Thursday, April 30, 2020

    I have been getting up by 6:30 am. I did a third alternative route on my walk.  It was a little over 5,000 steps. I took my phone with me because I was experiencing pinching in my hip joint area. 

    When I got home, the gate was closed, blocking the driveway and entrance to the house.  I yelled for Yvette in a small panic.  I would not be able to slide that gate open by myself. One of the students came and opened it. With the gate closed, Yvette was able to have Izzy in the upper driveway area during her yoga class in the driveway.  When she is confined below, she howls non-stop. 

    As we walked to the side door, Elsa had to make sure she was pet by all the students. It might be a way to get her infected and to make her a carrier. I just didn't have the energy to fight the situation. 

    I did a little more work on my book, posted the blog for the day, and did some more editing of the latest update. Then Sandor called. We spoke for quite some time exchanging stories. 

    His family immigrated from Cuba. He said he is predisposed to distrust the government.  I told him how I always felt that the government was run by a bunch of elementary school boys playing king of the hill. I never had much faith in government.  I think I just hold my nose and hope for the best. I'm not surprised when it's the worst. 

    He told about one branch of his family that is wonderfully eccentric.  He said he warned his wife-to-be when he brought her to meet that branch of the family.  She walked into the house, ran into a priest, two naked cousins running to their rooms, and one cousin sobbing because her husband had just been arrested by the FBI. He said the Cubans have a very strange relationship with the FBI and many get arrested. I assumed it was biased policing, but we didn't discuss it at length.

    We also spoke about the effect of 9/11 on him.  He said he was raised with the belief the US was safe. With this attack, he lost that faith. I have heard that before.  I have two problems with this reaction. One, I have never believed that the USA is guaranteed protection from external forces. We've just been lucky to not have had a war fought on our soil since the Civil War.  My parents went through WWI in Germany, and my maternal grandparents, who were Christian, were in Berlin at that time. Here in NYC, there were reports of Germans being attacked on the street, including children, after the US entered the war.  My family must also have worried about the possibility that the Germans might win the war and what that would mean for them. I understood that safety wasn't guaranteed. 

    The second thing I don't understand is why the Oklahoma bombing didn't create this sense of ill-ease.  That was a political attack. Just because it was a white, Christian American who did it doesn't mean that there was less damage than if it had been done by a foreign agent.  I guess it goes back to understanding the threats can come from inside the country just as easily as they come from outside. That certainly was the lesson the Jewish members of my family learned in Germany. They had to flee to America for the lives. Those who didn't died in the concentration camps. 

    I got some gardening done. Gardening for me always involves cutting something back or killing something. I have the blackest thumb I know of. Growing things doesn't work for me. I spent some time cutting back the bougainvillea that was consuming the bedroom yard area.

    I finally got the front storm door cleaned.  I don't use that door often.  I come in through the side door usually.  When I have come in that way, I have been struck by how dirty it is.  Then I forget until the next time I see it.  Also, in the past, it has taken a lot of time to clean. This time, I just turned the garden hose on jet and sprayed the door from the outside.  The dirt slid off. Wow! Then I soaped down the screen and the glass panels through it and rinsed it down again. Next, I propped the door open, soaped down the inside and rinsed it down.  I let the water runoff, and then wiped down the glass panels that were accessible from the inside. I slid down the top glass panel of the door and wiped down the screen I could reach. I went outside and wiped down the screen from that direction.  There is some spotting, but the door looks so much better. 

    As I listened to Terry Gross, I finally tackled making tuna fish salad.  I have been planning to do this for days but feeling inadequate for the task. It finally occurred to me that I could look up a recipe on the Internet.  Okay, so the recipe called for more mayonnaise than I like. Next time, I will know to modify it.  I also learned that if I didn't put in too much mayo, I could freeze the leftover tuna salad.  I think I'm getting the hang of this cooking thing.  All thanks to the inspiration of my nephew David who just throws things together and sees what works.

 

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Musings:

 

    I heard an advertisement for a radio segment on the mental state associated with a lack of human contact and conversation.  I don't remember the name for it,  but I remember the guest speaker saying that monks are familiar with this state of mind. I hope there is more information about this.  

    I would imagine I know something about this mental state because I participated in a dozen silent 10-day retreats in my fifties.  Of course, while doing them, I didn't do anything else.  We weren't allowed to read or write no less hold conversations, or even make eye contact.  The mental state which followed from eliminating all that from our daily lives and meditating eleven hours a day seemed logical.  It was weird coming out of that state.  They gave us over 24 hours in which we were allowed to talk to people, read, and write so we could return to normal before we left the meditation site.

    I remember during one retreat someone came on the property from the town to deliver something.  He approached me and asked me for directions. Boy, that felt strange. Again, I hope they talk about this state of mind more. 

 

PS. I learned what they were talking about on the radio.  It’s called acedia. Wiki says it's a state of listlessness. Damn, it's depression. No, I don't feel depressed now, and I didn't feel depressed during those extended meditation retreats. 

    My guess I had objectives during the retreats as I do now, which protects me from depression.  I don't feel helpless. I'm not floating, disoriented. I find it all quite relaxing. 

Wednesday, April 29,2020

    I talked to Dorothy and then my friend Carol from Ohio while Elsa and I did our morning walk.  It is a delightful way to spend that time. True, I didn't get to focus as much on my body, but I got 5,000 steps in.  The walk seems easier with the company.  In both conversations, we talked about our childhoods and our families of origin.

    Dorothy and I brought up names of miscellaneous people that were in my parents' lives. We knew these people were relatives, but we had no idea how they were related to us.  The family connections on my paternal side are known.  While my father had only one brother, he had five male cousins with whom he was raised and one female a good 25 years younger than him. Dorothy and I have a clear understanding of our relationship with them. But then there were all these other people we visited or visited us.

    There was Aunt Rita, who lived in an apartment with a great view of 5th Avenue in NYC. I remember watching the Macy's Day Parade from her apartment one year. I also remember that she had lost her senses of smell and taste. She explained that she remembered the taste of things as she ate.

    There was Joel and his wife, who lived in Younkers. We visited them every few months. I have no idea who they were. Then there was Mattie Cohen, Paul Cohen, who I realized as an adult was her son, and Gabby, who was a little older than I was.  For the longest time, I thought Mattie Cohen must have been the mother of my father's best friend as a child, Eric Cohen. But we never talked about him and his family that lived in Memphis when we went to see them.  I now believe that all these people were relatives on my paternal grandfather's side. We also had some relatives in South America. There was a family in South Africa. I understood our relationship with them.  Their father, Max, was my paternal grandfather's nephew, the son of his brother Louis. Dorothy and I both remember stories about Uncle Louie. Max died in his forties, leaving his wife and two young sons.  They moved to Israel. We lost touch with them. 

