The months flow past

I am happy, in spite of my cluttered nonschedule. Staying up later at night, even with the change to Standard Time, and napping longer and more often. I have been playing with my original registered domain and have now decided what I want to do with it. In part, at least. I want to pull out the pieces of poetry I’ve written that are significant to me and organize them so that I can at least find them, again, when I want them. Torn concerning “comments” on the blog pages, and so thinking I will set all of them to “moderated”.

My sister has finished and mailed out the final book she’s written/compiled following the deaths of our parents. The first was a compilation of photographs and their personal correspondence, beginning when they first met in late 1940 or early 1941 and ending after Dad was discharged from the army after the call-up for the Korean conflict. Mom and Dad both served in the Pacific Theater, Dad in the Army and Mom in the Navy. The second book is one of family photographs, the ones that were not included in the first book. The last book, also for private circulation only, is a compilation of Mom’s brother Jesse’s essays, correspondence, and photos, too, I assume. My sister was the only one living close to Jesse when he became unable to live unassisted, and she was responsible for caring for him and his concerns until his death. He kept copies of all the letters he received and made copies of those that he sent to others. Jesse’s book should arrive at the middle of the coming week. I look forward to reading it. I have only one of the letters that he sent to me—a political commentary on current events and probable consequences—on the occasion of my first birthday. Oh, my! I hope that my sister does not include those in the book, but only sends back the original correspondence for me to retain or dispose of.

We bought outdoor carpeting and laid it down over the gazebo floor. It’s helping to retain heat enough that I should be able to continue, thanks to my space heater, using the exercise bike in the gazebo, where I have a 360° view through double-pane windows. And a quilt and two camp chairs and a reading lamp. I’ve filled the open vents between walls and roof with Styrofoam blocks to retain heat. During the summer, Al added a mesh all the way around to keep the birds out; not that I minded the occasional mess, but they were unable to find their way out again, once in the gazebo proper.

Last night, we attended the annual volunteer appreciation banquet at the marksmanship center, and I got to visit and/or say hello to many folks I hadn’t seen for a year or more. I feel adequately socialized, now, until the families’ Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings, assuming that I am well enough to go and the weather is clement. In truth, the less direct contact I have with people, the more comfortable I am with myself. I like the unstructured time and casual leisure. If I become well enough and my eyesight improves enough for it, I hope to sign up for the monthly Ladies’ Night at the center and relearn how to handle firearms. I understand they have a couple rifles available, as well as revolvers and pistols. My cataracts are not showing much growth at all, right now, but my days of accurate bullseye shooting are long since passed.

I think the rabbits have made their winter nests beneath the gazebo’s raised floor, in amongst the concrete pilings and sand-gravel base.

I have cut off most of the tall grass and wildflowers and laid them on top of the remaining grass and other vegetation, being sure to cover the pair of rabbit burrows in there. If we really get five feet of snowfall over the winter, this year, I feel more comfortable leaving the leavings for the wildlife, rather than bagging it up and sending it off to the city’s mass mulching field.

By the end of this month, I will have lived seventy three years, assuming I make it that far. The thought that my parents lived to ages 94 and a half years and months past a hundred years alternately encourages or terrifies me. It does not seem right possibly to be facing, still, a quarter of my full lifespan. And then I think of my mother’s getting her first computer at age 76 and proceeding to write and publish three books, and my father’s reluctantly giving out ,at age 100, books from his library that he no longer intended to read, having done the fall yard work, that final year… They found it worthwhile, the long life. When I was in my twenties, I was convinced that I would not live to see forty. Seemed impossible to imagine and not particularly tempting. Guess one adjusts as the years continue to flow.

Night and the end of the day have long since arrived. I am behind two days’ poems in the November write-a-poem-a-day activities. The puppies and I are going to bed, now…soon.

[2019-11-07, dreamwidth]

 

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