Wednesday

Luci and I popped into the Green Door Thrift Shop today to get manila folders, but I wound up finding other treasures instead. 

1. Four sentimental covers of Good Housekeeping magazine, late 40s and early 50s.  

2. An old-fashioned Tupperware container for storing cards I'm making.

3. New friends for Luci.

Speaking of #3, she's now on Instagram with her new pal under Green Door Thrift--posted by one of the workers there.  Her new friend is a black 11-year-old Cavalier named Max who's exactly Luci's size.  We took them off their leashes and they played happily while Max's owner and I visited and all the customers in the store came to watch.

One--a ninety-something-year-old named Shirley--walked up to me and said, "Please turn away and don't look at me."  Her face was serious but her eyes were twinkling.  "Cause I need to take your dog home with me."  

Then we stopped in Jerry's Art-O-Rama where all the clerks know her and called out, "Hey, Luci!"

Meanwhile, I'm hearing from Linda in Cape Cod that they had a fun visit with the Learys yesterday. 

Tom, Day, Marcus, Deanna, and Jackson

Tom and Steve

Linda sent me these pages from her photo album--of Day and Tom's wedding 25 years ago:

104, zero chance of rain

I would like to invite any climate change deniers to spend the rest of this summer in San Antonio!  Record heat, day after day, depletes my energy and makes me grouchy....

Unless I'm in the casita gel printing or making Rolodex cards or whatever.

Due to my feet and ankles, I'm now back inside my wonderfully cool house drinking hibiscus tea and reading a book by Dr. Bruce Greyson, AFTER.  I ordered it after hearing him interviewed on NPR about people who had had near-death experiences.  I would go to the library, but the library doesn't open until noon and I try never to leave the house after ten. 

My Amazon arrival yesterday was a portable tea infuser that can also be used to infuse water with fruits.  It's called Pure Zen.  An insulated sleeve keeps drinks hot or cold.

Jan read this:  "Hibiscus tea can help boost your immune system and may help to prevent cell damage caused by free radicals in the body. This can reduce your risk of developing many significant health complications such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Hibiscus tea contains other antioxidants, such as anthocyanins."  

It's delicious, so refreshing--and along with sweet Luci curled up in bed with me right now--is a mood enhancer. 

Cape Cod, Colors, and Colorado

It's a quiet day in Lake Wobegon...as Garrison Keillor used to say.

I'm experimenting with colors on the gel plate and Luci is bored out of her mind, she said.  Why in the world would I prefer playing with paints to throwing her balls outside? 

My kids are scattered:

Day and Tom, both boys, and Jackson's girlfriend are celebrating Anniversary #25 on Cape Cod--a place we all love!  We've enjoyed so many good times there with Linda and Steve and their family.  It's where Day and Tom honeymooned 25 summers ago. 

At the Wellfleet Flea Market

Will and Bonnie and Elena--and the two dogs, Conway and Charlie, are vacationing in Colorado.

I'm traveling vicariously through their text messages.  

Dehydration?

Speaking of my wonderful neighbors and friends.....

But first--a little backstory.

For the entire summer, I've been having pain in my feet, calves, and ankles.  I was referred to a vein specialist and Jan gave me the name of Dr. Straight who did a thorough work-up and ultrasound and suggested I might want to try a procedure on three veins.  But first, I had to wear compression stockings (in this heat!) for six weeks.

I was excited this week because the six weeks had ended and I wanted that procedure pronto!  It sounded simple: the newer laser equivalent of "stripping the veins."  But when I went back to set it up this week, I read the small print in the post-op pages:

I'd have to have three separate procedures. 

After each, I'd have to wear these dang stockings 24/7 for two weeks.

And I wouldn't be allowed to travel for 90 days.

I was unable to summon the energy for being a patient again.  I was unwilling to give up my Georgia trip in late September.  And since there was no guarantee it would work, I abandoned the whole idea.