    With Carol, I talked about her mother. She sounds like an amazing woman. She bore six children and ran that house with an iron hand, a kind iron hand but an iron hand, nonetheless.  The kids were required to do chores around the house. Anyone remember that?  Dorothy and I didn't' get many of those because my mother didn't think we would do them right. We did get to make our beds after we learned how to do it correctly in camp, and my mother approved of our performance. 

            I also got to iron my own clothes, starting in 7th grade.  The gym teacher had us take home our gym outfits to be washed, starched, and ironed every week.  These were blue cotton uniforms with short baby doll sleeves and similarly puckered short pant legs. My mother took one look at that and said she wasn't going to iron it. When she saw that I could manage an iron, she let me take over that chore with all my clothes.  I loved it.  I rather like ironing to this day.  I guess the rule is if you want someone to do some work, deny them the opportunity, and they'll love to take it over when given a chance.

    I did some work on the book I'm writing.  Yesterday, I was feeling overwhelmed. Today, as I reread what I had written, I was able to tighten it up a bit and see ways I could make it flow better and not feel so all over the place. Dorothy and Shivani both criticized my work on that count. They said  I did not define my terms adequately and meandered from topic to topic.  On the former, defining my terms is irrelevant for my work, particularly the word phoneme. Not only do I never use that term with the students I work with, but I also think it has been bandied about in the educational circles to help people sound more erudite without having more knowledge. From what I can make out, the phoneme is equated with the sound a letter(s) make.  No, no, no. My guess also is most teachers have no idea that phonemes don't just exist in English.  I suppose they could infer that, but not when it is bonded with the English alphabet letters.

    Judy and I talked. She apologized for not calling me back yesterday. She said she had several long conversations and was talked out. I found out that tomorrow is her birthday. Happy Birthday, Judy. I promised her the Ross Happy Birthday version of the song. She said, please, no. It bears little resemblance to the original.  Mike couldn't sing, so I helped him to make an adaptation where he didn't have to carry a tone. We just howled; the song follows the words, but besides that, it is an entirely different tune and rhythm. 

    Judy and I lapsed into talking about our pasts, stories about our parents, and our childhoods. I told her I am finding that all my conversations with friends and family lapse into this.  No, that's not true.  It doesn't happen with Damon, Shivani, or Yvette, all from the generation after mine. It just happens with older people.  I don't mean being analytical, commenting on what was good or bad. No, I mean just telling stories. It's all very interesting. 

    Judy and Paulette delivered sandwiches to the homeless last night. They prepare dinner for over 60 people once a month as one of their ministries. Judy told me that they have opened the whole parking lot at that site for people to pitch tents. She said no one was wearing a mask or taking any precautions, and no one has the virus.  Now, everyone has to have the temperature taken before they can participate in the dinner. However, is it possible that living rough has made these folks immune to this virus?  Has living rough strengthened their immune systems or just exposed them to this particular virus? When I looked up information on the virus in the homeless population, all I got was warnings about how many will probably die, but not how many were sick or had died. 

    We already know that too much cleaning leaves the immune system untested and weakened.  People from cultures or homes that are kept immaculately clean tend to have allergies or get sick. Are the homeless who live closer to how we were designed to live in better health in some ways? Interesting. 

    A friend told me a personal story that supports this theory. He suffers from allergy trigger asthma. When he was young, he suffered continuously.  His mother took him to a doctor when he was three. This doctor had an unconventional approach. He told my friend's mother to take him home, take off his shoes and shirt, and let him around and play in the dirt. His mother's first reaction was, "No, way!" The doctor said, "Nothing else has worked. Try it for a month." After a month, his asthma was much improved. Dirt, the great healer. 

    Mike and I were never super cleaners. I should be way ahead of the curve.  With my loose social connections and my dirty house, I should live forever. 

 

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Musings:

    Dorothy and I talked about a relative through marriage, long dead, of our grandparents' generation, who was the embodiment of haughty arrogance.  I told Dorothy that our dad thought she was a 'real lady." I thought this summed up what was wrong with him.  How does putting out a constant stream of contempt make you a lady? I did and do choose other words to label her.

    But Dorothy pointed out that people like her are impressive. They may not be nice, but they are impressive. They enter a room with certain assumptions and force others to bend to their will by the sheer power of their entitlement.

    I can think of someone I know who has this presence, and all I want to do is run for my life. As I understand it from his daughter, everyone else feels that way too. Aside from his family, he has no friends.  I think that kind of presumptiveness is a form of mental illness.

    There are positive iterations of that presence, actors, lawyers, and classroom teachers. God bless the teachers that enter a room and without saying a word, command the class and extract calm and organized behavior. Neither Dorothy nor I were blessed with this disposition.  Both of us had to work for whatever we achieved in this regard.

    This lack made me an inadequate classroom teacher. Also, I am preoccupied with details. Why can't Johnny do this problem? What is going on in his head or not going on in his head?  This is not a rhetorical question; it is the challenge I choose to face.  It keeps me up at night, sometimes quite joyfully, as I struggle to find a solution.  This is great for Johnny, but my attention being focused on Johnny means the rest of the class sees the teacher has left the room, and  . . . .

    Fortunately, I had the opportunity to spend every year in my over 50 years of teaching working with individuals or small groups, except for two.  They were my first two years of teaching. They were not good.  For some reason, I knew even then that I would someday be a great teacher.  Somewhere along the way, I achieved that.  I am considered a miracle worker.  It would be nice if people would be interested in learning what I do instead of just calling me to work with kids they can't help. Oh, well. Maybe in my next lifetime.  

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

    I spent the day reading a children's book by Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn Dixie.  I bought the book because Ann Patchett raved about it.  I love the way Patchett writes. She said this book had a significant impact on her. That made it a must-read for me. I thought it would be a second-grade reading level.  I think it might be considering vocabulary, sentence structure, and plot, but when I looked it up, it was listed as a Level R.  That puts it at a 4-grade level. I think it's the concepts introduced in the book that may be considered too difficult for children of a younger age. 

    I found it pleasant reading, but nothing to write home about. There were two concepts introduced in the book that I found interesting. The primary one is how our lives are different because of the people and, in this case, animals in our lives. It's not that I haven't thought of it before, but it made me think again of how my life would have been different if  I hadn't met and bonded with Mike.  

