Tuesday, July 14, 2026   

     Warm sun this morning. Small birds in the bottle bush tree. Noisy garbage truck movies slowly down the street. The professor is visiting and we drink coffee together in my room before the day’s activities start.

     A second man has been murdered by ICE agents. More protests, of course, being scheduled. So hard to know what to do. Bombing in the middle East, senseless bombing. And here in my neighborhood all is well.  Somehow that doesn’t make sense.

     The gophers may be winning in the back yard.  My roommate is finding new ways to challenging their authority. This time with caned sardines.  Don’t ask. I don’t quite understand but the roommate knows.

     I am just about finished with the memoir of a neurologist.  I feel pretty healthy compared to her patients. We are rewatching season 5 of CLARKSON’S FARM with the professor. Another day, another day.

 

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.