The clerk at the township was off and nobody printed the bids. I waited at my desk before asking, then was told I could open them myself if I had done the training. The young man did not say it rudely. That made it worse. I was put out with him all morning for a statement I could not dispute, and when the clerk called about something else I nearly asked her to deal with it from home. I did not. I have disliked men who make everyone work around them for most of my life. Being left with an empty desk did not feel like three mornings a week of useful retirement. I left at noon, as usual.

My granddaughter asked which of the six tomato plants was best. I said the one by the steps because it always is, then went through the notes I keep on the back of the seed envelope and found I had written the most fruit against the far end. I had been thinking of the large tomato I picked last week, not the whole summer. Those are two different answers. She wanted the sweetest, which I had not recorded and do not intend to start grading. We cut one from each end with lunch. I could not tell them apart. She could, or said she could, and took the rest of the one I had voted against home.

I stood at the kitchen sink washing the tomatoes. The water was warm and after a while my fingers opened without that first stiff catch, so I kept them under it longer than the tomatoes required. My wife had left a towel ready. I can hold a ripe one without squeezing it, though threading the tie back through the cloth bag took two tries and a fair amount of looking. There is nothing wrong with the bag. My hands are slower. At breakfast I put the cut slices on the bread myself and carried both plates to the table, one at a time because the second plate was hot. They tasted as they ought to.