    The second concept is to make a list of things about people. That's not so easy. How do you capture a person with a short list of their characteristics? Mike: He had two Ph. D's; he loved me, and he was loved by me; he has one son and one grandson; he used to be arrogant and contemptuous of many people and expressed it with abandon; he changed completely; he didn't have a good relationship with his family of origin, he used to pretend they weren't his real parents; he was able to be joyful, loving and playful with abandon, he was childlike but rarely childish;; he loved to cook, he considered it a form of relaxation; he liked things to be neat on the surface; he couldn't tolerate chaos; he was primarily a left-brain thinker; he loved anything that was organized; did I mention that he loved me and I loved him.? After years of making fun of me for my spirituality, he converted to Catholicism, became a deacon in the church, got his second Ph.D. in theology, and got a job in a seminary.  He didn't do things halfway.  He would rather be in debt than pay things off. He was very attached to our goddaughter, Yvette. He wanted to adopt her when both her parents died. He was distraught that we didn't get her and her brother. Does this sum up a life? He told me he loved me, and I was beautiful every day of our life together until they intubated him and could no longer speak.  Did I mention that he loved me, and I loved him? He was a clutz, which resulted in more injuries to me than to him. I just thought it was funny. So lovely to be able to forgive people for their outrageous behavior.  I found most of his flaws funny the way you find the stupid things babies do funny.  He was a wonderful husband to me. I loved to kiss him.  Too many "I" s in here instead of 'he's. But I'm the one writing this list, and our love for each other, the pleasure we took in just being in the same room, or the pleasure I took in just being in the same room, sums up a lot of what's on my list.  Oh, there's more about him. He did a lot of volunteering after we retired and moved to Hawaii. He was never happier in his life. He worked his ass off juggling, I don't know how many different activities, and did well in all of them.  He felt grateful for the opportunity to do this work. I would say he was modest, but it was a little more complicated than that. He felt a need to avoid gratitude on the part of others. As I write this, I think it might have been because he was afraid that praise would trigger his old arrogance.  He definitely didn't want that.  Did I mention that he loved me, and I loved him? The rest is just details. 

    The family techie, August, helped me set up Smart Draw on Mike's tablet.  I want to make a video of me demonstrating my method of teaching phonics. He is a remarkable young man, very patient, very considerate, very thoughtful in his communication, and very helpful. After I got off the phone with him, I thought I would practice on my own. I couldn't get it to work.  We will need a few more sessions.

    Every time I look at my clean sliding door and my bisque toilet and get a little thrill of joy. It is incredible how the smallest things can have a lasting effect.  Actually, I think it is the small things that continue to bring happiness.  The big things we get used to and stop noticing. It's the little things that keep having an impact. 

    I had some neurological discomfort run down my left leg. I tried to crack my left ankle, which is what usually works to provide relief. I could' t get it to crack. Is my time up?  It would have to get very bad for me to have surgery. I will check out having a stem cell implant for my right hip the moment this shut down is over. 

    I finally got around to taking Elsa on her evening walk at 7pm. Neither of us had had diner yet.  I had no problem walking, even though I felt considerable discomfort in the left hip joint when I stood up.  

    I ate a late dinner, mostly yesterday's salad, leftover chicken, and spaghetti, to which I add some bottled pasta sauce.  It was okay but not as good as Mike's sauce.  Before I opened the jar, I checked to see if I could freeze tomato sauce.  The internet gave me an affirmation. What was left, I slipped into the freezer immediately.

Monday, April 27, 2020

    Elsa curled up next to me last night.  This was a first. It makes me think that she took the loss of Mike much worse than I did.  She has been slowly letting go and accepting that I'm it. 

    I watched an ad for Dr. Marty's dog food. He talked about ingredients found in other dog foods that are bad for dogs.  I have been feeding Elsa Science Diet for sensitive skin. I got out my magnifying glass and checked the ingredients. Yikes! Corn starch is listed first.  Next is hydrolyzed chicken. After that, it is one chemical ingredient after another. No wonder it is called Science Diet.  I have been giving Elsa half Science Diet and half Dr. Marty's, pouring hot water over the mixture, letting it sit until it cools, and stirring it to make a gravy. Elsa loves it. Once I finish with the Science Diet I have left, I'm not giving her any more of it.  The ad says an improved diet may clear up her skin condition and make her medication unnecessary. If that's the case, I'll save money.

    I got up at 7:30 this morning after a difficult patch during the night. While I was struggling to go back to sleep, I did some psoas stretches. This triggered nerve sensation down my legs, both my legs, not just my left one with the bad hip.  Great! Had I given myself sciatica? Did I have a lifetime of pain to look forward to now?  Despite my fears, I managed to get back to sleep.  When I went on my morning walk, I made sure to take my phone if I needed Yvette to come to pick me up. 

    I was fine on my walk. I even got to push the psoas stretch on the right side more.  I didn't see any of my usual morning acquaintances.  But I  ran into the ninety-year-old woman who moved here last year to live with her son.  This lady takes on a half-mile walk up a fairly steep hill. We finally exchanged names. She is Virginia.  I told her she was an inspiration for me. She quoted," Use it, or lose it." A lady after my own heart. 

     I called Kaiser to reschedule the two appointments with eye doctors that I had to cancel because of the shutdown. My name was placed on a waiting list. At first, I thought it was a waiting list in case there was a cancelation. But no. No appointments were being made at all. Everyone's name was just going on a waiting list. Once the shutdown is canceled, then it will be first-come, first-served.

    I also called the bank to see if send someone could come to cash my checks.  It was the central call center for the First Hawaiian bank. The agent told me I should write a letter designating this person to cash my checks, but it would be up to the local branch to deal with it.

    Instead of napping when I felt tired, I meditated. What a great solution! When I got up, I washed my bedroom sliding door and screen and the screens on my bathroom windows. Ah! It feels so good to get those things done.  They have been on my mental list for a while, lying in my mind like pebbles. I felt lighter. 

    I started weeding, but a light rain sent me inside.  I listened to Terry Gross's Fresh Air before I took my shower. It was definitely time.

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Musings:

 

    While I was lying on my love seat/antigravity chair resting, I focused on one of the trees within my view.  When I first moved here, I didn't see great beauty in the palm trees.  I loved the deciduous trees that I was familiar with from the east coast and Ohio.  Palm trees are in the grass family. They are only big blades of grass.  They are not solid like oaks, maples, birches. I loved to lie under the branches of one of those trees, watch the light flicker through the leaves as they danced with the breeze. Palm fronds wave back and forth like a crowd at a football game. It just wasn't the same thing. It's still not the same thing, but now it is satisfying in its own right.  I always figured that a time would come when I would develop a greater appreciation for what Hawaii had to offer. 

