Slow Saturday

I am still hampered by a locked rotator cuff. I have seen my doctor, and have been enrolled in physio, booked for an ultrasound (In mid February, the best our beleaguered health system could produce) and treated with both sympathy and some laughter as I struggle with coats, purses, shoe bags and other necessary paraphernalia, including a cane. I need at least three arms when they are all working. This is, of course, January in eastern Ontario, when a heavy coat, boots and (do you have gloves, mother?) other shields against the cold are, as the French would put it, de rigeur. Or, I think that is how it is spelled. The bot is not buying it.

So, I have been reading, starting a sort-out and paring down of my office ‘stuff’, and generally not doing very much of anything. Yesterday was a blue sky day, but cold. Today has been much milder (my gloves and hat are in the car, dear) and cloudy with a few dispirited sprinkles of snow. As of now, 4:30 p.m., the light is almost gone and there are gray clouds against a pale, pale blue sky. The long evenings of winter can be dispiriting for lovers of light and sun, but at least sunset is beautiful.

Our gravel road has been scraped and sanded within an inch of its winding life so driving was not as bad as I had expected. I can get my right hand up onto the steering wheel, so driving is fairly easy. What is not easy is reaching the button, on the right-hand side of the steering wheel, of course, that turns the car on and off. I was doing that, clumsily, with my left hand early last week, but can now lift the right arm by its elbow and push it up to reach the button.

The world is designed for right-handed people, as all of us who are lefties know, but the disparity really comes to one’s attention when the right arm does not work at all. Our new refrigerator has a lovely push-button arrangement to dispense cold water. It is positioned on the left-hand side of the machine, just inside the door. Impossible to use to fill a water glass except with the right hand. Well, it can be done with the left hand if the left arm is not holding the door open at the same time. Shouldering the door instead sort of works and Mary the human pretzel has mastered this operation.

Note, new refrigerator. It is lovely. It has a two door cold storage top and a freezer drawer that pulls out, complete with ice machine. It has lights. It has glass shelves. JG went to the store to buy a less expensive model, saw this one, and we are luxuriating in its features. I will no longer drop heavy cold frozen food on my feet when digging in the freezer. Also, we have a new washer, since the drum on our previous machine subsided into the body with loud groans. The new machine is supposed to be the simplest the store sold, (I shopped for that appliance) but its directions for use, presently spread out on my desk, include a notation on a steam cycle and other goodies. Oh, yes, of course the pull-out that one fills with soap is located at the top left corner, assuming that the user will reach with the right hand to lift the (oversized) laundry soap container.

Well, new frig, new washer, but, alas, no way to source and attach a new arm.  Too bad, eh?

 This is a post that Jean Chretien wrote and made public. It is so, so relevant and so eloquent. I am reposting it wherever I can find a public space.

American friends, this man was our prime minister for many productive years.

"Today is my 91st birthday.It’s an opportunity to celebrate with family and friends. To look back on the life I’ve had the privilege to lead. And to reflect on how much this country we all love so much has grown and changed over the course of the nine decades I’ve been on this Earth.

This year, I’ve also decided to give myself a birthday present. I’m going to do something in this article that I don’t do very often anymore, and sound off on a big issue affecting the state of the nation and profoundly bothering me and so many other Canadians: The totally unacceptable insults and unprecedented threats to our very sovereignty from U.S. president-elect Donald Trump.

I have two very clear and simple messages.

To Donald Trump, from one old guy to another: Give your head a shake! What could make you think that Canadians would ever give up the best country in the world – and make no mistake, that is what we are – to join the United States?

I can tell you Canadians prize our independence. We love our country. We have built something here that is the envy of the world – when it comes to compassion, understanding, tolerance and finding a way for people of different backgrounds and faiths to live together in harmony.

We’ve also built a strong social safety net – especially with public health care – that we are very proud of. It’s not perfect, but it’s based on the principle that the most vulnerable among us should be protected.

This may not be the “American Way” or “the Trump Way.” But it is the reality I have witnessed and lived my whole long life.

