washing our house. This thoroughness is one of the things I like about our painter. I’m sure all professional house painters start with a power wash. Others, however, might not get up on the ladder and say things like, “Holy crap, did you know your gutters are about two-thirds full of leaves?” and immediately begin cleaning them out.

Sure, work such as this will add some to the total cost of our job. The thing is, our gutters actually were two-thirds full of honey locust leaves, preventing them from doing their job properly. Sometimes it’s nice to be told what to do, even if it’s by someone you hardly know.

Yesterday, he arrived at our door with a can of paint and a handful of paint samples. We had showed him our initial choices which Bill had painted on the back wall. I’m pretty sure he threw up a little in his mouth. What he lacks in subtlety, he makes up for in earnestness. He didn’t hesitate to tell us that the yellowish-tan we were considering would make our house look like a gigantic banana when it was finished with that color. Good to know. The color of the paint in the can he proudly carried turns out to be perfect, and it’s the color we chose. Benjamin Moore’s Monroe Bisque, in case anyone is interested. He was pushing for dark brown trim, but I think we’re going to hold firm to something in the gray range. He’s not the boss of me.

Since it’s Day 3 and he’s still working on gutters, I think he might be pushing for Thanksgiving Dinner again this year.

By the way, Mr. Bainter the Painter was on that childhood program that clearly shaped who I am — Captain Kangaroo. According to Wikipedia, the man who played Mr. Bainter the Painter also played the Dancing Bear. He must have been a good actor, because the two don’t look at all alike. I know all hearts are filled with the deserving Mr. Rogers these days, but I will tell you that I spent a considerable amount of time with the Captain and Mr. Green Jeans.

I got a haircut yesterday. I was a bit early, so I sat down in the waiting area where I had plenty of time to read a magazine article that convinced me that Meghan and Kate are not mad at each other after all. It’s a great relief to know the two princesses are friends. (Although in one of the photos, Meghan’s back is to Kate, and I could swear Kate is whispering Meghan’s butt looks big in that dress to William. Might be my imagination.)

Anyhoo, my hair stylist finally came to lead me to her chair. As I followed her, I had two thoughts. Thought One: Why do all hair stylists wear black clothing? It seems to be the choice of hair salons around the world. Having people who cut hair for a living wear black seems as ironic to me as having bakers wear white. Sometimes when I meet my brother-the-baker for a cup of coffee, he has so much jelly on his bakers’ whites that it looks like he killed a steer instead of filled a few trays of bismarks. And Thought Two: Her bright orange shoes looked really cute as a contrast to her black smock and pants.

So I said to her, “I love your shoes. They are really cute as a contrast to your black smock and pants.”

Thank you, she replied. I got them at Goodwill.

I suck at Goodwill shopping. When I go into a Goodwill store, it is mostly to look for puzzles. But I will always stop to look at the clothing. All I ever find are blouses with discolored lace and and pants with frayed hems. And I’m usually pretty sure I donated them the week before. I really, truly rarely have any luck finding clothing at thrift stores. The primary reason for my lack of success is that any superior Goodwill shopper has lots of patience. I have a total lack of patience.

I’m not anti-thrift stores. I donate lots of stuff, and hope like heck that people will get Use-Part-II out of them. Thrift stores keep things out of landfills and help people save money. Both are good things.

I have a friend who is a remarkable thrift store shopper. I’m not sure if she still does, but I know that from the time she began shopping for herself, she shopped at thrift stores. And she always looks totally put together and never even remotely resembled the bag lady that I would look like if I bought my clothing at Goodwill. Not only that, but as her daughter grew up, she dressed her almost exclusively in clothing bought at thrift stores. She wore name brand clothing and looked just like every other teenager in the United States.

I only have one success story having to do with clothing from a thrift store. As I perused the pants, I came across a pair of really cute designer-brand pants in my size.

I tentatively took them to the dressing room (my apologies to thrift store shoppers everywhere, but the dressing rooms are scary) and tried them on. The pants were a perfect fit, not even requiring any hemming. The best part of all is that the pants were only $6 and STILL HAD THE TAGS ATTACHED. Goooooooooooooooooal!

I will continue to donate to Goodwill, and will continue to optimistically look at the clothing when I pay my puzzle-searching visits. I will probably NOT, however, consider buying shoes despite my hair stylist’s apparent success. Perhaps that decision is based on the look and smell of my own shoes, which I send to the landfill.

I started blogging in 2008 as a way to stay in touch with family while we were on our three-month European adventure. I had been trying to figure out how to stay in touch with people who would not only be worried about us, but would be interested in what we were doing each day. Why not write a blog? my daughter-in-law Lauren suggested.

A what?

I was being perfectly serious. It was 2008, and I had never heard that word: Blog.

