Ian

We are safe and sound and lucky as all get out. My heart goes out to all the people who weren't lucky. What devastation this hurricane has brought to parts of the Gulf Coast! 

My husband is taking the plywood off the outside of the bedroom window and I write this. Soon I'm going to drive over to our daughter's house (about 15 minutes away) to see if they got their power back, or if they want to come and stay with us until they do. Yesterday they said no. Since I haven't heard from them today, my assumption is their power is still off and their devices have run down. Surely young N will want to spend a day watching TV and playing video games? 

Their power went out for them about 11:30 pm as the storm hit Central Florida hard late Wednesday night. Ten year old N sent me a text after midnight with only one word, "Grandma." I didn’t read it when he sent it because I was asleep. Saw it about 1:30 am when I got up to check on things. Broke my heart.

Laundry and all that

I'm sick of doing laundry. Every single week, you know? It gets old. I don't mind organizing laundry and putting loads in the washing machine; however, I hate taking the clothes out of the dryer and folding them. Then you have to put them in the right drawers or closet! There's no end to it.  

It could be worse. When we still worked I ironed my husband's shirts every weekend. It was a labor of love. I never enjoyed it. I remember a professor whose wife refused to iron his shirts. Instead of ironing them himself, he wore them wrinkled. It isn't that I wasn't sympathetic to his wife, she was a working woman. I knew my husband would do the same. No way was I going to let him go to work looking rumpled. My choice.   

Retirement is a simpler life. Better in so many ways (e.g., t-shirts). I guess I shouldn't complain. In fact, writing this pet peeve post means I'm going to go get the sheets and jeans out of the dryer, where they've been sitting for 3 days, quietly waiting.  

And it seems we might have a hurricane hit Florida next week. I really should do as much laundry as I can before the power goes out.  

Don't judge me unless you've folded fitted sheets

Dreaming

A commonly repeated theme in my dream life is signing up for classes and then just not showing up.  For some reason, I don't take the trouble to drop the classes, I just stop going.  Sometimes (in my dream) I wonder if I should just show up for the final exam, but I've never read the materials.  It's very unsettling.  

Poetry in emails

A dear friend sends me poetry via email. Not poems she has written, but poems she finds and likes. I must admit at first I thought,"What the hell?" But then I started reading them, ha! What a joy.  

I often struggle to relax enough to read. Anything. I'm not kidding. I do read, but I have to wrestle with an angel first. Concentration is something I earn. A good story helps.   

Forget about meditating, it's just not gonna happen. So, receiving poems from her is good for my immortal soul. Perhaps there is balm in Gilead?  

Here's the latest.  

Future Plans

by Kate Barnes

When I am an old, old woman I may very well be
living all alone like many another before me
and I rather look forward to the day when I shall have
a tumbledown house on a hill top and behave
just as I wish to. No more need to be proud—
at the tag end of life one is at last allowed
to be answerable to no one. Then I shall wear
a shapeless felt hat clapped on over my white hair,
sneakers with holes for the toes, and a ragged dress.
My house shall be always in a deep-drifted mess,
my overgrown garden a jungle. I shall keep a crew
of cats and dogs, with perhaps a goat or two
for my agate-eyed familiars. And what delight
I shall take in the vagaries of day and night,
in the wind in the branches, in the rain on the roof!
I shall toss like an old leaf, weather-mad, without reproof.
I’ll wake when I please, and when I please I shall doze;
whatever I think, I shall say; and I suppose
that with such a habit of speech I’ll be let well alone
to mumble plain truth like an old dog with a bare bone.

Our great granddaughter is one of my role models