If you think that threatening and insulting us is going to win us over, you really don’t know a thing about us. You don’t know that when it came to fighting in two world wars for freedom, we signed up – both times – years before your country did. We fought and we sacrificed well beyond our numbers.

We also had the guts to say no to your country when it tried to drag us into a completely unjustified and destabilizing war in Iraq.

We built a nation across the most rugged, challenging geography imaginable. And we did it against the odds.

We may look easy-going. Mild-mannered. But make no mistake, we have spine and toughness.

And that leads me to my second message, to all our leaders, federal and provincial, as well as those who are aspiring to lead our country: Start showing that spine and toughness. That’s what Canadians want to see – what they need to see. It’s called leadership. You need to lead. Canadians are ready to follow.

I know the spirit is there. Ever since Mr. Trump’s attacks, every political party is speaking out in favour of Canada. In fact, it is to my great satisfaction that even the Bloc Québécois is defending Canada.

But you don’t win a hockey game by only playing defence. We all know that even when we satisfy one demand, Mr. Trump will come back with another, bigger demand. That’s not diplomacy; it’s blackmail.

We need another approach – one that will break this cycle.

Mr. Trump has accomplished one thing: He has unified Canadians more than we have been ever before! All leaders across our country have united in resolve to defend Canadian interests.

When I came into office as prime minister, Canada faced a national unity crisis. The threat of Quebec separation was very real. We took action to deal with this existential threat in a manner that made Canadians, including Quebeckers, stronger, more united and even prouder of Canadian values.

Now there is another existential threat. And we once again need to reduce our vulnerability. That is the challenge for this generation of political leaders.

And you won’t accomplish it by using the same old approaches. Just like we did 30 years ago, we need a Plan B for 2025.

Yes, telling the Americans we are their best friends and closest trading partner is good. So is lobbying hard in Washington and the state capitals, pointing out that tariffs will hurt the American economy too. So are retaliatory tariffs – when you are attacked, you have to defend yourself.

But we also have to play offence. Let’s tell Mr. Trump that we too have border issues with the United States. Canada has tough gun control legislation, but illegal guns are pouring in from the U.S. We need to tell him that we expect the United States to act to reduce the number of guns crossing into Canada.

We also want to protect the Arctic. But the United States refuses to recognize the Northwest Passage, insisting that it is an international waterway, even though it flows through the Canadian Arctic as Canadian waters. We need the United States to recognize the Northwest Passage as being Canadian waters.

We also need to reduce Canada’s vulnerability in the first place. We need to be stronger. There are more trade barriers between provinces than between Canada and the United States. Let’s launch a national project to get rid of those barriers! And let’s strengthen the ties that bind this vast nation together through projects such as real national energy grid.

We also have to understand that Mr. Trump isn’t just threatening us; he’s also targeting a growing list of other countries, as well as the European Union itself, and he is just getting started. Canada should quickly convene a meeting of the leaders of Denmark, Panama, Mexico, as well as with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to formulate a plan for fighting back these threats.

Every time that Mr. Trump opens his mouth, he creates new allies for all of us. So let’s get organized! To fight back against a big, powerful bully, you need strength in numbers.

The whole point is not to wait in dread for Donald Trump’s next blow. It’s to build a country and an international community that can withstand those blows.

Canadians know me. They know I am an optimist. That I am practical. And that I always speak my mind. I made my share of mistakes over a long career, but I never for a moment doubted the decency of my fellow Canadians – or of my political opponents.

The current and future generations of political leaders should remember they are not each other’s enemies – they are opponents. Nobody ever loved the cut-and-thrust of politics more than me, but I always understood that each of us was trying to make a positive contribution to make our community or country a better place.

That spirit is more important now than ever, as we address this new challenge. Our leaders should keep that in mind.

I am 91 today and blessed with good health. I am ready at the ramparts to help defend the independence of our country as I have done all my life.

Vive le Canada!"

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Please Sir, may I have some more?

 I cannot resist posting this. It really hit my funnybone. This is the same kitty that knocked the tinsel off the ED's Christmas tree. Caption ideas happily received.

