The News

 When I got the parakeets last spring I decided to subscribe to the Sunday newspaper.  If you don't see the connection, think birdcage liner. I had always liked the newspaper, had always been a subscriber until my marriage ended, and wasn't going many places because of the pandemic, so getting the Sunday paper seemed like a little gift to myself.

Over the months I have in some ways enjoyed the Sunday paper.  In other ways I have not really enjoyed the news.  So much of it is bad, bad, bad.  There are hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, murders, robberies, threats of every kind.  There is all the politics and politics and politics. I plan to vote and this year more than most, I know exactly who and what I plan to vote for.  Yes, I plan to vote.  But, the newspaper has neither formed nor changed my mind.

But, for two weeks the newspaper has not been delivered.  I have had to call.  I don't think that I will give them a third strike.  I think that I will cancel the newspaper. Reading it late Sunday afternoon is just not as fun as Sunday morning.  I can buy birdcage liner cheaper.  I could subscribe online if I care about the newspaper. 

As I write this I am reminded that the first really big fight of my marriage. We had been married about one month. My new husband got very angry with me because I didn't read the Sunday paper correctly.  I liked to sit on the floor and scatter the paper around me as I went through the sections and pick them up at the end when I was finished.  My new husband said that this was wrong and I wasn't allowed to read it this way. I should have taken the hint that this was the way things would proceed in the marriage, but I didn't.  These days nobody tells me how to read the newspaper.  But, I find that reading the Sunday paper is something I can do without.