    As I watched the fronds dance their dance in the island breeze, I observed that my mind was quiet. Quieting the mind is the objective of mediation practices. I started thinking about meditation from a neurological point of view.

    From what I have read, the verbal mind is from the left side of the brain, and it is rarely silent.  This does not mean that all thoughts come from the left side of the brain. The right brain generates nonverbal thoughts and relies on the left to accurately transmit that information through words.

    While I've done a fair amount of reading on the subject of the brain hemispheres, I do not consider myself an expert. As I understood it, this is what is going on. The yakking mind is considered 'the social brain.' It is constantly negotiating or trying to figure out how to deal with or avoid problematic social situations.  It is rarely just ruminating on something pleasant. That requires effort. That noisy brain is a problem solver. It's trying to figure out how to navigate the social world, so we don't get in trouble. Please remember that when our brains were being developed, social problems could spell death.  We had to stay on the good side of the members of our community or face dangerous consequences. While we don't face those types of consequences now, our nonconscious minds haven't caught up with the 21st century. They're still living in those caves hunting for bears and picking wild berries. That social brain has a job to do. 

    I read about an experiment done at some university with college students, the usual subjects of these tests.  They wired them so they could observe the activity of 'the social brain.' The subjects were given math problems to work on. While they were working on them, the social brain was silenced. Within seconds, the moment they stopped, the social brain was back at it, yakking away for all it was worth. 

    In meditation, we learn we can silence our brains. The methods I'm familiar with have to do with distracting the mind by giving it something else to focus on. Focusing on breathing is big these days.  In the 70s, it was focusing on a mantra, some phrase that a guru assigned you, or just OM, or please, thank you.  Any filler that we could focus on and successfully shut up the yakking mind.  

    Lying on my love seat/antigravity chair looking at the palm fronds waving in the breeze made me appreciate one other form of mediation, sharing into the flame of a candle or looking at a mandala. That means the attention is focused on the right brain. Pay attention to anything else, and the social brain will be silenced.

    Only one problem: maintaining focus is hard work. Some try meditation and declare it's not for them because they couldn't silence their minds. That's up there with trying tennis once, and upon noticing that you don't play like a pro, declaring that you're not suited for the game. Mediation takes practice, practice, practice, even for the professionals, like the Tibetan monks.

    Everyone enjoys a silenced mind. Ahh! What a relief, since that mind is always looking for problems.  Unfortunately, there are other ways to quiet the mind that don't result in good health, like alcohol and drugs.  Yes, that mind gets silenced, but so does your life.

    There are less dangerous methods which give us relief, activities that allow us to deeply invest in: listening to any form of music that moves us, looking deeply at art and letting it carry us away, reading, doing some project ourselves.  All these can work to give us some relief, but I found only one mediation that can be life-transforming. Caveat: It doesn't work for everyone. There are so many escape hatches from dealing honestly with ourselves. And even for those for whom it has made a significant difference, there is always more we are avoiding. The method which worked the best for me is called Vipassana, also known as mindful mediation. Well, that last is not entirely accurate. 'Mindfulness' has become a catchphrase, meaning observe your breath. Vipassana is more than that.  

    It teaches us to observe all sensations on our body without investing in them.  Catch that? Without investing. That's the hard part. To the extent I have ever been able to do that, I have made significant changes in myself. Thank God for me and everyone else, I assure you.

 

Sunday, April 26, 2020

    In the middle of the night, I heard a kitten meowing.  It woke me. It was coming from my bed.  Elsa was making that noise. Elsa is very taken with cats. When she sees another dog, she pulls, but I can control her; when she sees a cat, forget it. She doesn’t want to hurt the cat; she wants to sniff it. There is a cat in our neighborhood who lives with five dogs peacefully. Needless to say, this cat isn’t frightened of dogs. She sits still while Elsa circles her. 

    After hearing her meowing sounds last night, I found myself wondering if it is possible for an animal to feel they were born into the wrong species. Does Elsa feel she should have born a cat?  Is this the next horizon for humans? Can we be transitioned into another species?  

    For me, born in 1940, the sexual transitioning, which is accepted by many as normal today, still takes some adjusting.  This is not to say that I don’t recognize that people have this experience, and I believe they are happier when they are transitioned. I also see no harm to other humans in this transitioning. The only people at risk are those who do the transitioning. Parents have to make adjustments to their expectations of their children.  This can be hard but not harmful.  As for many of those parents, sexual transitioning is just not a given in my mindset.  

    As I think of it, we have been loosening the nature of the expectations that parents can have of their children for quite some time. There was a time when parents could determine the employment of their children, their mates, and where they lived. Then when those children had children of their own, they assumed that power over their children. Whenever a child, or anything for that matter, deviates from our expectations, we have a difficult adjustment to make. For me, that’s what the teaching of Buddha is about, learning how to adjust when things happen that you don’t want and when something you do want doesn’t happen. 

    That’s not to say the expectations aren’t crucial in maintaining societal structure.  Expectations, like assumptions, are necessary for day-to-day living. The challenge is having the right grip on our expectations, not too tight and not too loose, and adjusting when things don’t go as we planned.

    I had more weird dreams about bathrooms last night. This time I was looking for a shower. I couldn’t find a suitable one. I had problems with shower construction, appropriate privacy, and soap.  I never did get to take that shower.  I have been showering less in real-time.  I take one in response to my body, saying, “ I can’t stand another minute of this.”  Listening to NPR commentators lets me know I’m not alone. Maybe there is a natural rhythm for cleaning ourselves that’s been lost.

    I know Americans are the most obsessed with being clean and eliminating all odors, suggesting that we are human after all.  I understand this resulted from an ad campaign launched in the 1950s by the bathroom fixture companies convincing us all that cleanliness was one step above Godliness. Americans have the most elaborate bathroom arrangements.  These are no longer just practical; they’re works of art.  It used to be that realtors didn’t list the bathrooms when advertising a house; there was only one. Now, you can expect to find at least two bathrooms in a two-bedroom house.

