12 Oakdale

Bloom & Grow Membership Committee’s Welcome Back Open House was a success. All of my anxiety a waste. I knew that, but I still worried. We had 36 people attend, which does include 6 committee chairs and 5 of us on MC, but still, a good turn out, plus 3 people said they were joining, Ashley created a huge charcuterie, Rosemary brought desserts and a collection of raffle prizes (she evidently loves haunting upscale thrift stores), Linda P. came in the morning to help Grant and me set up, then stayed to bitter end cleaning up, Tina volunteered as extra hands. A good group. I provided the PowerPoint, which I updated with current pictures, plus I organized my committee with myriad emails and texts. My coup was figuring out, with coaching by AI, how to create an iPhone shortcut to send individual text to everyone in B&G, asking them to reply “Yes” if they were coming. The good: I got a few more positive responses. The bad: a heck of a lot of “I’m so sorry I didn’t answer your email.”...

Out to visit Mary, who says she is doing well. Ryan is still in a hotel somewhere in the Mideast. I’ve brought my sketching and paint supplies, a scarf I’m remaking, and our computer so I can update the Bloom and Grow PowerPoint.  The week’s project, in my mind, is to get all of the school supplies currently in piles on the living room floor stored so they are accessible. I always forget to take a ”before” photo. Mary had made great progress by sorting things into piles. So many markers, so many crayons. Just way too much for what shelves are available. Long term: items not used will be moved on. Short term: get things into the upstairs storage room with distribution TBD.  Well, finding the mouse and her nest certainly helped our decisions to throw stuff away. After 6 days of plodding away, going through the garage moved to the top of list. A full van of items donated, and a full garbage can thrown away. Thank goodness I looked in the cubby with the stuff from Ryan’s old car. ...

I guess we are officially old: we went to Grant’s new doctor, and he walked out with 3 more appointments. Are doctors’ visits our new social time? (Yes, I know we are old; this was just an awaking.) The original reason for the visit was to get refills for the 6 medicines he takes. In the course of the interview, Dr. Mehta decided Grant’s shortness of breath was likely cardio not pulmonary, so he wants that looked into. Grant is to return to him in a month with all the information needed. First up was to make an appointment with his cardiologist who, it turns out is on medical leave, return unknown. Yes, her APRN was an acceptable sub. 7:00 AM appointment next Wednesday, on the other side of Orlando. The bone density test easily scheduled and fairly nearby. Blood work at Quest, check. Then the cardio person added an X-ray which might be done at the same time as the bone scan.  On the other hand, we have been healthy enough to keep busy. Two weeks ago, a family and friend filled trip...

Forty-eight hours after my alarm was set for 3:00 Monday morning, we were back in bed, exhausted. We had arisen (I always sleep badly before an early plane trip), flown to Las Vegas, driven to Alamo, Nevada, toured Michel Heizer’s City , and returned home on the red-eye, to collapse in bed exactly 48 hours later. To break it down, and process all that: the first part of the trip was our usual get out of bed at o’dark hundred, dress, maybe eat, drive to the Marriott to park our car, shuttle to MCO, fly to wherever. We usually do this because flights are cheaper before 9:00 AM and we get a full day at our destination, especially if we head west to new time zones.  Then it got weird, not just because we were about an hour’s drive east of Area 51, home of the famous UFOs. For someone like me used to subtropical foliage and now central Florida’s coverage of green, the starkness of the scrub north of Las Vegas seems so barren. Plus no cell service. I definitely felt I was in a twilight z...

For the past couple of days, Grant and I have been hearing a chirping sound. He was convinced it was crickets, but since we’d heard it in the car, I knew it was something from his phone. Every time I’d hear it, I’d try to find an alert. No luck. He still went with crickets. I countered with my car argument. Perhaps it was some sort of warning from his hearing aids, like those expensive babies were in their death throes. He turned them off. We heard the cricket sound. What could it be? We sat down to watch a movie on TV, and he took something out of his pocket that he’d found recently on a morning walk. I don’t know what it is from, but when I switched it on, voila, our cricket. I am adding it to my pile of found objects. We are so nuts. I have been teaching the oldest little girl across the street, Vera, how to crochet. I encouraged her mom to buy a Woobles kit even though we both think they are pricey. However, the kit does have everything, including videos with step by step instructi...

I was wrong that on our country’s 250 birthday, our dear leader would announce the end of his little excursion in Iran. I guess a good thing I hadn’t laid any money out in the “predictions” market. He seems to have forgotten we are even involved there. Certainly the newspapers have dropped all updates below the fold. We started the day at the annual pancake breakfast at Town Hall, graciously put on by the Town of Windermere, his honor the mayor flipping the pancakes. All free, however the Police Foundation did take donations for the mimosas they were pouring. We were delighted to support them. I took my thin papered sketch book to practice sketching in public. Following an Urban Sketchers commandment to always finish a sketch, I used my water brush to add color when I got home. With that non-nutritionally dense start, we were ready for the day. I had already blanched and peeled 20 peaches: 12 for the cobbler, then cut the rest up for the freezer. That was about half of the Georgia Peac...