Memo from my body

Since an impending birthday apparently isn't enough to remind me of my own mortality, my body has helpfully rolled up its sleeves and jumped in.

Piecework

There’s been an outcry lately against the growth of standardized testing in public schools.

A Simple Morning

     After two days at home, the plan was to get out and rub elbows with someone other than my loving husband, while also accomplishing some errands.

In Praise of Aimlessness

After last weekend’s achievement of getting seven people on time from our house to a wedding three towns away, followed later by orchestrating three days of activities for the grandboys with the precision of a landing at Normandy, I’m learning to appreciate retirement all over again.

GrandParentLand

          The pile of improbably-colored sneakers is gone, the doorknobs are de-stickified, and the two-inch-deep aggregate of popcorn has been scraped from the kitchen floor. The house is silent. 

Banjoes, Bugs, and Bubbles

eHarmony, and other online dating services seem to be doing their job. We’ve known several couples, at least two of them in their 60s, who are together today because of them. Our nephew is the latest in the list. 

Busy, Busy

 Well, by 10 this morning, I had:

Fuzzy Things

In his prime, our now-departed – and deeply missed - cat Satchel was a hefty guy. Even as a kitten he stood taller than most cats, and he definitely outweighed the little Scottie dog that he’d chase back up the street from time to time. 

Sweet Visitor

          As I sit here, even though there’s not a breath of air in the trees, the leaves of the mountain laurel outside my office window are fluttering away. It’s not a teensy, tiny microburst, but rather the hummingbird who has become my new BFF. 

Home is where the laundry is

  

        We’re safely home from our vacation, although it is a bit hard to differentiate our vacation life from our retired life.

The Mean Streets of Eastham

Our vacation week is winding down and soon we’ll be returning to our normal beachless life. That is, we will as long as one of my morning walks here doesn’t result in my husband driving around, calling my name from the car window because I’ve never made it back.

Maybe it’s my inner gyroscope that is tilted off-kilter as soon as our tires hit the sandy roads of the Cape, but I find it almost impossible to navigate here.

If we’ve had the bad judgment to put me behind the wheel, we’ll set off in the car, pull to the end of our tiny, tree-shrouded road, and my husband will ask why I’m turning left instead of right, or taking Great Pond Road instead of Samoset. The honest truth is that I have no idea where I’m going.

A rat in a maze has a higher probability of getting to his goal than I do.

The roads here are to the most part unlabeled, and more circuitous than a twisted colon.

I’ll think I have a handle on the relationship of one road to another – “Oh yes”, I say, “this road is parallel to that other one and therefore leads to. . .”

But then it doesn’t, because it takes a whimsical turn, and then a dogleg, and then jogs back in another direction. 

Yesterday I thought I’d be safe if I walked in a tidy circle, which would therefore bring me back to where I began. I plugged my book on tape into my head (Frog Music by Emma Donoghue) and set off for the end of our road, following a route that I thought would be logical, one road leading to another, and back again.

I did make it back, but only after walking right past the entrance to our tiny road (no street sign) and having to retrace my steps. If it hadn’t been for that gigantic hydrangea bush I noticed the first time around, I’d still be out there.

I’ve already informed my husband he’s forbidden to have any emergencies requiring me to leap in the car and drive him to medical care. 

PM and AM

After Monday’s lunch at Martha’s Vineyard ($14 dollars extra to add four shrimp to my salad), we decided yesterday that it might be wise to scale down a bit.

Nice of them to name an island after me . . . .

Yesterday we zipped over to Martha’s Vineyard.

Sand and Tchotchkes

Every year at this time we head out for a week at the Mecca of Massachusetts, Cape Cod.

Beach Read

Here we are in the last official month of the summer. Since I'm at the beach myself, it seems only fair that I provide you with some beach reading of your own.

In between my other posts, I'll be popping in a few excerpts from my book, Earthly Needs. 
(There's a link to Amazon oh-so conveniently located to the right of this page.)