The Hiatus Report

Not these candles - I still have these. And the birds.

 I am painfully typing this by propping the heel of my hand on the keyboard as I have banged up something called a rotator cuff (maybe?) and my right arm will not lift. Luckily I am left-handed. Even more luckily I have two wonderful daughters and a wonderful added son (I am calling him the son outlaw, or SOL) who dealt with the Christmas feast. This included cooking (thank you YD), planning and plating (thank you ED) and stripping the bird (thank you SOL).  And my gratitude to all of them for taking home most of the leftovers. As well, the YD made a splendid Christmas Eve dinner. Grandkid’s older brother is vegetarian and I am shellfish allergic so we got a special dish. The rest of them had a marvellous concoction of mussels, oysters, shrimp and whitefish and we all had chocolate fondue for dessert. I do not want to see or think about food until maybe February. Talking to the ED about this, she says that she is about turkeyed out. Yes, indeed.

SOL and grandkid’s Bouche de Noel was spectacular. Both visually and to eat. And, arm or not, I got a sort of Christmas theme onto the festive table. I even, with some pain, sacrificed three of my beautiful wax Christmas tree candles for table decorations. I LIT them and they flamed beautifully all through the Christmas feast. There are still more beauties in the box for later years, though. It had to be a nice table as that was all there was. No wacky Lanark tree. See arm will not work, above.  I hear that the ED’s tree is large and the wacky bit is being supplied by the grandkid’s cat who is removing the tinsel strips from the bottom branches (by whacking them, of course). At least he is not crawling into the gift bags as the last cat loved to do. It is difficult to spot the candles in this shot, but if you look carefully, their brave little flames can be seen.

We endured a wet, gray gruesome day today, Sunday, but I guess the weather and post turkey somnolence held the crowd at the supermarket right down to reasonable and JG was able to get the shopping shopped. He even found parsnips, with some puzzlement, and I sliced some into the stew I made for supper. JG looked at his plate with even more puzzlement and allowed as how he did not see any of that vegetable I had asked for in his serving. So, I speared a fine white round from my plate and gave it to him. Please understand that we have had parsnips before in our sixty-one and counting years of married life. But I guess I have never asked him to buy them. He visited three stores to get his whole list, and the parsnips were in the last one. What was not anywhere were balls of suet for our birds. The bird count is on the 30^th, and we speculate that all the local birders have stripped the suet out of the store to use as bait for their count. I hope the weather improves for them.

YD is having fine weather hiking up and down, wait, down and then up again in the Grand Canyon. Her gift to herself for a successful retirement. She flew off last week and will be back for New Years Day. Or I think she will. My keyboard has just turned to Canadian and is giving me a È when I want a possessive apostrophe. I think I had better quit this, heave my right hand off the keyboard see if I remember how to switch back to the normal keyboard.

Yeah, and …  wishing you a fine and prosperous new year. Even with the idiots in charge in both our countries, may many good things come to you.

It's Beginning to ...

 I am looking out at a grey afternoon with low cloud and fine, fine snow showering down. More of a November feel to it than pre–Christmas December. Both my daughters have their trees, and the YD is supposed to be putting hers up this afternoon. We will see what happens with the cats in both households. The granddaughter has her terrible brat of a cat home for the holiday and the YD’s younger cat has never been exposed to a Christmas tree, having started life in Pakistan.

Edited to add the first encounter of Gilgit and the tree. So far, so good.

I have my present wrapping stuff out of storage, but only one set of gifts so far. I would be shopping except. Except. Covid. We went to a dinner party a week Wednesday and I came home with a case of it that developed over the weekend. And JG has caught it from me. Both of us are still showing two lines on the tests and so no shopping is being done. The YD stocked us up with food on the weekend and both daughters are on standby if we have needs, but you cannot send someone to buy their own Christmas present. Unless you are my father, that is. He did that.

