AS INTO DAYS

13 of 100

11 fevrier

Although it is entirely unruly and overgrown, there is some beauty in the backyard out my desk window. A bright orange tabby cannot fail to be striking against a nearly neon green of the wild grass and the tangelo tree. The vine that has a name like "carolina" is budding little yellow flowers and beginning to bloom. Out of the other window the wisteria is budding like mad. The neighbor's purple bougainvillea stands out against the gray stormy sky, and what ho! Fox has jumped up there to add another color dimension.

I did manage to garden in the front yesterday. The knee made it pretty difficult to move. I hadn't realized how often I needed to get up and down. I seemed to make appropriate accommodations, though I experienced some bad pain and stiffness last night, the discomfort went away. 

Patrick and I are having breakfast this morning with two of our former Kava friends, Vicky and Rita. We keep trying to make plans but something always comes up. Until anon.

Almost tomorrow.

Breakfast was delicioso and muy rica Mexican food. None of us could finish breakfast as we ate too many warm chips and fantastic salsa. Patrick's burrito was ginormous. So much for light eating. We were all happy to see one another again. Vicky and Rita used to come to the Saturday Yoga Wall class which was very small and that is where we got acquainted. Turns out they are screaming Democrats as well, so we had a lot to chat about. Hope to see them again sooner than later.

After physical therapy, I came home and accidentally turned off the pilot light for the floor furnace. This was a bad move on my part. Janet stands over the heater several times a day at this time of year. And, it is a little bit colder today. Patrick walked over with a small space heater. I just bundled up or got under the covers. The gas company comes on Wednesday. 

Speaking of which, our gas bill was $250 last month which is three times normal. Janet is always cold and just turns up the heater as high as she likes. I cannot get her to dress more warmly, no matter than I try.

I didn't really get anything done in the world of progress today. I did quite a bit of Duolingo French and read my next Kermit Place Readers book, Monkey Boy by Francisco Goldman. This is rather the perfect book for the moment, being just literate enough to be engaging but not daunting.  I am very much of a mind to keep on reading, but the cousins are taking out Janet for a belated birthday breakfast tomorrow. We need to be down there at 10:00 (Coffee Cup in Long Beach), so I will need to get Janet up around 8. Which means I need to be up then. Vera is already curled up on my pillow, which I prefer to her sleeping on my legs or feet, particularly as I am not yet comfortable with my new knee. 

PLACES I CIRCLE BACK TO

The first time no one listened

becomes that home I seek

again and again when I

speak, thinking each time

my voice carries —

it vanishes in others’

visible breath. I haven’t found

a room I can fill.

Outside, plants grow and shed leaves

where they find themselves, and the horses

stamp at flies without a trace

of anger. Sometimes I vanish

comfortably under the sun

and undivided sky

while puddles shrink

invisibly after days of rain

leaving, instead of dust, a mud

that holds everything in place —

this is how the ground gives up

the moisture that has come

and come to it beyond

what it can drink. A blessed

tiredness. As sometimes when I’m reading

and the words pull themselves together into a story —

into a person more right than wrong

in a recognizable dilemma —

someone not blurred by decisions

or divided into faulty halves

but leaning into

her fate, one long dance,

as into a day of work. As into

days of work we seek

and do and seek respite from, to

tell ourselves we are really here.

— Leslie Ullman, Dreams by No One’s Daughter, University of Pittsburg Press, Pittsburgh, PA 1987