Oooopsie!

There goes my bus

It's not just because I missed my bus, but I also forgot to write a new post in my usual Tuesday routine habit. I don't think anybody but me probably cares, but it's pretty hard for me to get used to forgetting things all the time, every day. I would have sworn I wrote this post, but it was just in my own head. It's now Wednesday morning, bright and early, but nothing I can do will make it possible to post this yesterday. I thought about just letting it go, but I don't seem to be able to do that.

Oh well. I had a pretty good day yesterday and felt like I had all the time in the world, but deadlines and buses wait for no one. We have a wonderful bus system here in Bellingham, and I ride it quite often and faithfully. I know the ins and outs of the system, and I recently learned that, like everything else, the rates are going up. 

Until they do, I haven't paid a dime for a bus ride for seven years, since if you are 75 or older, the buses have been free. Once the rates change, I'll be paying $1 per ride. I know it's not much, but I see people on the bus that I know will be negatively impacted. I wish we could have a means test, or some way to cover their costs for them. The bus system is taking comments and I have suggested this might be a way to help the really indigent riders. Any ideas? 

Now I am going to post this tardy missive and hope the rest of my day will proceed without further incident. 

:-)

A wee bit hot

Late summer yellow rose

Today, John dropped me off at the Cornwall Rose Garden and I strolled through it to see the last of the summer blooms. It got very cold last night, down into the low fifties, and this sweet blossom still had some pearly drops of dew to make it seem even more lovely. 

But before long, as I walked home for the second day in  row, it began to warm up. A lot. Right now, at 4:00 in the Afternoon it has warmed up to the mid-eighties. It is a rather anomalous day, but tomorrow should be a normal temperature day, perhaps twenty degrees cooler than today's summerlike feeling. I enjoyed the brief reminder of summer's heat, but I much prefer the brisk fall temperatures.

Yesterday I received my first massage since the skin cancer surgery. I wanted to wait until the scar was only a little bit visible, with the dissolved stitches gone, and still it was a bit on the sore side as she worked around the area. I have missed getting a monthly massage, and it was simply divine to be given a full-body rubdown after a few months. I am now scheduled for anotner one, and life is beginning to feel much more enjoyable, with my mood improving, after having gotten more than eight hours of sleep last night.

I realized today that my hip problems don't allow me to spend around three uninterrupted miles of walking, two days in a row (a total of more than six miles) without some discomfort. I am happy that I can manage as well as I do, but I'm reconciled to less exercise than I once thought I couldn't live without. I'm still hanging in there, and those two days of volunteer work I do in the dining room at the Senior Center (on Thursdays and Fridays) and my usual walks seem to be the most I can manage comfortably. It's not nothin', so I am not complaining. 

Dying tree

Our apartment complex is just across the street from Birchwood Elementary School, and I noticed that this big beautiful tree at the front of the school seems to have died over the summer. I ran into a teacher this morning who told me that the school called in an arborist to see if the tree could be salvaged, but learned that it is beyond hope. This Friday it will be removed, and that I should be ready to find a detour since the road will be blocked off as they cut it down and turn it into timber and mulch, with the roots remaining in the ground. It will be sad to see it go, but there are other trees around that are healthy and will slowly take over. 

It is just another reminder that nothing lasts forever, even big trees that have been around probably longer than I have been. Reminds me of that old Cat Stevens song, "you want it to last forever but you know it never will," so I said goodbye to the beautiful old tree and will take a picture of the spot where it stood, once it's gone.

:-}

Perfect weather

A peek at the boats in the bay

Although this almost looks like a black and white picture, it's really just a peek at Squalicum Bay last Saturday on my walk. I saw the boats lined up from behind a big tree, and I thought they looked like they could have been from another century. I was resting on a bench before heading back up to the coffee shop with my friend Steve. We only walked around five miles, but I was tired the last half of the trip. I'm not feeling all that energetic these days, and I wonder if it's because I am no longer making weekly hikes with the Trailblazers, or if I'm just feeling my age, or both. 

