Monday, July 13, 2026

     Warm fog this morning. We are getting ready for hot overcast weather. My younger sister is visiting for a couple of days. A treat for me. My comforter was too warm last night. My sister is out walking this morning.

     Today I will change to cooler bedding. I have made a list of things to do so I don’t forget. It is more I need encouragement to actually do my daily chores. So easy to slide and think I can do them the next day. Piles of ignored stuff on my desk from last year. Someday I will do the job.

     Air planes flying overhead. Commercial not military. We live in a military town. The state of war can spill over to my town. Military planes come in and out. We just accept it.  Decades ago, I saw from my deck, mushroom clouds coming from the military base as soldiers were learning to respond to atomic blasts. We forget and think of our town as a tourist beach town.

     I am reading an unusual memoir, I DELIVER PARCELS IN BEIJING by Hu Anyan. So good. I now know more about the working class in China. And I am continuing to read WHISPERS OF THE MIND, a neurologist’s memoir.

 

Sunday, July 12, 2026

     I sit with my friend on a bench at the local park. An old friend. We worked together as social workers, chaplains and then in building resources for homeless women. We are both old now and talk about our current struggles. Sitting in the sun, children playing in the park, dogs with their owners. We talk about hardships and joys. I continue to adjust to old age.

     I take naps in the living room on a comfortable old hand me down couch. People come and go. I am burrow under the blue down blanket. I sleep better with people around.

    The tall man says good by.  He is beginning his long hike in Europe. He uses the roommate’s clippers to cut the pepper tree branches blocking the front entrance. My roommate is working on the back yard farm. The weather is changing, different clouds and air. Maybe a storm is coming.

     We watch the new documentary THE MAN MUST BURN, on HBO.  The story of the Burning Man festival in the desert. I knew about it when I was younger, but didn’t attend. Many of my friends loved it. This series focuses on the Covid epidemic times. I start reading a memoir by Carolyn Larkin Taylor, M.D. WHISPERS OF THE MIND, a neurologist’s memoir. I am learning more about brain conditions and medicines. Political news is quiet today, just the usual bombing and war, and lies and corruption, and endless ICE violence.

 

 Saturday, July 11, 2026

     I curse at this young man who wants me to drive my car into the dark basement garage. I am picking up my friend from a medical appointment. My eyes are too slow to shift to safely see in the dark. He is embarrassed and says this is his boss’s new rule. I turn my car around awkwardly to sit in the driveway outside of the dark garage. There is street paring available.

     Later I worry about the cursing. Mostly I am embarrassed by being old and damaged. I pretend to be competent and normal. And maybe I am normal for an old woman. Maybe it is ok to yell sometimes. but it feels like I am losing it. I just can’t make my eyes adjust faster in the dark.

     The fog breaks open for a couple of hours of sunshine in the afternoon. Every where I look, flowers are blooming. We eat some of the first tomatoes. My roommate has planted watermelon seeds that will grow in our cold foggy climate.

     I am reading a memoir, GHOST STORIES by Siri Hustvedt about her grief around her husband’s cancer death. Of course it is well written. Another step in becoming familiar with the details of dying. In the evening, we watch two episodes of season two of BEEF, I find the story too angry and too violent. I prefer the controlled fierceness and drama in detective stories.  Nothing new to say about the president’s confusing war with Iran. So scary.