You never know what you're going to happen across on long walks.

A few days ago, heading home from Matthews Beach, I noticed an old, old woman, scooting along 110th with her walker, she looked worried. I said hello and as I talked to her, I noticed she was wearing slippers.

She asked me what street she was on and which direction 27th was. It became pretty clear she was lost and had trouble remembering things... She'd keep asking me questions, forgetting I'd already answered them moments before.

Poor lady. Luckily she knew her address so I was able to guide her home. She kept telling me not to trouble myself, to go on and leave her, but I said it wasn't
a trouble, since I was just out for a stroll anyway. When we got to her house, though, she confessed that her family would be mad at her for wandering if they saw a stranger leading her home.

So I said goodbye and then lurked in the bushes a few doors down to make sure she got up the stairs OK.

Then today, coming back from another excursion(this time to look at a place for rent down Sandpoint) I saw a woman kneeling anxiously in the gutter next to a car. She stopped me and told me, rather breathlessly, that she had been chasing her kids ball down the street, a long, long way(35th is a big ol' hilll) and it got lodged under the car and she couldn't reach it.

Long arms come in handy. I worked it out slowly-it really was wedged in there!-and went home well thanked, with a gunky arm and that nice feeling of having done something useful.

Washing my arm, I noticed a little bug crawling up my shirt. I coaxed it onto my hand to take it outside, and the darn thing bit me! So much for dogooder karma!

:)

Stifling the urge to smash it's ungrateful little self, I swished it off my hand onto a rental ad and popped it out the window. after all, it probably assumed, in it's little buggy brain, that it was going to be devoured or pulverized or something unpleasant like that.

It's a hard, short life being a bug.