    I went a slightly different route on my morning walk today.  I managed to do over 5,000 steps before I got to my driveway. I spoke to Dorothy while walking. She told me that Jean R. had called her to ask for her son’s telephone number.  Jean and her husband, John, have agreed to let Dorothy’s son David do their food shopping for them.  Yay.  This is so much better than John getting up a 5:30 am., suiting up, and getting online at the grocery store with the other seniors to do the shopping. Both Jean and John are up there in age and have health issues.  I think we are all giving a sigh of relief.

    B. texted me to say that he was heading into town. Did I need anything?  Pumpkin seeds from the health food store.  I put them in my salad every night. They are a source of protein. B. called me from the store to tell me that they were out.  No surprise. The air-dried, unseasoned ones disappear almost as quickly as they come in.  

    When I was in elementary school, I bought two boxes of unshelled salted pumpkin seeds every day after lunch and ate them on my walk back to school.  When I say salted, I mean coated with salt.  Each box cost two cents. No one could get away with selling anything that salted today. 

    After I fed Elsa and washed my dishes, I meditated. Boy, what a difference this makes in my attitude and my ability to function. I did more work on writing my book on my method of teaching reading and several household chores.  I think I am going to become a domestic diva.  I was always good at massive cleanups for arriving guests, but I have never been good at those small daily acts of straightening and cleaning. While Mike was good at straightening, cleaning wasn’t a priority for him either. I am not a germaphobe.  I believe a degree of exposure to dirt is good for you.  Whatever ailments Mike and I suffered over the years, none of them were a result of filth. We were never that dirty. 

    Now, however, I’m getting into small daily acts of cleaning and straightening. I don’t know if Mike would have cared about the cleaning, but he would have been over the moon about the straightening.  I do things like push the dog food containers sitting on the counter flush against the splashboard or push them all together, so they’re not randomly spread out.  

    I’m also discovering that I don’t mind cooking. Of course, what I’m doing doesn’t qualify as cooking in the sense that Mike did it.  But I’m providing healthy food for myself with little waste. I’m even enjoying planning ahead, so I have some variety from day to day. If it weren’t for all the chocolate I’m scarfing down at night, I would be losing some weight.  

    I get the greatest satisfaction from working on the book. If I have done some of that for the day, I can consider it a day well spent. Nothing else does that for me, not even the updates, the housecleaning, the gardening, or the ongoing, although much slowed down, sorting of items to get rid of, a lessening of the load.

    I turned the radio on around 2:00 pm. On the NPR news station, they play Hawaiian music for two hours every Sunday afternoon. What is striking about Hawaiian music is it is mostly love songs about the land. They are not love songs reminiscing for what Hawaii was before it was manipulated into becoming a state. No, these are love songs about physical places for their beauty.  I don’t know if there is another culture that embraces the land this much.  Maybe some of the Native Indian cultures do, but I am not familiar with their music.  I’m living in the middle of a culture that adores the land.  

    As I wrote this, the station played a love song to a woman. However, there was mention of the ocean and the seashore, and a particular town.  The land is everything here. 

    It is said that the land chooses who gets to live in Hawaii. The longer I live here, the stronger the physical pull of the land is, and the more struck I am by the beauty of this place.  When Mike and I first moved here, the landscape was a blur of alien vegetation and rock formations.  I tried to explain to someone that I wasn’t struck by the beauty of the Big Island.  The scenery is not as dramatic as it is on the other islands.  We may have the highest mountains, but they don’t look big. They just look like big hills, sloping gently to the ocean. There are skyscrapers as tall as some of the mountains on Oahu; those mountains jut dramatically up to the sky at the edge of the valley in which Honolulu sits.  They look impressive, but they are mere molehills compared to what we have here on the Big Island.  

    Where Honolulu has lush growth, we have vast expanses of barren rock that look like Macadam at first glance. But when you become familiar with it, the lava rock presents a surface with endless variations. The view of the ocean never gets tired – now.  The sunsets. Oh, boy. The sunsets. Sometimes, Mike and I would actually applaud a sunset. I used to think the wonder of sunset was watching the sun sink below the horizon.  Now, it is how the light of the setting sun colors the sky.  Familiarity does not breed contempt; it breeds deep appreciation.

    My eyes seem to be getting worse by the day.  They only bother me when I’m reading or writing, activities I do a lot these days. It’s a combination of things: the macular pucker, the age-related drooping eyelids, and some allergy that makes my eyes red and itchy and leaves a film—yuck to the whole thing.  I have also noticed that print is cleared at night.  There is a single light coming over my shoulder at night, illuminating the book I’m reading.  I suspect I’m having problems with glare during the day. I don’t know if anything can be done about that. I‘ve already had cataract surgery. 

    A family member is also complaining about her eyesight. She has always loved to read. She has opted for audiobooks as a substitute for reading. Jean probably has the worst eyes in the family.  I never hear her complain. She soldiers ahead, reading when she can and writing endless letters to help people in prisons. 

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Musings: 

 

    I finally looked into a book Judy lent me called “The Face of God.” As far as I’ve read, it looks to quantum physics to illuminate the mysteries of life, mainly how consciousness works and impacts things outside of itself.  The author concludes that this mysterious something is God, a conscious force that impacts the world.  The keyword is consciousness, suggesting that whatever our world is about, it was planned by something we understand as a mind. Some believe this provides proof -positive, empirical proof of the existence of God. God, as a conscious presence outside, beyond human existence, is, from my point of view, a hypothesis. The empirical world still has nothing to say about the existence of conscious design. Just because it looks that way to us doesn’t make it so. 

    My position is that of the agnostic. “I don’t know.” I am certainly not an atheist. That would require knowing. I can live with this uncertainty.  This doesn’t mean I don’t also believe. It just means that I don’t need empirical knowledge to make that possible, and I don’t need certainty.  

    I wasn’t raised to believe in anything metaphysical, quite to the contrary.  My parents, my father mainly, saw nationalism and religious affiliation and belief in God as a source of contention, which leads to war.  

    He was born and raised in Germany and only left in 1935.  That he believed group affiliations were a source of evil is understandable, given what he experienced. It took me a long time to let go of his fears and accept my human need for community and for belief. While he’s right, affll1iation can lead to evil, it can also bring out the best in humanity. Affiliation itself is not the problem.

    Some say that if you don’t think your belief is true, you don’t really believe; you’re only acting as if. The book I just finished on the subject of Jung’s religious beliefs mirrors my own position. He has said he knows God. But he equates the depth of the human mind, which may or may not be connected to God, with God.  That’s what he calls God.  He is pretty explicit about this in one of his letters. He is also explicit about his belief that any effort to define the nature of God beyond our own experience is pure hubris.  The finite mind cannot comprehend the infinite.  All we can do is use our experience in the world to create an image of God. This does not mean God does not exist. It only means that our picture of Him, It, is incomplete at best.  

