Words of Barrett

Friday Blog

This is an unplanned bonus!

For those of you who have dogs, you know there’s a difference between the bark for announcement: “mom,there might be a strange dog running through the front yard” and “uh oh, something in the driveway I don’t recognize”. Since my office is at the far end of the house, I rarely jump up every time one of the dogs barks. This morning I thought I recognized the second type of bark and went out to find two cars (one is a rarity) coming up the driveway. Much to my surprise and consternation, it was the police. The county police and the town police. Gulp.

Within a nanosecond, I remembered why—the panic button. Whoops. Let me back up. Several weeks ago, I had a rather freaky accident that scared the bejesus out of me. When my breathing return to normal and my brain was fully oxygenated, I decided to spend some money on one of those “help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up buttons”. I hoped it would be a little bit like carrying an umbrella—if you have it you’ll never need it.

I’ve been pretty good about wearing it around my neck or sticking it in my pocket and today the inevitable happened. I was leaning against the sink fixing coffee and heard a voice. Evidently, I had pushed the button and from my jacket pocket of voice was saying “hello… hello… hello”. Naturally, I panicked and started pushing buttons to make it stop. “Well that’s embarrassing,” I thought.

10 minutes later, the dog barking ensued. And I was mortified. Busted! I scurried outside apoplectic and apologetic. “I’ll bet I’m in big trouble,” said I.

“Are you all right?” two female officers asked in tandem. “It’s no problem as long as you’re okay.”

A brief repentant conversation continued. I explained the situation and promised that should I ever do that again I will simply talk to the operator instead of hanging up. They were very nice and after I went and the house stayed in the driveway yakking for another 10 minutes. Perhaps they didn’t know each other and were just gossiping or they stayed long enough to burn the vision of two patrol cars into my retinas.

Good news is the button works and actual people will respond even if I can’t talk. The bad news was I’d rather not meet my local police officers looking like a complete Duffus.

In local news: the bright sunny fall weather has been interrupted for the last couple of days by large ribbons of smoke blowing from the North West. When the wind died this morning, the smell of smoke was in the air once again.

When I checked,  there were fires burning in the Jemez Mountains, about 75 miles northwest of here. It turns out to be a prescribed burn west of the Valles Caldera and Los Alamos. So far, it’s under control.

That’s all the news for this week folks. Enjoy your weekend!