So today, Freda called.  She is having similar symptoms and she--unlike me--does research on Google.  Turns out it could be dehydration, very likely since I'm not much of a water drinker.  Tea and Diet Coke and lemonade apparently don't count. 

Walking is very painful, some days more so than others.  Today it was bad.  I hobbled to the CVS and bought a Britta pitcher, Epson salts for soaking (Carlene's suggestion), ate watermelon and apples (prescribed by Kate) and am guzzling lemon water.  

Luci has been licking my swollen feet and ankles as if it's her job to fix them.  Dogs know things we don't.  She knows something is off.  

I'm feeling hopeful.  If it's simple dehydration, that's way easier to fix than the needle and compression remedies. Meanwhile, my tiny little dog is drinking two bowls of water a day!

I could learn a lot from my friends and Luci! 

Man or Men in neon green

A strange phenomenon in our neighborhood--either one man or several riding bikes in neon green t-shirts.  I won't explain.  Jan's wonderful response to my query follows:

There he goes again, riding past my house,

The fat guy in a neon green shirt

Perilously perched aloft an old-fashioned kid’s bicycle.

 

‘Round and around he goes,

By morning and by evening,

When it’s cool enough and the spirit beckons.

 

He nods and gives me a fleeting wave,

Then grabs his handlebar to avert careening off route

And losing his cool posture, his Buddha-like contentment.

 

Linda has seen him, too,

But she also has seen his double and his triple,

And she thinks they might be a gang, a club, riding separately.

 

Although it would be nice for the fat guys 

In neon green shirts on bicycles to belong to a club of lookalikes,

I prefer to think it’s just the one fat guy with the fleeting wave, doing his thing.

Gaslit on STARZ

Martha Mitchell, John Dean and all those involved with Watergate are featured in Gaslit, produced by Julia Roberts who plays the eccentric wife of Nixon's Attorney General.  

I remember the night Nixon resigned, but we didn't have a TV at the time so I didn't follow it closely.  We were driving to Georgia when we heard the news at a Shoney's along the way. The Big Boy chain featuring a neon fat boy holding a fat neon burger. 

This ten-part series on STARZ is very interesting and well-done, and I've spent much of the day watching it.  

There are uncanny resemblances between the time of Nixon and what we're learning on the January 6th investigations, White House staff lying and breaking laws to stay in good standing with a horrendous President.  One of the characters says, "How do we survive when we don't even have a shared understanding of what's right and what's wrong?"

Next up: a documentary called "Who Is Ghislaine Maxwell?"  

South American travelers home

Today I picked up the travelers from Peru and Columbia.  We started our day at Twin Sisters, then continued at my house looking at photos for the rest of the day. 

They were enchanted with Machu Picchu in Peru and they loved everything about Columbia.  They petted alpacas and llamas, picked coffee beans, and said the people and the food were wonderful.  According to Elena, everything about the trip was magical.  Nathan--our family's history buff--was a veritable storehouse of information about the history of South America. 

The scenery in the mountains was so beautiful, I'd love to go there.  The weather was mild, the skies blue, and the hillsides were covered with bright green vegetation, amazing flowers that looked like silk, and a great variety of birds, no bugs.  The kids were particularly taken by the condors and the parrots. 

What a happy day this was!  

Golden Friends

Five of us septuagenarians celebrated the birthdays of two of us yesterday at Cappy's. Reflecting on the decades we've been friends, I thought of the Girl Scout song: "Make new friends, but keep the old; Some are silver and the others gold."  These four are among my Golden Oldies! 

Top photo: 

I met Freda in the late 90s, so she's the "youngest" in terms of longevity of friendship, but only because she waited that long to  move here from Maryland.  Freda is an avid swimmer and music lover--and Luci's walking partner.  Luci does a happy dance every time I mention Freda's name.  

