Sheba’s recovery is progressing rapidly. I’m terribly happy see life back in her. She’s keen to play and interact, and she was walking around the house often, but she is still favoring her foot. Today, I’ll change her bandage and add some cotton to it underneath her foot and that should help her to walk in comfort.
I finished my friend, Beth’s, book Mid Life Solo. She’s a good writer but shite at marketing, so if you’re inclined to read a wonderful collection of essays about a single mother raising two kids, this is a good book for you. Yes, she is a dear and very close friend, but she’s open, honest and sometimes funny; each essay is short. It’s a view into one life that’s quite intimate, and we all can relate to the ebb and flow of life events and their attendant emotions. You can order it on Amazon. And now I will read my last book by Richard Osman about the Thursday Murder Club. I am a huge fan now of this writer and this series.
I’ve decided, hoping that my coming tests reveal a correctible problem in my heart and surrounding blood vessels, that when I am stronger, I will do some entertaining. I like going to visit my friends here, and I don’t. I’d rather visit with people here. After almost nine years living with my condition, I’m benefitting from experiential knowledge.
I think of my condition as a demon. Born of abuse, this creature has taken over parts of my brain, but I can defeat him if I stay indoors, see no one and never speak (except to my beloveds). The demon feeds on stimuli. By staying at home all the time, I am in control of stimulation because it is silent here, and private. I carefully choose my entertainment and music, and the demon starves, and my body returns in full to my control.
And I’m not going to cook and bake to impress—well, maybe I’ll try to impress with dessert—and keep things simple and easy.
Dianne is coming to visit on the day of my echocardiogram. I’ll be coming home from the hospital to find her here. That’s next Monday. When she first saw me, she said to herself: Now there’s someone I don’t want to meet. We were both taking a one-ear post grad program to become teachers.
We did meet and we became very close friends. She taught in Kelowna; I was in Vancouver. I got an MG and loved driving upcountry to visit her with the top down and taking in the beautiful landscapes of southern BC.
She, like me, is an only child, and we both had distant/selfish parents. I think of her, and Beth, and Leslie, as my sisters. I was in my thirties when I read a sentence attributed to Armistead Maupin when he was speaking about LGBTQ children abandoned by their parents. He said: “Some of us have our biological families, and others of us have our logical families.” Bruce, Dwight, John and Steve are my brothers. Soul siblings.
It's cold now. It was two degrees yesterday, but bright and sunny. This weather is predicted for a week. I don’t want it to snow. If there’s too much snow, walking with whatever is wrong with me will be impossible. Even when I am healthy, walking on fresh snow in our trails where there are trip hazards everywhere, is exhausting. I plan to ask friends to walk Sheba if there is a snowfall that is too deep.
Today is My Day! It is gloriously sunny but really cold. When I got up, it was -1° and now it is only 3° (11:00 am). We’ll be staying indoors today, that’s for certain. But my garden is coming back to life:
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| Fuscia blooming on my deck. |
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| Little shoots on my. Clematis. |
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| Hellebores. |
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| Daffodils; I've scores and scores of them. |
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| Garlic |
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| Chard |
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| More Hellebores. |
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