Blogging began sometime in the late 1990s, but surged in popularity in the first few years of the 21st Century. Apparently I was stuck somewhere in the late 20th Century, where I was finally comfortable with email. So when Lauren saw the blank look on my face and understood that her mother-in-law was technologically delayed, she showed me how to set up a blog. Hence, the Reluctant Traveler was born.

Well, much to my surprise, readers included not just my family, but many others as well. Acquaintances, friends of friends, people with whom I hadn’t spoken in years all followed our adventures via my blog. And when we returned, many of them asked me if I would keep writing the blog. I told them I wouldn’t continue, because now that I wasn’t traveling, what in the world would I talk about?

But people kept asking, and my sister Jen, in particular, pushed me to consider writing a blog. But I have nothing of interest to write about, I kept saying. Write about your life from your own perspective, she replied.

Finally, on August 14, 2013, I kicked off Nana’s Whimsies with a post cleverly entitled Hi There! It’s no wonder people wanted me to continue blogging. Such adroit writing!

So here it is, August 2019, and I have blogged nearly every day except Sunday since then. I’ve missed a few days, it’s true, mostly due to hospital visits; sometimes due to sheer laziness. People often ask me if it’s hard to write something every day. My reply is always the same: Once I have thought of something to write about, the writing comes easy. I love to write. But you can likely tell the days that I’m struggling with subject matter because the blog is B-O-R-I-N-G. But I plug right on.

Jen suggested to me recently that to make it easier on myself, I should consider only writing Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, or some other iteration of Not Every Day. I’m not ready to do that and here’s why: I recently was listening to a podcast that features two of my favorite writers who began their careers writing blogs back in the early 2000’s. One of them told the other that after having written a blog daily for many years, one day she decided she would take a day off. She never wrote regularly again. I have no doubt that is what would happen to me. I need the regularity of daily blog writing.

I will tell you that I hesitated starting this blog because I couldn’t imagine that anyone would care a bit about my life. While my numbers aren’t staggering, I have a very steady 100 or so readers of my blog. A friend of mine who is a fairly recent and now faithful reader told me that she loves to hear my stories about my family and my simple life. That bewilders me, yet I am so pleased.

I know that blogging is now old social media. Nevertheless, just as I was stuck in the 1990s with email, I’m sticking with blogging for the time being. Podcasting is the new social media du jour, but while I listen to podcasts, that ain’t my cup of tea. While I never say never, I am pretty sure I never will do a podcast. I don’t even like talking on the telephone.

Anyway, thanks for reading my simple blog.

Here are some of the real stars of my blog…..

As I was growing up, the only people who binged were those unfortunate souls who were anorexic and/or bulimic. They binged on food. While I have always, well, let’s say enjoyed my food, I can’t say that I’ve ever binged in that way.

These days, while food binging is still a thing, the term is generally used in reference to watching programs on streaming television, one right after another.

My nephew Carter recently binge-watched Death in Paradise, which left Netflix on July 31. He was determined to see all of the programs before they went away, and he was successful. My sister Bec — his nana — commented on his having successfully watched all of the programs. His response was that the idea of watching one program on, say Monday night, and then having to wait until the next Monday to watch it again like she had to do when she was a kid seemed weird. She didn’t have the nerve to tell him that in those days, she had to get up from the couch and walk over to the television to change the channel. She didn’t think his heart could take it.

When I first retired, I rarely watched daytime television. And then, one day, I started watching a television program — it might have been The Closer — and I discovered binge-watching. I believe there are seven seasons of that program, and I sat there and watched one program after another. I didn’t finish all the seasons in one day, but over the course of a week or two, I watched them all. And then I binge-watched Endeavor. And Downton Abbey. And Broadchurch. And Grace and Frankie. And The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I was off to the races.

Bill doesn’t understand binge-watching television. Frankly, for the most part, he can’t imagine sitting in a chair for several hours and watching television when he could be out cutting up the hot tub or installing wood floors. Go figure. He will walk by my chair on his way to the garage, and shake his head. My back is to him, but I know he’s doing it.

Right now I’m binge-watching Midsommer Murders. That’s glorious fun, because there are 19 full seasons on Netflix. NINETEEN. I watch one or two programs a day. I adore British PBS mysteries. I love that the police never have guns. They crash into an apartment in which they know there is a bad guy, and there is nary a gun to be seen. They simply pummel the bad guy who just lays there and takes it. While the murderers occasionally use a gun to do their dastardly deed, for the most part, they prefer bashing in the victims’ heads with Things Very British like cricket bats or crochet mallets. They also love a good poison.

Having said all of the above, I will admit — to Carter’s chagrin if he knew — that there is one program that I watch live every Friday night, commercials notwithstanding. I love to watch Blue Bloods on Friday night right when it’s happening. My sister Jen and I will text during the show, seeing if we can be the first one to hear Frank Reagan sigh.