     For me, I experience some depth of mind that is beyond my comprehension. As Schroeder wrote, we know how sound is received by the brain, but we do not know how those electrical and chemical impulses are translated into our conscious awareness of sound. Our minds may operate as a radio transmitter, which receives signals from outside ourselves, or all thought is generated from inside our skulls.

    I have experience as a psychic. Most people I work with say I do a pretty good job discerning their thoughts.  I don’t know where I get this information from.  I only know that I always monitor the information I get to determine if it could be harmful.  If so, I censor it.  I have no idea where this information comes from. Am I receiving information from the other person’s mind? Are images coming up for them because of the topic under discussion that they can’t discern, but I can? I assume I can provide information that the other person isn’t even aware they are thinking at that moment because they do not have as good a relationship with their nonconscious mind as I do. 

    While I clearly believe in interpsychic events, I don’t know that I ‘know’ that I have a relationship with a being beyond the person I am working with at that moment. Does that mean I don’t believe? Of course not. I just don’t know.  I often pray openly for advice on how to help a person. I am also clear if that information comes through my left-brain using background logic and linear thinking versus my right brain thinking.  They feel different. There are surprises if it comes through my right. I suddenly know things or offer suggestions I don’t understand myself but wind-up having meaning for the person I’m working with.  I have a deep relationship with the unknown.  I just don’t know what the source of that unknown is.  I just know that I have to treat that unknown with a deep respect for its power to do harm as well as good.  My only prayer is, “Let me do no harm.”  Failure to do good I can cope with, doing harm not so much.

 

Saturday, April 25, 2020

    I woke up at 6:30, got up, and went to the bathroom, and went back to bed. The silence was restful.  

    When I read The Seven Story Mountain in high school, I thought I would love to live in a silent community. In my twenties, while in graduate school in Wisconsin, I read about an opera singer that had a throat problem and had to give up all speech and singing for a year to heal. She retired to a small cottage in the county and only had contact with her mailman every day. I thought, “Ah!”  Those who know me must think, “She’s kidding.”

    In my studies of Buddhism, I learned some people spend their lives living in caves meditating.  I had a positive reaction to that too. What can I tell you? I am full of surprises.

    In my late forties, I found a Buddhist meditation retreat that involved 10 days of silence.  I grabbed it. Mike freaked out. He thought it might be a cult, and I would never come back.  It’s nothing of the sort. There is no effort made to convince you to spend your life living in the retreat center, giving up your regular life, or even contributing large sums of money. In a concession to his fears, I made a 3-day retreat, which they no longer offer.  I made arrangements to make the more extended retreat as soon as I got back. Mike was assured that I was safe and would return home. We were good.

    A woman I knew from school commented upon hearing that I was going away for a silent retreat, “No way! You won’t make it.” I said, “Just watch me. I’ve been dreaming about this since I was a teenager.” Go figure. How can someone who talks as much as I do crave silence as much as I do? There was another woman at the 3-day retreat who spoke as much as  I did. She didn’t make it. Hidden depths?  Whatever it is, I often have had people not see me clearly.  I have no idea why.

    This morning, I lay in bed, thinking about how I feel more and more reclusive.  I should take advantage of this enforced retreat from the world, embrace this silence, listen to the radio less, meditate more, and write only when I want to.  I find I have less to say. I’m writing more about daily activities, cleaning, gardening, grooming Elsa, walking, etc., and less about thoughts and feelings. I have no idea what this means. 

    I have always been afraid of this aspect of myself.  Even now, I fear that I will become a total recluse and want no one around. Where has all my curiosity about others gone, my fascination with the human condition?  Where has my interest in seeing the world in new ways?   I have decided to follow this to its logical end and see what is at the bottom of this. 

    I must say as I resolved to make this change as I lay in bed this morning, a feeling of total relaxation and peace surged through me.  Now, that’s a good sign.

    I wrote to my niece Shivani yesterday. I have been meaning to call her but haven’t been able to get over the speedbump of my resignation to retreat.  She wrote she had the same experience. She is alone with her three-year-old son.  Their situation is a good one. She is a great mom, and he is a great kid. She writes they are getting to know each other better. I’m thinking what a profound impression this time is going to make on that child. She’s not a jealous mother who wants her children to see her as their only resource for safety and comfort. This time together can only be good.

    I thought I was walking faster today, but the circuit still took me an hour. However, my step was more spritely. I’m getting more stretch in the left inner thigh muscles and more relaxation in the left outer thigh muscles.  It will be interesting when I get back to Bikram and work with the great PT, Katie, to see what the differences in my body are.

    After feeding Elsa, I packed up the razor Judy lent me, a book she had lent me and $12.50 I owed her, put them in a Safeway brown bag, and walked up to her house.  Paulette came out to greet me. Unfortunately, so did the dogs. They made a racket and probably woke up Judy and Howard, who were still sleeping.  

    On the way back home, I passed Ronen, who runs the farm next door.  I commented on a patch by the fence awash in haole koas.  These are invasive weed trees. I was told they were planted as possible food for some animal.  I think the story is the animals didn’t eat them, and they proved to be unstoppable in their growth. They are also almost impossible to kill.  You have to pull them out by the root, and still, Good luck. These trees will take over all of Hawaii, given half a chance. 

    I jokingly made some comment to Ronen about having planted them. Every growing thing in his yard is eatable. Much to my surprise, he told me they were. He says you can eat the young shoots. People in Africa consider this a staple. Okay. If that’s the case, we here in Hawaii are set if a problem with food delivery sets in.  

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MUSINGS:

   

    There’s a lot of talk about loneliness right now because of our isolation due to the pandemic.  It talks about the importance of intimate relationships in our lives and loose relationships.  I think we all know what intimate relationships are. They have to do with people we feel close to, people we think of when we want to share the good and bad moments of our lives, and people we can call 24/7 if there is a need.

    The last item can be part of loose relationships too.  I live in a neighborhood where I know most of the people on my street.  I know that if I’m in need and have none of my usual support around, I can call on half a dozen others and expect them to help me.

    In fact, I had the opposite experience. I had a few pleasant conversations with a woman on my walks. We exchanged telephone numbers. Out of nowhere, she called me and asked me to sit with her while her husband was out. She was just recovering from a stroke and didn’t want to be alone. All the friends they had called were not immediately available. I dropped everything and went. Did I find it somewhat peculiar? Yes. But I also know that many people on the street would do the same for me. 

