Two cats in training

Before my youngest daughter’s visit from California this past June, she’d witnessed my gradually thinning figure since our beloved patriarch’s death January 30, 2024.

Mind, the last thing a woman of any age wants is flabby, wrinkly biceps. 

And the last thing a mother desires from her baby is a lecture, particularly when the child has just moved 2,000 miles from Michigan to California to live with her older sister and brother-in-law.  

Furthermore, with the help of my flabby biceps, before she left Michigan in March and drove to California with her dog Lilly, I mopped the lower level of floors in her house in preparation for her rental. 

So, yes, my flabby biceps still work. They weed gardens, have carried fifty-pound bags of BACTO and cocoa bean mulch from my car to gardens since the first fair spring day. 

However, truly, my biceps need some toning. I need more flesh on my bones.

Yet, I've no delusion about recovering muscle tone to what it once was.

Therefore, during her visit to my home in June, Ruth offered, “Let’s go to Target to buy a set of barbells.”

"Barbells?" I replied. "Yes. Two three-pound weights should do it to strengthen your biceps," she said.

She sat in the chicken chair by the kitchen window. "Like this," she said and illustrated the open, close, up, down, pattern.

Meanwhile, Mitty's blue eyes and Cuddles' green eyes focused on Ruth, their heads following her hands. "This could be fun," I said. 

So, off she drove us to a local Target store, led us to a colorful collection of barbell weights.

"Looks like you've been here before," I said.

“A few times.”

I picked up two lavender colored, three-pound barbells. Ruth smiled. "I thought you'd like that color."

Dear Reader, the handful of times I've since sat in the chicken chair with barbells in hands, Cuddles and Mitty have sat before me, waiting.

Then the training begins. Cuddles' green and Mitty's blue eyes look sideways, up, and down.

They don't exactly know which way to 

turn their heads when I open my left hand and right hand simultaneously.

Sometimes their eyes move left. Sometimes right. Up and down their eyes and heads move together. 

Here it is the second week in July, the English lavender is about bloomed out, and the gorgeous, long-stemmed French Grosso is beginning to pop. Harvest is nigh. 

I pray this persistent, hot weather breaks, grants some mercy upon my wrinkly biceps.

Meanwhile, Mitty, Cuddles, and I devote some time to training with lavender barbells.

And my water thermos waits for the field.

Contact Iris at irisfarmletters@gmail.com