12 Oakdale

On the one hand, I’m thrilled I’ve lost 10 pounds. On the other, I’m embarrassed I let the fat accumulate. It wasn’t a surprise when I stepped on my ancient digital scale and read the highest weight since being pregnant with my last child 25+ years ago. Once again, lying on the couch, eating potato chips, and having a nightly cocktail has not proven to be the best plan. I had to do something drastic: either lose weight, or buy new jeans through the internet. I chose the former as the lesser horrible option. Using a mobile app (Lose It!), I’ve faithfully, if not perfectly, recorded my breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks. I put in a goal of losing 1/2 pound per week and recorded my weight every morning, so I have a squiggly line, mostly going down. No more chips, booze only on the weekends, and eating smaller, certainly not tiny, meals is paying off. I can get into almost all of my pants. The skinniest may be donated to a good cause if I can’t wear them by the time we visit Mary in ...

I’d showed Stephanie how to water the crabapple and other new trees we’d planted, but it poured all night, and our lawn was absolutely squishy with standing water when I went to pick lettuce in this morning. Not a problem. We were going cabin camping in the Keys. All would be well. We left the house at 9:00 AM, stopped for a pretty good bagel, and cruised on down the turnpike, looking forward to our late lunch at Island Fisheries. Maybe even a beer and stone crab claws in the upstairs bar. I looked forward to the Keys relaxing chill. Nine hours of driving later, which should have been six, we wolfed down our takeout lobster reuben and coconut shrimp on the porch of our cabin at Bahia Honda, exhausted. Not the waterfront lunch I’d imagined. Two miles north of Homestead, traffic had stopped. From there, we crept along, knowing there must have been a terrible crash up ahead. Made it to the RaceTrac for gas, and got back in line. Good grief, how bad was the accident? Finally, we saw a smal...

Thursday we got our second Covid vaccine shot. It took exactly one hour from getting in line to driving away. This time, an Orange County fighter, rather than a nurse, administered the shot. I don’t know if that was the cause, but by evening, my arm was really sore. My shoulder hurts all the time anyway, which I am hoping to deal with by continuing my shoulder exercises. They helped my right one which no longer hurts.  I think I did them both in by over-zealous gardening when we first moved to our little house. If a couple months more of strengthening exercises don’t improve my left shoulder, I’m going back to the orthopedic surgeon to see what is the problem. I digress. My arm hurt like the bejeezus, but I consider it a small price for the relieve of getting the vaccine. Friday morning, we decided to visit Bok Tower to see grasses planted around a bog and a pond, which I learned about at an Orange Audubon Society Zoom meeting. Bok Tower, in my memory, was green lawns and azaleas. ...