Random Thoughts
When the bottom shelf rack fell out out of the refrigerator door not once but twice a few days ago, I knew we were heading into our own personal Series of Random Unfortunate Events, because this is what happened next (and I’m not even counting the fact that our upstairs heating-unit stopped working on Christmas Eve Eve and my college-senior daughter got her nose pierced in October): 1) My car needed all new tires; 2) My digital picture frame’s screen went weirdly and sort of scarily red; 3) Our Comcast Internet and local NPR station were gone for days; 4) Our new Christmas-present TV wasn’t working properly, leaving us unimpressed with big-screen high-def; and 5) The refrigerator incidents resulted in two broken bottles of wine and one smashed-to-bits shelf. But 1) we got new tires and figured out how to set up our TV properly, 2) Comcast and NPR came back, 3) I’m working on digital-picture-frame and refrigerator-shelf replacement and 4) none of these problems required calls to or visits from plumbers, electricians, doctors, hospitals, insurance agents, fire fighters or police officers and all loved ones are happy and healthy and accounted for, so what am I complaining about?
About
Cathy Wood is a freelance writer and columnist based in Muscle Shoals, Ala. For more than 10 years she was a features writer and columnist for the TimesDaily, in Florence, Ala.,
Me and my messy bulletin board.
after first starting work there in 1997 as an advertorial writer and then as a clerk. Her writing has appeared in many newspapers across the country through the New York Times Regional Newspapers Group. Her areas of specialty include fashion, books, food, decorating, shopping, entertaining, local personalities and arts. Her weekly column, which appears on Fridays in the TimesDaily at www.timesdaily.com, is a humorous look at her life –- and the lives of her two 20-something daughters, four cats, one dazzlingly cute grandchild and her husband of four years, a sports editor who is kind and well-meaning but often befuddled about such things as women’s shoes and which day to take out the garbage. She also writes for Shoals Woman and other TimesDaily and regional magazines and has recently dipped her (monthly pedicured) toes into the blogging world. She’s a 1979 graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tenn., where she was editor of the school newspaper, Sidelines. She also has worked at the Manchester Times, in Manchester, Tenn., and the Daily-Post Athenian, in Athens, Tenn. E-mail cathylwood@gmail.com
– John Lewis Pitts
