Friday, March 15, 2024

Flashback

 

          After a delightful breakfast out (an omelet and a fabulous scone with a hefty helping of Devonshire cream!), I visited the WC before leaving.

          There, I found a sight that I never, ever would have seen in those bad old post-2020 times:



          A table holding a generous supply of toilet paper, unguarded and set out for patrons’ convenience. Mid-Covid times, I’d probably have contemplated this vision and debated whether emptying my purse of non-essentials like my wallet and car keys would make enough room for me to abscond with a roll.  

Monday, March 11, 2024

My Shelf Runneth Over


 Last year I guess I was out of library books but too close to our date of return to Massachusetts to check any new books out. I must have mentioned my plight because a friend loaned me a paperback mystery, which saved me from the horror of having nothing to read. In the meantime, I had downloaded one to my iPad, so I was doubly rich.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Power and Plants

 I was on the phone with our daughter in New Jersey who, after an onslaught of wind and plunging temps, is without power and therefore heat. Kindness made me avoid revealing that I was sitting on our porch in my jammies.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Retail Robbery

       My Guy was off sitting behind an easel at an art workshop, so I took myself out for some retail therapy. There was little on the agenda other than a poke around in the stores at a neighboring town but I ended up at the same discount store I shop in by our condo.

Monday, February 26, 2024

Looking over my shoulder

 I faced the unfaceable and stuffed my Temple of Carbs into a bathing suit for the first time this year. I was off to the small pool in our complex to read and maybe catch some conversation.

          Unlike everyone else, I dodged the sun and planted myself safely under the shade of an umbrella and opened my book, but after a while, the chatter in the pool drew me in.

          While we stood in the water, swishing with our hands, one woman there mentioned that when she returned North, she’d be going back to her job in an assisted living facility. I knew one of my friends there at the pool had sold their house in Georgia and moved with her husband to such a place. Both facilities were the ‘staged’ sort, where you might begin in the independent living portion but when the need arose, you would then move on to the next level of care.

          My friend spoke about the changes she’d likely see there when they returned to Georgia from Florida – people needing more help in the common dining room than before, others who they might not see again at all.

          One thing I like about being here is that most of the people I see are in my age range and out and about, which means that paradoxically, with few opportunities for comparison, I tend to forget how old I am.   

          I don’t think I’d like living in a place where the ongoing frailties of others would serve as a graphic reminder to me of what’s ahead.