Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Friday Is Here, Oh Dear; The Race Begins!

Thought For The Day –  The meaning of opaque is unclear.

My day started at 4:30 AM when Robin and I had coffee and sat at the table, solving the world’s problems.  Robin and Colleen have helped move me forward in my new life, and I thank them for being my sounding boards!

Colleen and I talked this morning about losing Sue, and then I got to thinking about my family.  Sue gave me my family back after years of being isolated from them.  I will always treasure the great times we had with cousin Kat, Aunt Opal, and Aunt Edith. As I walk around the house, I can still see them joining us for family gatherings and watching them and Sue in the kitchen doing their thing.

Losing my family was hard to deal with in the past several years.

Robin and I had our coffee, and as she got ready for work, I walked the yard.  The wall is coming along great, but I asked for one more course to be added so the equipment would not be seen when walking around the pool.  The sounds are so muffled now you can’t hear it when in the pool itself!

Build that wall!

The garden is doing OK, but it is bare in several areas awaiting the time to plant the winter garden.  I recommend planting one bed in root crops (carrots, beets, and onions), another in cole crops (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and bok choy), and another in salad greens (lettuces, mesclun, spinach, and chard). I plant winter crops closer together to prevent erosion from hard winter rains.

The dirt has been turned, and amendments are added and recovered with mulch, so it is ready to go.  I have to let the hot months come and go first.

The new wall is in the upper left-hand corner.

The watermelon and pumpkins seem to be coming on healthy, so today they get a treat, a beautiful sizeable Gromulch drink!

The garden is almost cleaned out.

I looked into the grapes with care and found some berries ready for picking.  The Concord grapes stay on the vine quite a while.  Another week or two and they will be history for this year.

Some Concord grapes were discovered hiding beneath the leaves!

Time to walk as the scale revealed, I put a couple of pounds on the old carcass.  I walked up to Boot Barn and got a new belt in the thirty-six-inch range, the 38s and 40s don’t work anymore.

The dermatologist called, and I need one more surgery, so I set that up for next Thursday.  This face is going to look like something only a mother could love if keep it up at this pace.  Next time, I plan to have the doctor look where I can’t, especially on the back.

My scale is back to lying through its transistors!  Two-hundred-one pounds this morning, so I have to eat less Indian food and cut down on the martinis.  So, that means, time for a walk!  Not just a walk but a long walk at a quick pace.  I was zooming without the computer!

Three plus miles at almost two and a half miles an hour. I was fearful of going faster for worrying about breaking glass as my massive body passed by fragile windows.

Within two blocks, someone, or something, was honking at me, so I stopped and carefully listened!  Those pesky morning glories love to tease me when I walk!

Robin came by as she is staying this evening, so we shared a margarita.  We (mostly Robin!!) worked on Kat’s writings.  My cousin, who passed a few years back, loved to write, but her folks never encouraged her.  I found a binder in the house, and one of the stories was entitled “My Misspent Life.”  I attempted to read it by the ink was old, the paper was yellow, my eyes have seen better days, so I asked Robin to transcribe it.  She has worked weeks on the binder, and now it is done.

My next job is to go through the collection and see if I can relate it to Kat’s life with dates.  I plan to add photos where it makes sense and then put it in a book form, write a forward, and send it to family.

OK, Mary called and was leaving work, so I am off to meet her for dinner at The Orange County Mining Company as they just reopened using all their surrounding patio space. We know this place well as we have danced there with the Starlighters in the past.

A lovely 90-degree evening in SoCal!

We enjoyed a lite dinner with sauteed mushrooms and a baked potato with all the healthy fixings. We were looking for artichokes, but alas, they said, “Out of season!”  We enjoyed some wine, pleasant conversation, a few giggles, and a great view of the city.

Pretty as a picture!

Mary faced away from the Sun and called attention to the reflection in the windows of the homes on the hills.  We can see her house from here just to the right of the street on the left-hand side of the photo.  The reflections change quickly as the Sun dips into the ocean and rests before coming up tomorrow in the east.

The Sun’s angle begins to reflect against the homes in the surrounding hills.

We returned to her home and watched two movies, “Red 2” with Bruce Willis and “Runaway Bride.”  Both films were gigglers.

Laughing is excellent medicine, according to Doctor Mary, and she is quite right.

 

The Grey Ghost was ready to call it a day, and at 11:00 PM, we headed home.  Mary called to make sure I was OK, just as I turned onto my street.  All was well, and I was in high spirits.  It was a lovely evening, a great movie, fantastic company, and thirty minutes of Bluegrass country music on the way home.

A lovely way to end the evening, thinking about my Sue: in the picture below, we are out to dinner at a local Italian restaurant, and she just told a funny.  She would tickle herself and give me that unique smile.

Always beautiful.

Robin has crashed already, and I fell into bed, and it was lights out!

About Paul

Just an old retired guy trying to finish out my last years on this planet. I lost my best friend and wife in early 2020. I was blessed again by reconnecting with Dr. Mary Côté, a long-time friend. Mary and I got married July 28th, 2021, and are enjoying life together and plan to spend the rest of our lives being a blessing to our friends and family.
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