I remember with some glee the year he handed my teenaged self a large sum of money and told me to go to a lingerie shop and buy my mother a beautiful nightdress. And I did that. And wrapped it. The look on my mother’s face when she opened it and stared at my dad was, um, priceless. I think his only foray, ever, into Ladies’ Intimate Garments was a trip with me just before I was married when he insisted I buy a pair of lovely silk pajamas and went with me to get them. For my wedding night. He also tried his formal and inhibited best to tell me not to expect too much from my groom on this occasion. And was much relieved, although red-faced, when I told him it would not be a problem since I ‘had my period’. (What my mother had trained me to say. SHE called it ‘the Curse”.)

I started writing this in a very dark mood, but telling that story has cheered me up no end. I did love my father a lot, even when I wanted to dot him one with a heavy object. After my mother died, he moved himself into an apartment in a seniors’ building, divested himself of my mother’s ‘stuff’ (the grandkids got it) and enjoyed a new lifestyle, even setting up a lovely girlfriend. But his lifestyle did encompass my participation. 

The most egregious trick he played on me was what happened when the building supervisor asked him to join the management board of the building. He declined but told her that I would be delighted to take part. I was elected in a flash, and ended up secretary, of course. I also had to be on call to drive him to appointments and events. And was not, ever, allowed to make him the slightest bit late. When he was planning an excursion, he would line up everything he would need on the hall floor in his apartment, including hat, library books, cushion for the car seat in cold weather, etc. I learned to open the door just a bit, cautiously when I called for him. The grandkids were adult by this time, and they thought the whole thing was very funny. I am sure my grandkid is chuckling over her mother and aunt complaining about me, indeed, perhaps at this very moment. 

On the other hand, they are probably too busy disentangling cats from Christmas trees. 

Mindless Chat and Other Stuff

 I just switched my writing font from Aptos to Arial. I am not sure why, as Word is pretty determined to have me use the former. It may be a classic ‘old fogey’ thing. I also like Times New Roman for some things. But when I write, I revert to Arial 12. Stuff it, Word.

All of this ‘Word’ labelling can be annoying as well. I used to play on-line Scrabble. Sadly, it got improved and dressed to the nines and saddled with all sorts of add ons and it is now Words with Friends, version 2. There was just a fill in posted that asked how we liked the latest addition to the gizmos and gimmicks. I told them.

Our finish carpenter has, um, finished for now, packed up and departed for another job. He is due back in a few weeks to do more finishing in our downstairs. But, for now, I have doors on rooms and closets, tile on the landing of the staircase, baseboard and quarter round throughout and really nice finish panelling in the kitchen where we eat. He did his cutting in the garage and so I also have a layer of sawdust on the floor there, even though he did sweep it out once. Otherwise, he cleaned after himself amazingly well, in spite of his sad report that he had left an open tube of epoxy in his toolbox and the stuff was now floating his tools. Not only a fine carpenter but a fun and gentle man. Referrals on request.

Now Grammarly wants me to substitute ‘despite’ for ‘in spite of’. Weird. I do have to ignore some of its strictures if I want to sound like myself. And I do.

I have to quit playing here and go and vacuum a ton of dirt off the front hall floor. We have had no snow, but we do have dead leaves, sawdust and dirt from the laneway. All of these things seem to want to migrate into the house. JG is off to the city to see about a repair to our big canister central vac, but I have a small hand pushed one that is about to get a workout. After I post this, of course.

Sunday will be the first day of December when one can think about Christmas. Just because the stores have been decked out for three weeks is no excuse. I read about people who have already decorated the house and surrounds, and I pass several houses where the house and yard are full of shine and half deflated Christmas ‘stuff’. Our prompt for this month’s photo club is 1.) a Santa Claus parade and 2.) red and green. Muttering to myself. But it is an interesting club. Members from phone photographers to highly outfitted mavens. We put photos from the prompts up on a screen and discuss. Politely but with determination. I got one kudo last month from the ‘orange’ prompt but there is one purist who does not approve of cropping, and so I did not get overall applause.

I did get applause on Wednesday evening. We held our annual dinner for the hall staff (Watson’s Corners Community Hall of which I have often written). I have worked there in various capacities for about thirty years now and our hall manager recognised this in a speech and I was loaded with flowers and thanks. It was sweet of them and I admit to tearing up a bit. You have to notice that this is one really big bouquet.

