Good morning everyone and welcome to Friday’s Morning Open Thread.
Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
I’ve come to think of this post as one where you come for the music and stay for the conversation—so feel free to drop a note. The diarist gets to sleep in if she so desires and can show up long after the post is published. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug.
Join us, please.
If you’ve read the last couple posts I’ve made, you can see I’ve been in a bit of a mood to chat rather than think deeper about anything in particular. This week has been filled with violent storms and flooding rains, a bit of sunshine here and there, and tragedies big and small. I don’t have much to add this morning, but I do want to give a nod to the fact that we all made it through another week to the very precipice of the weekend. While I have a busier-than-usual Friday that is due more to the weather than to the work itself. The weather has pushed back some site visits and since schools are ending classes this week we now have access to the buildings we will be working in (seven days a week) over the next two months.
But the unpredictable and quick-changing weather has delayed some prep work that I’ve had to put off and disrupted site visits that are overdo. So that work I couldn’t complete on my regular schedule is going to be jammed in today. Early this morning, I will head down to toward the tip of Lafourche Parish (a long, winding bayou “county” to walk the roofs of that school board’s largest high school. Almost every building needs a new roof, and the couple that don’t will be undergoing major repairs. But we were awarded part of that renovation contract and this will be my first opportunity to join the roofer on the actual site and go over means, methods, and schedules. Slightly tedious stuff, even for someone like me that enjoys getting into the details and hopelessly trying to chart out the progress of a project on a daily basis over three- or four-hundred days.
To celebrate and commiserate, I broke into my stock of Café Bustelo to make a small, rich cup of coffee to accompany this dawn. I keep it on hand for my love, but she’s far away and certainly won’t mind my using a bit and toasting her. I will celebrate the first beautiful day in the last nine and raise a caffeinated mug to my son, who finished his school term earlier in the week and left yesterday for a two-week visit to his maternal grandparents in Nevada (he enjoys the visits and they treat him like a prince, but I will miss him terribly nonetheless).
And life goes on for us. We get older and (hopefully) wiser and we store away the outlines of some experiences while trying mightily to forget others—which, from a personal standpoint, isn’t helped by writing about them. But we all have our burdens and deals with them as best we can. This morning, before the day begins in full, I’ll enjoy the strays that are already hanging around in hopes of a bit of attention, the tentative calls of birds announcing having survived another night, and the voices of the neighborhood frogs celebrating a week of perfect amphibian weather. As we approach the start of Memorial Day weekend, we can pause a few and appreciate the living before mourning the dead, share a secret smile of defiance in the face of turbulent circumstances, and celebrate the gift of life despite it all.
Cheers, my friends. Have a wonderful Friday and and even better weekend.
❧
Be well, be kind, and appreciate the love you have in your life.
❧
❧
☕️
Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?