12 Oakdale

Betsy arrived from Switzerland Thursday evening. We picked her up after attending a dedication of a statue in a pocket park along the West Orange Trail that is maintained by Bloom and Grow members. Amazing how beautiful an area can be if 5-6 women work on it every week. Inspiring, but beyond my ability, even with CC’s help every 2 weeks. But with that in mind, Betsy and I weeded out the area by the boat house fence, laid newspapers, and mulched with pine straw. Looking good. We also went to Target to get her a bathing suit and a SIM card and data for her phone. Back to Target: somehow neither of us noticed she’d bought the wrong bathing suit, having placed the one she actually liked, and looked good in, back on the rack. The home is calling us. Plus, the SIM card wouldn’t work. Wrong suit returned, right suit bought, and tough luck on $40 data, no returns allowed. We moved on to Verizon, where Nick tried and tried, but couldn’t get the SIM card to do its thing, in the phone Betsy has u...

I’d blame it on the weather which is at the crispy-dry, hotter than blazes, right before the rains start stage, but that’s just part of why I’m so tired, the past week, it has been in the low 90’s by midday. No matter how much water I drink, I’m dehydrated after working in the yard. I’ll get adjusted, but not quite yet.  I did harvest my potatoes, which consisted of lifting up the boxes whose bottoms fell off and running my hands through the dirt. Not a great haul, but they are absolutely delicious. I’ll grow them again next but not in boxes which were difficult to keep watered. Maybe in the ground. Another reason I'm tired is all the house chores falling to me. Even if I’m not actually working on them, they have taken up residence in my brain. The dang toilet seat still isn’t attached. The house is dirty, so I guess I’ll have to find and hire cleaners. I need to get estimates to have the non-blooming magnolia taken down, plus other tree trimming. We got a letter from the IRS sayin...

In the wee hours of Sunday morning, during one of his night bathroom trips, Grant stumbled. Somehow he grabbed the toilet seat. He was fine. The toilet seat was not: broken hinges. With our current supply chain still functioning, (one wonders what Our Dear Leader’s tariffs will do to that), he ordered a new one to be delivered that afternoon. Monday morning , I had a Windermere Garden Club board meeting, followed by an afternoon appointment with Julie, the outgoing Membership chair of Bloom and Grow Garden Society, whom I am replacing next year. I had just enough time between the two to stop by the house for lunch and to ask how the seat replacement was going. Medium. Grant was able to get one bolt unscrewed. The other was firmly in place, spinning with its anchor when he tried to remove it. He was watching videos about what to do.  When I returned just before dinner time, many videos had been watched, much turning of the screw (bolt) had happened, no progress had been made. Why ar...

We start Year Six in Windermere. My innate optimism has ebbed away. Grant is working hard at getting healed and stronger, however, it all has taken a toll on me too. Little by little, I see our world contracting. That makes me sad. I know most of this low is because I’m so tired. Not just all the additional physical outgo, but also all the worry I have. The latter is probably just wasteful because there is so little I can control anyway.  I know this will pass. I will adjust. I will get more sleep. It is just now, in the interim, that I flail against my situation. I recently read a book that suggests being kind to one’s future self: will that cookie now make my future self happy? Is my excuse to skip exercise really how I want to care for myself in the long run? A positive spin on doing what I know I want, right here and now. It works some of the time. On the plus side, Grant’s fall was as well timed as possible. We don’t have any big events on the horizon that we would have to wor...

Year number 4 here in Windermere, with the exception of Grant’s falling and breaking his pelvis, was a good one for us. Of course I didn’t get anywhere near all of the things done that I’d hoped to do. I have, however, started lowering my expectations. Baby steps, baby steps as we revert to our second childhoods. I worked on my patience. Or rather, life has forced me to work on my patience, with Grant who feels bad needing my help, but even more with myself. Having to wait on him after his fall, literally hand and foot, since at first I had to get on the floor to put on his compression socks, wore me out. I just do not have the energy I had even a few years ago. So patience with myself and my aging body. There perhaps is some irony that exercising to keep myself strong makes me tired. Patience with my mind, because I know everything is still in it. It just takes longer to grab what I need. Patience with my watercolors. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. Patience wi...

Sunday, Mary and Ryan left at o’dark hundred so we said goodbye the night before. Never long enough. Up at my usual 5:00, I did my morning rounds of make coffee, feed cat, exercise. Then fill bird feeders. No watering, because the sprinklers run Sunday mornings. At 6:45, after making my daily little drawing, I went to the grocery store to stock the larder for Grant. He will be on his own for the first time since his fall. The drive began in heavy rain, which we desperately need, but couldn’t it wait just another hour? The northbound Turnpike was shut down 20 miles into my trip, so Google rerouted me through Mineola, sending me through a part of central Florida new to me. Back on the Turnpike, just as the rain stopped, I had to drive through a deep puddle in a construction area, which threw mud up on my freshly washed and now rained upon car. It has mud streaks all over. And of course, no more rain predicted for the week. I’d made a PBJ to eat when I got to S...

We began with 3 days at the condo Mary and Ryan rented at Englewood Beach. Across the street and a block north was the public beach. I loved the Gulf, and it’s still “of Mexico”, no matter how much our Dear Leader thinks we will call it “of America”. Bella rode with us, so we stopped by Venice Pier to reconnoiter about finding sharks’ teeth, the main mission of this part of their vacation. Sadly, the road to the best area was destroyed in the last round of hurricanes so it would be a trek. We could, however, rent a scoop, i.e. Florida Snow Shovel, at $10/day and use it right there. No, we could not rent one for several days,  Information gathered, we drove on south to the Chadwick Cove condo, a 2-story building on the bay. Set up on stilts, the 1st floor (ours) was a 3-bedroom unit. Upstairs were 2 2-bedroom ones. Perfect for various sized families and groups, Ryan’s father and stepmom had arrived but weren’t around. Grant managed the stairs up and settled in for the stay. Bella an...