A Phishing Story

At a bit after 9:00 am this morning I received a call from someone representing himself as an employee of our bank. His voice was accented but his English was clear. He said that there were two questionable items shown on our Access card and proceeded to read off the sixteen numbers on the card at top speed. I bit. Luckily, I do not keep the numbers of this bank’s access card in my head; I do recall most if not all of the numbers of the card I use to make online payments but this card is one that my husband mostly uses.

And so I asked the man to wait while I got my wallet and found the card. When I got back on the line, the voice requested that I give him the card numbers. At this point, I became cautious. He had, after all, given them to me. And so, I asked him to repeat the numbers while I tracked them on the card. No, he responded. I should give them to him. I was pretty sure that I was smelling a rat by this time and so I told him that since he had given them to me once, it should not be a problem to do it again. The bank rules prevented it, he said. Not credible. I hung up and, to be sure, I decided to call the bank and check.

 I looked up what purported to be a number for our local bank and called it. What I got was the main phone complex for the whole bank, with mindboggling option choices. I chose credit cards and had to sit on hold for almost half an hour. By this time I was annoyed enough to put the call on speakerphone and do my jobs with one hand while I waited. When I got a rep, I told my story and was assured that the call I was reporting was a scam and that I had done the right thing to report it.

Two takeaways from this. One is that this scam is pretty catchy; the bank rep was glad to be told the details. The second is that the bank’s phone policy is extremely annoying, even though the music piped during the hold is broken by recorded assurances about call importance and requests to stay on the line. It should be possible to call the local branch without being redirected to the main number and put on hold. If the redirection is, in fact, necessary, the bank should have enough people on the main complex to prevent long waits. Not to mention using better music.

A Door Able(s)

  

We are almost at the end of the decent weather for the months to come. While it is still mild most of the time, we have had one snowfall. It lasted less than the full morning that it fell, but there have been what my family always called ‘hard frosts’ the last few days. And, a major marker in the year, deer hunting started here today. I have heard a few rifle shots, but when I passed the hunt camp next door to us this afternoon, there was no deer carcass hanging, so either that camp has not been successful or it was another hunter that I heard. I can still go out into the screen room with some comfort and so I do hear the guns.

Most of the leaves are down, as well. The oaks are hanging on, but even the tamaracks are pretty denuded. The palette in the bush has gone to greys and browns with a few notes of rust and, of course, the deep greens of the evergreens. JG has been sweeping and raking to get the worst of the leaves off the ‘lawn’ (there is so much twitch grass that it is a bit presumptuous to call it that). And yesterday was a grey day with drizzles of rain that did not amount to much. What it did do is wet down the leaves and now JG is raking by hand. I used to be able to help, horrible job as it is, but now all I can do is watch.

But inside things are improving. JG has hired a finish carpenter to … finish … the bits of the house that he never got around to doing. Window surrounds and baseboards, mostly, upstairs. And doors, glorious doors on my office and to close off the storage cupboard in the wall opposite the brick chimney wall. I will add photos! There was some question as to whether I would get the office door since there is a bookcase just inside, but the door swings and clears. And the door to the bedroom is framed in as are the closet doors in our bedroom. They are going to get a lick of paint, too, in time.

 

Our presently fully occupied carpenter is a character. As he measures and installs, he talks to himself, muttering about measurements and fit. And there are sighs heaved. And deep breathing. I am trying to stay out of his way but I am on the same floor of the house, and the ongoing chat, at full volume, is hilarious. Once he gets this floor done, he is going to be sent down to the television room, an area which is really, really unfinished at present, needing mudding on the walls, a ceiling and a partition and door into the furnace and workroom part of the basement. I think we will have his company for some time to come.