I met Joy when her not-yet-husband Frank and my then-husband were colleagues at S.A.C.  They recently celebrated their 40th anniversary and we were at the wedding!  We celebrated holidays together and parties on our motorcycle track and their Medina Lake house. In all these years, I rarely see Joy without a bouquet in her hands.  Yesterday's was a sunflower she grew in her garden, vibrant and beautiful like Joy. 

Middle photo:

Mary Locke and I met in 1974 when we were members of Manor Baptist Church. A few years later, we  decided to go to graduate school at U.T.S.A.--just "something fun to do." That's where we met Bonnie, our favorite professor.  One night after class, we decided we wanted Bonnie to be our friend--and it worked.  She said yes! 

Bonnie retired from teaching at U.T.S.A a few years ago and now teaches a lively writing class for seniors.  Her students love her class so much that they have compiled their own writings and made a book--and will be doing a group reading on July 30th.  Then Bonnie's off to Vermont for two months of cool mountain air and liberal politics.  

Bottom photo: Bonnie and me. 

As Bonnie always says, when someone ( among the outsiders who think Texans are all gun-toting conservatives) asks her why she "still" lives in Texas, she says, "My friends!"  

A nearby Cappy's table of younger women might see us as "old ladies," but we prefer "wonderful old women"--to borrow the title of Bonnie's book.  Except on birthdays, we see each other not as women of a certain age, but as lively ageless creative friends.  We knew each other "when...."

And that's golden! 

Cuttery in style

I'm not sure if my tool deficiency has anything to do with my cooking aversion, but as it happens, the  four kitchen knives I own are dull as bad books.  I was once married to a man who said knives would last longer if you don't sharpen them!  He was right.  They have lasted for decades, but they don't slice well at all. 

So yesterday I went to Sunset Ridge Hardware with a discount coupon and treated myself to my first good quality chef's knife.  What a revelation it was to slice squash and onion with no effort at all!  I sliced up a whole yellow squash and a red onion, sautéed them in olive oil, and then sprinkled them with cheese.  It was delicious! 

I know that having the right tools makes all the difference, but I hadn't yet applied that principle to cutting tools.  Art supplies yes, cookery not so much.  I have paper-cutting scissors in seven sizes. 

So now I'm on a roll.  I will be slicing apples and peppers and whatnot with glee!

Don Quixote in Newark

If despondency over gun violence and the direction of America is going is bringing you down, let me suggest a two-hour respite--a PBS documentary called Don Quixote in Newark.  

Jim Oleske, a dyslexic trouble-making kid expelled from Catholic school at the age of 7, was driven by his love of children.  When the AIDS epidemic broke in the early 80s, he was a young doctor who treated babies and children with the new virus.  His research, in spite of many obstacles for funding, has made in utero transmission of AIDS to children almost a thing of the past. 

What a tireless, generous, windmill-smashing doctor he is!  A mensch of a man, he uses the word, love, a lot.  He loves his little patients and their parents and often follows those who survive into adulthood. He's humble.  "I wanted to be a pediatrician," he said. "I didn't know at first that you had to become a doctor to become a pediatrician."  Rejected from 29 medical schools, he was finally accepted ("an accident," he says) into the 30th.  

His favorite book of all time was Don Quixote--a book that implanted in him a desire to follow his dreams no matter what. Now a white-haired doctor who laughs and cries with his patients, Dr. Oleske  has, over the years, taken every little patient a purple stuffed rabbit in memory of a child who died.  At his retirement party, he gives his medical students purple rabbits. 

Watching this beautifully made documentary, I couldn't help but wonder: what must go so wrong in a child's life that he grows up to become a killer in his late teens?  We have an epidemic of young men who are fascinated with murder, who live on online communication forums with other aspiring mass killers, and who have few if any friends in real life. 

Watching a truly good man devote his life to doing good, working overtime, and remembering the names of his patients--what a contrast, what an inspiration! 

Thanks to Freda for recommending this excellent life story of a mensch of a man!