I felt choked up this morning. My throat is getting tighter. It's getting a little more difficult.
When I got on the scale this morning, my weight, which has been stable as the rock of Gibraltar, dropped to a lower number than ever. Huh? I haven't been eating that much, and I haven't been losing weight. I ate one good-sized meal, and the weight dropped like a broken elevator. When I told Paulette about it, she knew what had happened.
She did Weight Watchers. Clients are allowed so many points a day. When her weight stayed the same over a long time despite following the diet, the counselor told her to eat the maximum number of points possible for a single day. Then her body responded by dropping the weight. Neat trick.
During Bikram, Heather stood over me and examined the straightness of my spine. She indicated that I had to shift my head, so my chin moved over to the left. I had a hairdresser pointed this out to me once. She was having trouble sizing up my hair because my head was on tilt. I have paid attention to it periodically, but now I'm ready to pay attention to it 24/7 since I've felt the shift's impact on my neck and back.
I stopped off at the UPS store to drop off the return package to Amazon, that book by Brooks, that I got two copies of by accident.
I had an appointment to speak to an old friend this morning. It's easier to make actual appointments with folks living in the Eastern Standard Time Zone. We talked for about an hour, updating each other on our lives and the lives of the people in our families. Her husband was Mike's best friend through elementary school through high school. They kept in touch for a while, lost touch, and renewed their relationship when they were in their forties.
I trimmed Elsa's face. I hate the way the Petco groomer does it. The hair is too long the day it's cut. I trim it and then forget to tell them to make her hair shorter when I have the next appointment. It started raining while I was cutting her hair. It was a little rainfall and Irish shower. When I was finished, I finally went out to trim my hibiscus shrubs.
I noticed that my plants had pimples the other day. I took a sample to church to show Margo, who runs Sunrise nursery. She said, "Blister mites. Get Avid. It's costly but solves the problem. Get it from Farm and Garden." I stopped off there on Monday on my way home from yoga. The Avid isn't just expensive, it's outrageously expensive. $110 for a small container. Bill asked me how many plants I had to treat. I said, "2." He said no. Avid doesn't make sense. Use Sulfur Dust. You will have to apply it more than once after trimming off all the affected leaves. Sulfur dust only costs $10.47 and isn't as bad for the ground.
I suspect our gardeners realized that the plant had this blight before. They dealt with it by trimming it back sharply. I can tell because I can see how one of the plants grew back, a lot of sprouting branches. It's not the best look for a hibiscus, but it's good enough. The oldest plant is thoroughly infected. The second one less so. The third one has a small plant and has only a few affected leaves. I went at the two plants and trimmed them back, throwing the cut branches on the driveway. I found this great tool at Ace Hardware the other day. I think it is called a Ratchet. It's a little hand tool, and it is incredible. It makes cutting branches of all sizes easy. I cut back one of the shrubs completely, ridding it of every infected leaf. I was working on the second one when the rain came pouring down instead of the steady drizzle I had been working in. It was time for me to go inside and take a shower.
Scott stopped by and talked about a design for the bathroom I want to install in Mike's library area. There is an alcove off the library area where Mike had four four-drawer filing cabinets. They fit perfectly. The area was originally a closet off a two-car garage. The two-car garage became Mike's library. Yes, it's that large. Remember, it contains over 3700 books, a desk, a large two-seater reclining chair set, a large stuffed chair, a large cassock which can be used for storage, a stationary bike, and a Pilates machine. It all has to go if I am to make that room into another bedroom I can rent.
The nook isn't very large. A sink and a toilet can be fit into it easily. I want to place the shower outside the house with access from the inside and the outside. We have four-foot overhangs on our homes here. They protect us both from the sun and torrential downpours. I plan to fit the shower under that overhang. I want to put in a skylight. These changes will make the shower as close to an outdoor shower as an enclosed shower can be.
Not knowing much about construction, I thought I could put drywall right over the bookcases. Scott tells me that they're easy to remove. Now I am looking at a whole different set of possibilities. Scott wants to use some of the wood from the bookcases to make a Murphy bed for Yvette in her yoga room. That way, she can put up guests comfortably downstairs. Up to now, if comfort was a requirement, her guests have stayed up here with Mike and me.
Today the emails from John Coughlin came pouring in, which he forwarded from the librarian from Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. The librarian didn't sound like he would be interested in many of Mike's books, assuming he already had everything that could be n Mike's library. The order list includes something like 150 of them.
I'm not quite ready to start filling his request list. I want to get the library in order and take pictures of it in its original form so we can all remember Mike's dream and how it became a reality. I am so glad he got what he wanted. It made him so happy. I loved making him happy.
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Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.
One of the great things about retirement is that there are no deadlines; one of the bad things about retirement is that there are no deadlines.