It is past time to have these things done. It will make a great difference in the ability to sell this house at a reasonable price and in reasonable time. I don’t want to think about this ending. The house is the home we built ourselves. Our forever home. Planned just for our needs. Our sweat and a few tears and smears of blood from punctures have gone into it. But it is a long way from anything else. And we are getting old and older. I am not capable of cleaning the inside myself any more, so it is done for me, but JG is still doing everything outside but the tree cutting himself and finding it more difficult and exhausting each year that passes. I must believe and act in the belief that our days here are numbered and few remain.

Change of topic after a pause while I wrote cheques. While looking for something else, I just fished four pens and three snap lighters out of my purse’s pockets. I swear the things migrate. Next week I will find them all on the dining room table or in the pockets of my fall coat. This spring I got out my raincoat and found half of a dog biscuit in the pocket. I think the last time I walked the YD’s dog and fed her biscuits was 2018, or thereabouts.

Okay, time to stop maundering on and post this.

Second Summer and Second Thoughts

 We have been favoured, these last few days, with perfect “second summer” weather. (I called it ‘Indian Summer’ for most of my life, but am aiming for political correctness in old age. And, indeed, the concept of lazy Indians waiting until a dose of cold weather set them to gathering winter stores is a horrid one. Once could almost buy into ‘Colonialism’, if that is what the pejorative is, when you think of how we all carelessly dismissed First Nation skills when we said that.) Hmm. More than usually in the bracket mode today. Apologies. Well, no, darn it. I like my asides. Shakespeare, after all, used them.

Anyway. Second summer weather was where we started. Sheaves of rustling leaves underfoot, but still a grace of gold on a lot of the trees, and the odd leaf drifting down, silhouetted against that incredibly blue sky. Warm wind and warmer sun. (Yeah, lots of nice bugs warmed up on the screens, too. We will not go there.) A huge harvest moon, now on the wane but still lovely. Stars, in quantity, before moon rise. I missed, sadly, the dance of the Northern Lights in our vicinity, but one of my neighbours caught it across her fields and has generously posted the photos. 

I got her mother’s permission to put this one up.

Courtesy Jessica 

I went to our first Snaps and Chats meeting last week. The dynamo of a chairman that runs our Hall applied for and got money to buy a projector and screen and has set up this twice-a-month meeting to take and discuss photos. One meeting on location and one in the hall with the photos projected. Unforseen, the projection was less than perfect when the photos we submitted were enlarged. Definition and contrast were lowered and some of the best features of several of the landscapes did not come through well. However red leaves did. As well as the location day, we get a monthly assignment; this month’s was ‘red’ and ‘old’. Next month ‘orange’ and ‘buildings’. If I stop posting it is because I have driven off the road while casing good barn shots.

Since writing the comments on ‘Indian Summer’ above, the term came up in a discussion with the YD, who was curious as to the provenance. She says she had never heard my take on it and so we googled it, to find that she was correct. Where I got that definition I do not know, but I suspect from somewhere in my extended family when I was a little girl. My mother’s family was ‘lace curtain Irish’ self described and a pejorative description to an extent, not unusual in my grandmother’s kitchen.

O'Neil Homestead

My maternal great grandfather left Ireland in the early 1800s, as a Catholic escapee (I rather think), but arrived in Canada ‘Church of England’ and thus qualified for a grant from the Talbot settlement. I believe he got 800 acres of virgin land and he ran cattle on it and gradually cleared it, building as a family project a home and barn for each of seven of his eight sons as they came of an age to be established. (The youngest got the homestead and the care of ‘Grandma’ after he died). ‘Lace curtain’ Irish were seen to be dead set on bettering themselves and were thus not ‘bog’ Irish labourers with no education or land. Hmm. I seem to be rewriting a family study I did for a course in Social Anthropology, way back when.

JG got out the equipment and sucked up a vast quantity of the leaves this afternoon. But there are still a lot on the trees and Wolf Grove Road, in particular, was a fine place to drive along today. What was not fine was the Queensway from the west end in on a sunny Tuesday morning. Not quite a parking lot, but close. I am so glad we no longer live there.

Whipped

 Just to take the taste of that last pity party out of my mouth, I am reporting a new source of reasons for you to pity me. And that is that my kitchen hates me. 

