Sunday, September 6, 2026

     I remember in 1959, looking at the student journalists working at the Daily Californian college newspaper and yearning to join them.  But I am a girl and not welcomed.   I join the business staff and sell ads. I wanted to be a journalist. And now I get to write about my own life.

     I don’t mean to. I spend most of the day playing computer solitaire.  I am actually getting better at this game. I fold sheets, then solitaire, I order food on Instacart and then more solitaire, eat lunch and still more solitaire. So it goes. A flock of geese fly over the house.  I don’t see them but hear their loud voices. The squirrels return to eat more sunflowers and then more solitaire.

     Some days a rebellious energy arises. I don’t want to do my daily exercises of walking on the deck and doing chair yoga. I successfully avoid them. As a result I sleep fitfully, frequently restless and awake. At 3am an airplane flies low over the house. And the dogs are barking.

     I am so enjoying this British novel, THE ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LENNI AND MARGOT. Another story of kindness and tears. I start watching the HULU series FURIOUS, an intense mystery about women’s rage.  Too intense for me maybe. I have a plan to make sure my election ballot is counted. Time to save our democracy from corruption.

 

 Saturday, September 5, 2026  

       Really, I am not sad or depressed.  I just cry while sitting outside in the shade. Fluffy storm clouds in the distance. I am near the end of the novel, THEO OF GOLDEN, a book full of kindness and joy. Maybe the feeling is tenderness.

     All morning my roommate is busy finishing her chores in the house and garden, and packing up for her road trip to the mountains. She is on her way and the house is quiet.

     In the evening, I move into my bedroom, lock the doors, turn off the house lights.  Time to read a bit.  The dogs start barking. More than one. I am not sure which yard they are coming from. Surely the dog lovers will stop their barking dogs.  I do worry when I hear the dogs, someone is hurt and needs help.  But not true.  Just barking dogs in the evening.

     I watch the ending of Britbox’s BLUE LIGHTS, a really good series about the police in Belfast. A new season may be coming. I start reading the novel, THE ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF LENNI AND MARGOT. A surprisingly good book. I am not successful in writing something smart and funny about our incompetent president.  It is beyond my skills today.

 

Friday, September 4, 2026    

     Out on the deck in the afternoon I watch several squirrels race along the top of the wooden fence and attack the brownish sunflowers. They are too heavy for climbing the plant.  They pull down at the plant and when the flower is near, they muscle in.  delicious sunflower seeds. They are relentless and keep at it for the whole time I am outside.

      A solitary hummingbird is working the plants on the deck, in and out of the flowers. My roommate says this hummingbird lives in the oak tree and protects his territory form other hummingbirds.

     More library books arrive in the morning. Now a tall pile on the dining room table. I find obscure book recommendations on line, and check out the library for a copy. Sunny September has arrived. I love reading the novel, THEO OF GOLDEN.

     My roommate is going on a road trip over Labor Day weekend. The TV shows we watch together will have to wait. The most serious ones are MAXIMUM PLEASURE IS GUARANTEED and TRYING. I will find new ones to watch while she is gone.  The president’s incompetent speeches are weirder now. Maybe he is acting crazy deliberately. Hard to tell, but he is fun to watch, as he struggles with words and concepts, and tells obvious lies.  He is a 1930’s comedian.