At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [31]
Bridget replied, “I don’t know. There’s nothing prettier than apple blossom time.”
“Face it,” Cici said, “we live in the most beautiful place in the world, no matter what time of year it is.”
No one could argue with that.
Then Lindsay said, “I’m afraid we lost a little ground today in the battle to deromanticize this place for Lori.”
Cici gave a half-smothered grunt of laughter. “I’m not sure it’s possible to deromanticize anything for a twenty-year-old girl.”
“Be warned,” Bridget said. “Another business plan is in the air.”
“Sheep?” inquired Lindsay.
“Sheep.” Bridget was thoughtful for a moment. “The thing is, it’s not a bad idea . . . if we were thirty years younger.”
“Neither is the bed-and-breakfast,” Cici said, “if we had the time, money, and energy to spend developing it.”
“I just don’t want to spend my declining years dipping sheep and carding wool.”
“The lanolin is really good for your hands,” Lindsay pointed out.
“But the very thought of having to learn a whole new set of skills,” Cici objected, masking a small shudder, “an entirely new trade . . . what is ‘carding wool,’ anyway, and why would I want to learn how to do it? I don’t use half the things I know as it is. Why do I have to know more?”
“Hear, hear.” Bridget sighed. “The older I get, the more I’m convinced life is a game for the young.”
“What I hate,” said Cici, “is being constantly reminded how much smarter they are than I am.”
“They’re not smarter,” Lindsay protested. “They can just think faster.”
“Think faster and learn better,” qualified Bridget. “I used up my last brain cell learning how to operate my microwave oven.”
“I can’t even program my voice mail,” admitted Lindsay.
“But show me one techno-geek who can recite the periodic table and knit a cable stitch sweater.”
“At the same time.”
“Yeah, and I’d like to meet one person under twenty-five who knows how to operate the Dewey Decimal System.”
Cici looked at Bridget. “Do they still use that?”
Lindsay said, “Actually, I don’t think kids are really smarter or faster than we are. We just have a lot more stuff in our brains to sort through before we come up with the right answer. If you’re under thirty, all you have to know these days to do almost anything in life is how to push a button.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Lindsay slanted a glance toward Cici. “But you could have checked to make sure the sander was plugged in.”
“Wasn’t it you who wanted to call 911 to help us get out of the dining room when all we had to do was crawl under the piano?”
“I think Lindsay is right,” Bridget said. “We’d all be a lot smarter if we didn’t have so much on our minds.”
Her pronouncement was met with stares. “I mean, I read somewhere that we’ve actually lost something like two percent of our brainpower over the past century. We can’t solve problems because we’re used to technology solving them for us. And the very technology that was supposed to make life easier has actually made it more complicated. The average caveman used to spend four hours a week providing food and shelter for his family. The average American spends over a hundred hours a week doing the same thing. How has life gotten easier?”
They thought about that for a moment. “Clearly, that caveman did not live in a hundred-year-old house with an adolescent boy and a college-age girl,” Cici said.
“Which is just one more way in which his life was simpler.”
They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the distant bird, watching the sky turn ever-deepening shades of cobalt.
Lindsay said, “We should make a display case or something for the things we find here.”
“Like a piece of old chain?”
“Well, maybe not that. But someone used that tool one time, to work on this house. I think he should be remembered. And maybe someone wore that ribbon in her hair, a long time ago, or hung a brooch on it, or used it to tie up a bouquet of flowers. It would be nice if it had a home again.”
“You,” said Cici, with a small shake of her head, “are the most romantic person I know.”
“There’s not a thing wrong with that,