Ten-Finger Exercises

Other things to do in the evening

Monday nights I always enjoy a few hours alone to write while Bill is at a meeting. Last night I got called to a deathbed to sit with a husband until his son arrived from Seattle. It was a good place to be. The woman was an artist, and the room her hospital bed had been moved into was rich with art and history. She had framed a number of family photos from the thirties. She had only found her birth mother within the past few years and was very excited to have found family. She had painted the plaster walls of her old house with a gold glaze, I think it would be called. It wasn't bright at all; in fact, the metalic-ness of it only showed if you looked at it in the right light. She had some antique crucifixes on one narrow wall, and a wonderful old candle "lamp" that hung from the ceiling, the kind that were used to mark the tabernacle when the consecrated bread was within it.

She had designed a stain glass window which filled the hole where a wall air conditioner had once been. It looked beautiful. I have a wall air conditioner we haven't taken out even though we had central air installed last year. I think I'll do that too.

Tonight after supper I was trying to help Bill deal with the glucoscan meter. His blood sugar has been running a little high, and the doctor told him to get one. He'd flubbed two strips this morning before breakfast, when he was supposed to be doing it for the first time. Wanted to try it again tonight, and it worked okay.

My October goals, number one and two, are to lose weight and get in better shape. Got a new exercise routine worked out last week at the Y, but my back was still sore from pulling out deadly nightshade. (Haven't gotten it all out yet, either!) So I swam yesterday, and overdid it. I'm really sore today. So I'm sitting with a heating pad and planning to go back tomorrow at least to cycle or do warm water exercises.

I don't have a big writing goal this month. Will try to keep writing at least a story or poem every week, and to blog as often as I can.

A funeral this afternoon had one laugh in it when a son of the 88 year old woman told about a particular birthday cake. His mother had ordered a two layer sheet cake; and when she looked at it later in the day, she saw it had only one layer. Indignant, she took it back to the bakery to complain, and then it dawned on her. It had been two layers, but the boys had cleverly removed the top layer, and put it back in the box after eating the bottom layer.