It was one of the most awful, pitiful movies I have ever watched. I was so disgusted with the main character that I wanted to slap the whine right out of her. I couldn’t finish the movie – it was too stupid. Awful movie – and even Julia Roberts couldn’t save that piece of claptrap.

A woman was calling, crying, to tell me that her son had just committed suicide by taking a massive prescription drug overdose. Both the mother and her son work for us in the warehouse, third shift. So she was calling to let me know that they would not be at work this morning. The bad news was a shock – I had no idea her son was so depressed that he would ever do anything like that and now I feel guilty for not paying more attention to him. How could I not see that something was so terribly wrong in his life that he would do this? But then, it came as a complete surprise to his mother, too.

My parents believed that fresh picked not only tastes best but is healthiest for you, and I agree. We often went to a farm that grew strawberries and we would load up the freezer with fresh strawberries – my mom’s most favorite fruit in the world. We also picked other fruits and vegetables, and we patronized a lot of fresh fruit and vegetable stands that lined the Maryland highways, buying everything from fresh peaches to cantalopes to green beans to sweet corn.

When my children were young, we continued that tradition with them and they have picked many things from other’s gardens as well as our own. But our favorite has always been to pick blueberries. Not only is picking blueberries great family fun, but they freeze and keep well, and can be used in so many delicious things from the kitchen. There’s nothing like a stack of grandma’s fresh blueberry pancakes with melting real butter and warm blueberry syrup!

Well, she was glad to see us and acted pretty normal, so that was good. But she says she’s tired, tired down to her bones, and she just doesn’t want to run the store anymore. She’s always had a problem finding good help and she’s never found an assistant manager that she could trust completely, so she’s decided to put the business up for sale and become retired.

Of course, that decision has opened a whole pandora’s box of questions and we have to tread lightly so we don’t offend her, but the wife went nuts with a hundred questions and we finally had to leave because I could tell the MIL was getting annoyed. We asked if there was anything she needed help with and surprisingly she asked if we would help her look into MediCare and the Medicare Part D coverage that I vaguely remember hearing about.

Now I’m not sure she really needs the help of if she just came up with this little task to shut up the wife and divert her attention to a little project, but the wife grabbed onto that request like a boll weevil grabs hold of a cotton ball. And off we went.

My mother made tuna by adding Kraft Mayonnaise, chopped white onion, chopped celery and bottled sweet pickle relish. Heap it on fresh white Wonder Bread and put a few leaf pieces from a head of iceburg lettuce. Serve with potato chips.

My stepmother had her own idea of tuna. She used Hellmans mayonnaise, if she used mayo at all. She preferred the sweet-sour taste of Miracle Whip. She chopped up one or two hard boiled eggs to add to the tuna, along with some chopped onion. I don’t recall any pickle relish or celery, but to be honest, I hated that tuna recipe and would do almost anything to avoid having to eat it, from I’m not hungry right now to I don’t want to spoil my supper when I get home (to my real mom after the Sunday child custody visitation was over).

Now I celebrate the diversity of tuna and enjoy it with a variety of add-ins, including sweet pickle salad cubes or chopped “bread and butter” pickles, a slice of American cheese of top or shredded any mix of cheeses stirred right into the tuna. Onions in or out. Add anything crunchy that you like. Put it on any kind of bread or roll you want, and put any kind of lettuce – or not – on it.

The only place I draw the line is that IF you include mayo, it MUST be Kraft real mayonnaise. Any other brand of mayo or “salad dressing” ruins it for me.

I drop her off in the morning and find something to do for a few hours before they call and tell me she’s ready. She comes bounding out of the groomers back room with bows on her ears and a happy tail wagging.

The best I get is a haircut for $12. Although, when I go to the dentist for my 6 month checkup I do get someone to brush my teeth. So I guess the only service I’m lacking is having my toenails cut?

Then there are the others who wake up dreading what troubles the day will bring. Some of them have good reason – they are facing a day in court or perhaps a job performance review, a dispatch to the front lines of a war, or a difficult medical procedure. But many people are just depressed from their normal quality of life and daily troubles.

I wish I had the solution to the people who drag themselves through the day feeling depressed and sad. That must be awful. I try to start my day with a smile and a good cup of coffee. It doesn’t always work out that way, but I do make the effort.