I mentioned my mom’s neighbor Mildred the other day. Well today I finally spotted her out in the yard and went over to tell her thank-you for the wonderful Christmas stockings.

We said our hellos and I thanked her and made small talk about her flowers and her home’s new electric blue paint job. This is sort of our ritual actually. After about two minutes worth of this she can get down to business.

“I wonder if maybe you’d be able to help me with something?”

She’s always, always, got some small project for me. Doesn’t matter how long I’m away from Portland, there is a home improvement project waiting for me at Millie’s house. I’ve dug up dozens of bushes, transplanted flowers, fixed a leaky faucet, repaired some siding, and who knows what else. Let’s just say it’s a crapshoot when I agree. It might be something easy, or it might be something that will take me four hours and require a shower and a load of laundry afterwards.

I got off easy today.

“This latch on the gate isn’t lining up, could you fix that?”

“Sure, that shouldn’t be too hard,” I say as I turn around to find her disappearing through her front door.

“Thank-you Peter.” Click, the door shuts. Peter?