    These are all loose connections: people who only have brief conversations with in-passing, people I run into regularly on my walk, people I see at mass every week, people I see at the yoga studio, and people who work at the stores I frequent regularly. Sometimes those conversations are only the scripted hello/how are you ones.  And there’s the music of those little ritual exchanges; those are foundation stones.  

    They say those who do well with loose relationships are physically the healthiest.  In that case, I have reason to anticipate living forever. I’m an ace at loose relationships. I’m also pretty good at the intimate ones.  It was the ones that fell between those two that I had difficulty with. I’m doing quite a bit better with those now too, but I have a way to go before I can say I’m actually good at it.

Friday, April 24, 2020

    My leg felt weak this morning. I think new muscles are being engaged; nothing terrible is happening. I completed the 5,000 steps on the morning walk.   I got the day's blog posted, and then it was time for a nap.  When I worked on grooming Elsa, I did much better.  I believe there is such a thing as too little stress and activity, which is also exhausting. 

    I still had to finish trimming her front legs. Yvette came up and moved the table's base under the eve so I could work on her while it rained. I thought Elsa would give me trouble when she was sitting on the table, but no. She stood still.  Finished. I won't go so far as to say she looks gorgeous, but it's good enough.         

I meditated today.   It boosted my energy and inspired me to do some miscellaneous stuff that had been on my list.  I moved a pillow off the dining room chair, where it has been sitting for quite a while, waiting to be stored properly.  I headed into the guest room to put it away and discovered that three other pillows were sitting in there.  I put them all in the laundry room.  They will be washed, sundried, and then I'll decide whether to keep them or donate them to the homeless. 

    I am concerned about the lady who runs the homeless project here in Kona.  I have been hearing on the radio that the homeless have a high incidence of Covid.  Lisa could contract it.  She does a fantastic job. She's organized and caring.  What a combination. 

    I've been watching Peak Practice.  There are thirteen seasons with twelve to thirteen episodes in each one. There have been several changes in the cast. Sometimes they offer explanations for the changes, sometimes not. I'm on season 8. These are my favorite characters with some of the best scripts.  

    The show started with Kevin Whateley and Amanda Blake meeting and falling in love. Their characters were wearing a little thin when they left the show.  I assumed the show's producers decided that they needed a change, but no. The rumor mill had it that Whately and Blake were having an affair, and their respective spouses demanded that they come back home. It was perfect timing for me.

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MUSINGS:

 

   

    There's a lot of talk about the impact of loneliness since we are all confined to our homes due to the pandemic.  Some of us experience this time as alone time, solitude; some experience the isolation as loneliness. Why are they different? 

    Let's say loneliness is a result of feeling disconnected. Disconnected from what?  Maybe out of sync?   We can be in the middle of a crowd and be lonely. We can be at a birthday party for ourselves and feel lonely. So, what is the magic ingredient that makes us not feel lonely?

    T.S. Elliot's comment in his play the Cocktail Party had a significant impact on my life. He says somewhere in that play, as I remember or misremember it, "Everyone is lonely. Only some people know it, and others don't." I was in my twenties and feeling lonely.  Hearing this allowed me to stop feeling sorry for myself.  Realizing that loneliness is part of the human condition helped me come to terms with it. 

    There are two parts to not feeling lonely in my experience. One is being seen the way we want to be seen. The other is being in sync, in the musical sense, with those around us. Mike saw me as I saw myself.  He was one of the few. No, that's not true, but he was one of the few at that time in my life who enjoyed me as well as admired me (or hated my guts)  for what he saw in me. Some see the exact same things he saw and interpret them in negative ways. Listening to some, you'd think I was the devil incarnate. What can I tell you? 

    I talked to Judy about the topic of loneliness in the middle of writing about it. She helped me see another aspect that leads to loneliness. Many people put on false fronts so as not to offend and to be liked by others. That helps keep them out of trouble, but it does not address the issue of loneliness.  If you are always putting on a false face, the one you think will be well received, no one ever gets to know you to like you or dislike.  This is a form of self-imposed loneliness. 

    I think there are people out there looking for someone who will accept them as they are before they are prepared to show anyone who they are. That's half-assed and backward. While I certainly don't recommend anyone going around showing their worst parts at all times, simple honesty, in moderation, does it for me.  That is a narrow path, but it works.  It attracts people who like what I am and works as an insect repellant for those who don't. 

    The other part of not feeling lonely is related to music. No, I don't mean a shared taste in professionally created music or events where people all create music together, but those are nothing to be sneezed at either. I mean the music of daily life, the rhythm, pitch, duration, and loudness of our speech and movement. 

    There's the rhythm of our own lives and the rhythm of our shared lives.  There are the greeting and departure rituals, there are the conversations where we match each other's rhythm and pitch when speaking and mirror each other's movements. We are making music together. Is anything more delightful than finding someone who quite literally moves to the same drum as you do?

    There are nice people who I am not comfortable with because matching their music means sharing their anxiety, their insecurities.  Participating in the music with our whole beings makes me feel the way everyone else feels. I don't want to go there. I don't want to become that person. 

    On the other hand, is there any greater high than being in sync with a whole community? Singing together in church can do it, but not unless you are letting loose. Unharnessing our inhibitions and throwing ourselves into a joint activity is a high. That's why rock concerts, classical music concerts, any live performance, a political rally, or a lynching can be so moving. It isn't just me feeling the event; everyone feels it just as I am. We are all marching to the same drum. Loneliness evaporates. Unfortunately, sometimes morality goes with it.  Sometimes life itself can be lost with it.  Being part of a greater whole is important to us as a species, but it can also be very dangerous.  Scary, huh? 

    I was raised to be afraid of that impulse to join in the song. My parents were refugees from Nazi Germany.  They had heard the rallies. (My mother wasn't required to attend because she was still unmarried and considered too old to ever have children. Little did the Nazis know.) My parents had seen what that impulse to belong, be carried along, can bring about.  I was taught to fear it.  

    Primitive tribes with a small number of people can establish this kinship and maintain it. Esther Gokhale videotape a group of women from an African tribe who walked single file, matching each other's steps.  I believe that unity makes the act of walking easier more relaxing, but it also creates conformity. Military groups can do that. Some people come back from war and miss the comradeship so much that they are ready to go back and risk their lives for the experience or commit suicide because they can't bear living without it once they have known it.  