The backstory. We have, of course, pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dessert. And with the pie JG requires whipped cream. Whipped with a touch of vanilla and just a sprinkle of sugar. Whipped stiff, almost to the butter stage. Our grandkid does this very well, using a Cuisinart handheld ice cold (from the freezer) whip and with the cream in a precooled container. So, we had dinner, the girl, um, young woman whooshed, JG loaded his pie with glorious white curls. There was enough left that he had the last piece of pie yesterday also loaded. And the carton that contained the cream was still in the frig. With a bit of cream left in it.

Now, JG complained that it was a very small container and I reminded him that the YD had produced two cartons for the festive day, only taking one home with her when it was clearly not needed. But, there were blueberries in the frig just demanding that the rest of the cream be whipped for a topping for them. Blueberries are like that, right?

And so. I got out the Cuisinart handheld, put the whisk end onto it and, inserting it into the container with the last of the cream (with a touch of vanilla poured in first), turned it on. Whirring and whipping followed until, suddenly, there was sort of a clunk and the partially whipped cream whirled out of the container and onto my sweater and face and the counter and the wall and the floor. I turned off the machine and demanded assistance. After some considerable cleanup, it was determined that one strand of the whisk had broken.

I had ice cream and chocolate sauce for dessert. JG at the partially whipped cream with his blueberries.

Goodness only knows what is going to break next. 

Voices

 This is an essay in futility perhaps. My conscience says “No, I can never post this. I can never even show it to anyone. I should probably delete.” That sort of honest person who I am sometimes does deserve a voice. But that person who I am a lot of the time does not listen. She is a stubborn old bitch. Not going to delete today.  Maybe tomorrow. Oh, shut it. Post and be done.

 Here is what I want to say. Here is what I have to say. Every morning it is a fight to make myself face another painful, boring day. Every day I have to make myself have patience with small but so frustrating things. Many days I worry about what the future is going to bring and how bad it is going to get and how I am going to be able to cope. I can’t cope, sometimes, now. Some days it all seems entirely useless. Futile. And exercise in rolling the rock uphill.

 I have been reading and rereading this, correcting minor errors and trying to make things clearer without losing my unique voice. Whatever that is. There are many voices, I guess, many babbling streams of rhetoric and less than deathless prose. I am, at times, the cheerful and eloquent reporter about birds and leaves and lovely weather. I am the proud repeater of the daughters’ and granddaughter’s achievements and amazing journeys. I am a somewhat biased and occasionally informed commenter on political events. Sometimes I read and analyse what I have read. Sometimes I do not even proofread.

 Frequently I am writing to be another person.

 This is not always who I was. I used to be a busy, almost too busy, person with contributions to make, I thought, to my community and my family and my friends. I made things, useful and just pretty. I cleaned things. I edited and weeded, both literally and figuratively my possessions and my home. A load to the dump. A wheelbarrow full of broadleaf to the back of the rocks. A fun or funny post created. A speech written or article collaboratively planned. I guess that woman would still like to be around, but the honest woman knows she cannot be.

 One of me has been working on this for over a month now. It was three pages and growing. Editing woman pared it to this. And will leave it for one more round before deciding whether to make it public or not.

 Later. It is a lovely sunny day in early October. A month since I posted. We have had JG’s 85^th birthday and I fed the remains of his cake to my discussion group. JG seems to be pleased with the cookie cookbooks I gave him as his present. I also fed his cookies to the discussion group women, and two of them took extras home, which flattered the baker. We also had Thanksgiving dinner here, my wonderful daughters presiding. After starting the turkey, I got to sit and listen, as there was no way I would have lasted in the kitchen maelstrom.

JG has a fine thermometer that can be tracked on his phone. He inserted this into the bird. In spite of much discussion about whether the bird was cooked or not, it ended up being just right. Given that I have presided over close to one hundred turkeys as they roasted, most without any aid other than my estimation of cookedness, this should not be surprising, eh? And, yes, there is a substory here that I am not going to tell, cautious person presently presiding.

 Okay. I am posting. Cautious person loses. Editing person is shutting down. Stubborn person is probably who I really am.