After Bikram, I stopped off for a sale at a local diving shop. I remember hearing, somewhere, that divers wore weights. I'm not planning to dive, no. I'm a woman of a certain age and, I guess, a certain weight. When I go swimming, my rear end bobs up to the surface, or I get tossed around by the waves just like so much debris. Women tend to be more buoyant than men, and what little mass sat in my abdomen when I was younger has withered, leaving more space for air, creating more buoyancy.
I went swimming with Judy and Paulette in a quiet inlet. They handed me a noodle. I felt like one of those shmoo toys which you can't knock over. In my case, I couldn't keep my rear end under the water. It bobbed to the surface, forcing my face down into the water. Next time I go swimming, we'll see how wearing those weights work.
After the diving shop, I headed to Costco. Closed???! Are you serious? Costco was closed for Labor Day. Well, I had enough food for tonight. I'd stop off tomorrow.
At home, I drank my morning soup and did some work on the blog. I meant to do some work on the book, Chapter 2, but I played FreeCell instead.
Then I went out and did some work on the plumbago. Both my neighbors and the parents of the woman who lives there were in the yard. The mother called, "Hello, Betty." She is the only friendly one. What a difference that simple act made. It dissolved some of my hostility toward them. The wife won't even look at me when she sees me in the street. I can imagine that she doesn't want anything to do with me because her dogs hurt Elsa. She wasn't home at the time, but someone might have told her. There's no way I blame her or her dogs. Elsa got away and ran onto their property. But then again, she doesn't talk to anyone. Several neighbors have asked me about them and pointed out how unfriendly they are. Don't get it.
Yvette reported that she had her hot flashes under control with acupuncture and Chinese herbs. She gave me a gift of an appointment with the woman she worked with. When I saw her today, she said hot flashes are just about her bread and butter. This makes me very optimistic that I can see an end to them. Of late, I have had worse ones. I can be dripping wet. Yuck. Yvette had six hot flashes a day, and now they have stopped. Erin, the acupuncturist, gave me a list of foods that were good to eat to foster my yin versus my overdeveloped yang. This excess of yang makes me wonder if I'm a few chromosomes short of a trans. ¬ I stopped at Safeway on the way home to pick up some food items: watermelon, asparagus (yum), and apples.
Mike frequently offered to share the burden of the hot flashes with me. So sweet. When he was in so much pain and so lonely during his hospital stint, I offered to take turns with him. I'm sorry I couldn't give him some relief, and much relieved that I couldn't and didn't have to suffer the way he suffered.
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MUSINGS:
Wow! Do I ever need to read Augustine's Confessions! Here I find someone's who's thinking is like my own on the subject of human nature. Well, roughly like my own. He used self-observation to get a better understanding of the human condition. He also felt that it was through deep self-knowledge that one got to know God. I don't think he meant that he would discover that he was God in the Buddhist sense. From my own experience, I suspect that the more I know about the specific, me, the more understanding I develop of the general, all humans. It means seeing my dark side. It means realizing that I am capable of what any human being is capable of, both good and bad. I recall the family motto: "Don't confuse lack of opportunity with virtue." My father quoted the words to me. My uncle, his brother, told me they were posted on a wall in the house.
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