    It all boils down to being part of something, doesn't it? It's that conflict between seeing ourselves as one or part of something greater than ourselves. That's the paradox that we can be a part of a whole and totally unique at the same time. The human hand exemplifies this paradox. All human hands are recognizable as such unless severely damaged, and each hand is totally unique. Like our hands, we are all both, exactly like all others and nothing like any other.

    Feeling that commonality is where spirituality comes in; however, you interpret it. For some, spirituality has a specific face; they know the face of God. For others, it is Jung's collective unconscious; for others, it is seeing the commonality in all matter. There are many ways of achieving that sense of commonality with all humanity, all living things, or all matter. Or is it with all energy?

Thursday, April 23, 2020

    I was up by 4:30 but dozed till 6:30. My leg is still being challenged. I see it as using muscles that have not been called to action.  Among other muscles, my psoas is being stretched.  Several bodyworkers have told me to stretch it by lying on my bed and hanging my left leg over the edge.  This procedure never felt right to me.  Now, I know why.  The method the bodyworkers recommended was passive.  It was supposed to allow the muscle to relax. But that wasn’t the right approach for my body.  I am getting a change now because my emphasis is on strengthening my glute and leg muscles. If I had followed their advice, I would have weakened the only muscles I used to walk.  Now that I’m strengthening other muscles, which should have been used in the first place, my psoas is sighed in relief that it doesn’t have to do all the work and relaxed.

    Judy promised to bring over the electric razor she uses to groom her dogs today.  I got Elsa in the sink and washed her.  This is not her favorite activity; it never was. She pressed the top of her head against the side of the sink, hoping I won’t be able to wash her face and get water and soap in her mouth and nose.  It occurs to me that maybe I’m doing wrong.  I bet I can find instructions for a way to do it on the Internet.

    After Elsa and I did our tango, I needed a nap.  I have no idea why I’m so tired. Is it possible that the nap schedule used in preschool is the right one for all of us at all ages?  I’m thinking my tiredness is a result of age, but maybe not.  Will I be able to go back to my previous schedule once this shutdown is over?  Judy notices the same thing.  For her, this is also a vast improvement. She suffers from insomnia. Now, she sleeps like a baby. She also doesn’t’ know how she will be able to go back to her previous schedule. She and Paulette, her sister, were always on the run doing something for the church. Now, Judy says if she gets four things done at home, she considers it good.  For that matter, how is anyone going to be able to get back to the busy, busy schedule of the modern world with its 24/7 scheduling? 

    I have read that primitive people work about four hours a day. The rest is some form of leisure. Maybe that’s why they die younger. Wouldn’t that be an irony? I know that no stress can be as deadly as too much.

    I was roused from my nap upon hearing the dogs next dog barking madly, one dog yelping, and someone yelling at the dogs.  These are the same dogs who tried to kill Elsa when she got on their property. I was afraid that I had left the side door slightly ajar, and she had gotten out.  I called her, but she doesn’t come when called unless there is a benefit, like a treat, a meal, or a walk. Thank God she is a small dog and goes limp when I grab her. If she were bigger, I’d be in trouble.  The thought of losing her . . . . Need I say more?  However, I was just too tired to get up and check. There was nothing I could do about it. If she was injured, I was sure that the person screaming at the barking dogs would take her to the vet. While I felt she was okay, it was still upsetting.  When I started to get up off the sofa, I looked to the side, where she usually sits while I nap, but I didn’t see her. That caught my breath for a moment. As I stood up further, I caught sight of her. Ah!!  It would be nice if she came when I called.  It would also be nice if she learned to bark when she has to go out and bark when she has to come back in.  Okay, so she’s not perfect.

    When I think of Mike, I often think of ways he was not perfect, how he left the refrigerator door open, forgot to switch off the oven, tripped over things in his path.  Most of his flaws just made me smile.  He was my funny Valentine. One of the delights of this man was his ability to express joy with childlike abandon.  I don’t know if I saw that in him in the beginning. My mom had that ability, but with Mike, he could also express his love for me that way. Expressing love wasn’t my mom’s thing.

    Each day I hear more information about the adverse effects of being on a respirator. Before this month, my only association with intubation was in surgical settings.  It was a security measure during surgery; that’s it.  I had no idea what its significance was when someone needed it because their own breathing mechanisms were failing.  I think some of the medical staff thought all the members of my family and I did know the significance of Mike’s condition.  Looking back, I can remember moments when people spoke to me, believing they were telling me that his life was in immediate danger, but I didn’t get it.  That’s not what intubation meant to me.  I didn’t have the background knowledge I needed to understand it.  I don’t know that I would have wanted to know how close to death he was and how unlikely his survival was.

            On the other hand, I might have related to him differently if I had understood.  Most of the time, I believed this was a temporary state. I was preparing for our time after he came home.  Might I have spent more time holding his hand instead of writing the updates?  Yes, I’m rethinking everything. Not a happy place.

    Judy dropped off her electric grooming razor with two blades. My extension cord wasn’t long enough to reach the table in the yard off my bedroom. I tried to move the table closer.  I got the round top off the base, successfully moved the base closer to the house, successfully rolled the tabletop over to the base, but that’s where success ended.  I couldn’t lift the top back onto the base. I texted Yvette, asking for help.  

    I decided to work on Elsa immediately doing what I could, holding her in my arms while sitting on the chaise lounge. Elsa loves being carried over my shoulder.  That’s where she was while I ran that razor over her body.  Then I shifted her to the other shoulder and took care of the other side of her body.  Reaching her neck and head required an adjustment in my grip.  I got everything done except her front legs and paws.  I don’t think I can get a job as a groomer, but she was clean and close.  I don’t have to worry about dreads. I planned to finish her front legs and paws the next day.  I was pretty proud of both of us.

    B. called to say he was making a trip to town. Did I want anything?  Yes. A small jar of mayo and some celery.  This system works for me.  I don’t have to make large orders. I just have half a dozen people check with me as they head into town.  This allows me to place small orders whenever my heart desires.  Am I lucky, or am I lucky?

    When Elsa and I were coming back from our before-dinner walk, I noticed a car with its light on sitting on the verge. That raised my curiosity. As we went down the hill, the car had started moving, but very slowly. There was a car behind it. I figured the first car was pulling the second one.  Then I saw another vehicle behind that and another one.  Balloons were flying from some of the windows. They started honking their horns. I saw more and more cars. It was like a funeral procession, but in this case, one car had a Happy Birthday banner plastered on its hood.  It was a birthday party during the Covid virus shut down.