I got up and walked Elsa. I experienced a new discomfort/pain in my hip. I thought, “Is this it? Has my hip reached the end of its rope?” I have severe arthritis in my left hip, along with a large bone spur. Those who look at my X-rays wonder how I even manage to walk. Therefore, I’m always on the alert for the possibility that I have taken my little experiment as far as I can.
When I got home, I did my oil rinse, washed the dishes, drank my two cups of water, and boiled one kettle for the weeds. I got an email from Raymond James telling me what my monthly income is so far and suggesting that the Affidavit and the Trust Fund documentation had arrived and were with the legal team. There will be more money coming in once social security and NJ pension fund work out the paperwork. Hopefully, they get that done before I die.
After worrying that the leg may have reached its end and thinking of changing the surgery appointment so I could do it either in August or October so I could travel in September, I revised my opinion again. I saw more flexion in my left hip as I did my yoga. Bikram, which is the exact same asanas in the exact same order every day, provides an excellent opportunity to evaluate what is going on in my hip. If I hadn’t been doing yoga, I would never have noticed the improvement.
At the end of the class, Yvette dumped her yoga stuff and mine in my car for me to wash when I got home. So glad to have someone else to do something for. I rinsed off and headed to my chiropractic appointment. I had her do work on my body above my armpits both in front and back, and a lot of work on my neck. This work on my upper body is making a massive difference to my spinal curvature. Who knew?
I texted Mike Glaser, my second cousin at some remove, asking him to inform me when he ships the paintings. I had lent three paintings done by my great aunt, and his great-great-aunt, to the community in Teltow, Germany, for an exhibit of Jewish painters who lived there before the Nazis came. I have one wonderful painting of a little boy at a petting zoo that I’ve had since I was a young child. Another was done when she lived on the east coast, a painting of Central Park. The third was done when she lived in Florida; it’s a picture of a scrub pine tree.
I stopped off at Home Depot to buy carpet gliders for my dining room chairs; the old ones have worn out or fallen off. I bought three and a regular Hersey’s Milk Chocolate with whole Almonds. Okay, I was hungry. When I got home, I only found two packages of the carpet gliders. I must have dropped one in the parking lot.
I made my morning soup and sat down to work on the blog. Judy called on the house phone. She was in her car coming home from Waimea, where she had her regular blood test as part of the chemo treatment. She told me that her husband is having some worrying symptoms that may be nothing. He is going to get it checked. I told her to stop by and see if there was anything she could use from what was left in the pantry.
She couldn’t believe all the Chinese sauces Mike had. She could only use a few of them. When we looked at the second shelf in the pantry, we found a lot of grains that had already gone bad. One package was completely broken down, reduced to the flour from which it came. Judy left with two shopping bags, and the shelves still looked full. Remember, this is the second clearing. The first was my clearing out all unopened, unexpired cans and bottles, which I gave to a charity.
The items in the pantry must have been there long before Mike got sick. While I cleaned the refrigerator regularly, I never thought to clean the pantry. I figured he’d say something if he thought it was a problem. Of course, cleaning wasn’t all my responsibility. I did everything with water: washing floors, carpets, windows, the screens, the counters, the laundry, anything that required a liquid application. It was the only division of labor we had for cleaning. Either he never saw the destroyed food, or he didn’t feel comfortable asking me to do the cleaning. He usually didn’t do that type of cleaning. Cleaning out the pantry was going to be a messy job; I put off washing the kitchen floor for another day.
After Judy left, I did some work on the blog. Then I decided to go out and do some work in the garden. The vine on the fence between our property and our neighbor’s was getting out of hand. More seriously, the fruit on that vine was maturing, meaning more vines would be planted. I got out there and started ripping it off the fence. When I came across fruit, I grabbed it and threw it on the cement driveway. The fruit gets run over. I dare it to plant its seed there.
Since I was all hot and sticky and in need of a shower anyway, I figured I’d go down to the bottom of the property to pick more limes. As I walked down there, I pulled some miscellaneous weeds. The gardeners usually do this, but I haven’t been up to asking them to return on their regular monthly schedule. It’s not the money; for some reason, it triggers sad feelings about Mike. It was Mike who hired the gardener when he came in touch with the reality that he would never be comfortable digging in the dirt himself. I find it energizing. Well, I find ripping things out energizing; planting, that’s another matter. I think I’m the world’s worst gardener. I have had some luck recently. I planted a bush that has survived and seems to be thriving. When I lived in Princeton, I couldn’t get a forsythia plant to grow and thrive.
When I was down at the bottom of the driveway, I saw our neighbor, Ronen, on the other side of the fence. He texted me about a week ago telling me that he was smelling sewage coming from my property every afternoon. Did we have a septic tank or a cesspool? While cesspools will probably be outlawed soon, everyone here has one. Our contractor told us that if we hadn’t had problems with it so far, we probably would be good forever. We actually have two cesspools on the property, one for the main house and one for the shed where B lives. I had asked Ronen to call me the next time he smelled it. I said he should come over then, and we’d work together to locate the source of the problem. I hadn’t heard from him. I was thinking there was one of three causes:1) the smell disappeared; 2) he hadn’t been home, or 3) he never received my text. Number one was the best option, and that’s what it was. I think B had left garbage lying around when he left for the mainland for a couple of weeks. When he got back, he took care of it. Voila! No more smell.
I carried a bucket with 32 limes up the hill to the house, put them in the sink, and filled the pail with water to kill off all the wildlife I had brought in the house with them. When I took the limes out of the bucket, I sorted them into the ones I had to squeeze before they went bad and the ones that could wait a while.
When I checked the clock, I saw it was 2:24. Oh, dear. My student was arriving any minute, and I could not meet her smelling as I did. I jumped in the shower and got dressed as quickly as I could. I did not do MELT or use the Tiger Tail today. No time.
I actually had a few minutes before she arrived. I organized my materials and found a story I wanted to work with on the computer that was at a 2nd-grade level. When she arrived, I showed her the five books I got for her yesterday. I picked books I thought she might be interested in. She had said that she wanted the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. I got two of those and picked up some A to Z Mystery Books, too. The Diary books are on a 5th-grade level, which is the grade she is in, but well below the grade level, she tests on. The A to Z books are on a 3rd to 5th-grade level. She picked one of the Diary Books. She has seen other kids in her class, reading them. She said she has seen first graders reading one of the books. That is some good first-grade reader. The book is hard for her, but if this is what she enjoys reading, that’s what she should be reading, whatever her motivation may be. If she’s not feeling frustrated but challenged, it will keep her nose in the book. Good enough.
On the second grade passage, she only made one mistake that she didn’t self-correct. She read we for he. Problems with these level- one sight words is so common for kids who had issues when they first started to read. We also did some work on math. She was showing me how she was dividing fractions and subtracting decimals, but then she didn’t know how to do subtraction with regrouping. Over the summer, I want to go through the whole 5th-grade math curriculum. When she doesn’t understand or can’t do something, I can trace where the breakdown comes in and teach that before we go on.
After she left, I got to work on the blog. As I was typing, I heard the distinct sound of rain. I rushed outside to save my Bikram clothes hanging on the line so they will be dry for tomorrow. After living here for 5 years, I have developed a sensitivity to the sound of rain when I have clothes on the line comparable to a mother’s sensitivity to her child waking up while she’s in a dead sleep.
I walked Elsa and came more work on the blog. I had dinner, watched TV and cataloged some books. I walked Elsa again, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. Good night, Elsa, Goodnight, Mike.