Our skies cleared up quite nicely after all the orange sunrises of the previous week, and I am glad to be living here in the Pacific Northwest. We could use some rain, but at least the lawn mowers are not a daily occurrence, as they tend to be when it greens up. The trees are just now beginning to change color, and that will go on for another month or so, my favorite time of the year.

Today my guy had to endure a bone marrow biopsy to give his doctor a better idea of how to proceed further with his cancer regimen. He didn't tell me the details, but he said it was "not fun." A real understatement, if you ask me. My own skin cancer Mohs surgery has healed up and will barely leave a scar, but we have entered into the stage of life where these unpleasant occurrences will happen more often. But as I sit here with sunshine pouring through the windows, a light breeze ruffling the trees, I am feeling no pain, only a tummy a little bit fuller than I wish it was, and my hips a little broader than they should be, but otherwise life is good. John was at the coffee shop this morning, and I realized that since I didn't have breakfast with him on Sunday (since he went dancing Saturday night and wanted to rest up), I missed his company. Another sign of our advanced years: we need to pick and choose our activities carefully. At least we are still iupright and on the right side of the grass, as they say.

I told him that I was glad to see him and had missed hanging out together, which might have surprised us both. We tend to take for granted our friends until they aren't there for one reason or another. Plus I am definitely a creature of habit and wish I could always have things stay the same. But they don't, do they?

In any event, I am feeling very happy to have such a full life, and tomorrow I will have my monthly FaceTime talk with my sister, after what I hope will be a good yoga class. And that will be the extent of my daily activity. Not bad, eh?

:-)

Late summer is getting hot

Today's projected heat in our area

I saw this graphic on my New York Times page, which shows the temperatures in my area, north to British Columbia, and south to Oregon. All that dark red stuff is on the east side of the Cascades, which always gets much hotter than over here on the western side, where the ocean breezes moderate our weather much of the time. (We live almost right under the "77" near the border.) When I walked to the bus this morning, it was actually cool enough for a jacket, but by the time John dropped me off at the Cornwall garden to start my journey home, it felt almost, well, warm.

I have a pretty full life, at least for an old retired person, and the only day during the week that I don't have an appointment for something is Tuesday. And since the Senior Center (as well as the buses not running yesterday) meant no Monday yoga, I'll have to wait until tomorrow for the Wednesday class. I sure feel better when I get stretched and tuned up.

I am finally through the whole procedure to remove that skin cancer, so I washed all my clothes that still had some vaseline residue from two weeks of constant slathering of it onto my neck. Now I'm back to my new normal, no more cancer, no more stitches. 

One thing I've noticed is that I am no longer feeling sorry about not hiking with the Trailblazers any more. I read about their adventures weekly, and I am glad that I've done these hikes often enough that I know exactly what they're doing. Now that I am just reading about and not actually doing them, I feel quite pleased that I have moved into another new phase of life. 

Sure is pretty and hello to Mt Baker

There are many things that I miss, but probably the hardest is that I can no longer appreciate the pictures of these places like I once did. My failing eyesight means that a picture is no longer just something I can take for granted, since the lack of depth perception means I often see something different than the real thing. And my ability to hike long, hard distances is fading fast. I suppose that's to be expected, since your body wants to do what it always did before, and I can't keep up any more. So, in a way it's a blessing to settle into my easy chair (not wanting to miss being outdoors I do some walking every day) and enjoy resting on my laurels. What does that mean, exactly? Well, the AI that comes up when I look for the meaning is:

To "rest on one's laurels" means to be satisfied with past successes and achievements, to the point of stopping any further effort or striving for new accomplishments, often leading to complacency. The phrase uses the ancient Greek and Roman tradition of awarding laurel wreaths to victors, symbolizing honor and accomplishment. 

Ha! I guess it's all right, then, if this octogenarian enjoys her retirement from reaching any new goals and pops on her many laurel wreaths and sighs with contentment.

:-)