Today in 2020

I needed to run the air conditioner today! Crazy and unprecedented weather this winter in Central FL. What is likely to happen is a freeze and it will be catastrophic because all of my plants are acting like summer is just around the corner. They’ll be frozen to the ground. That’s how Central FL lost our orange groves…something like this happened then. But not this warm. I read that there are grove owners thinking about bringing the orange groves back now that the weather is so much warmer and with global warming there’s some indication they would be right to explore it.

A good day, actually. My most unexpected pleasure was my daughter’s visit this afternoon. Apparently she had a hearing aid problem and her doctor’s office is near here–her dogs explored them when they were in a dish on a side table and some of the parts were damaged. Thank goodness they were not eaten…at $4000, that would have been expensive poop when they showed up again. We sat outside and had one of our mother-daughter chats about her life and my wimpy leg. Just about an hour and she was off again.

I received my book from FB of photos in 2019, and like it so much. It does reflect my isolation that is growing in that there are few photos of people or of places I’ve gone, unlike past years. I’m trying to remedy that.

Still haven’t called a doc regarding my knee, which is recovering enough that I can now pinpoint the places that are painful. I have walked all day without using the cane and yesterday I did a huge shopping trip, walking through a big grocery and etc. store. I had to, no food for dinner the past night, not for a proper meal. I baked a plate of frozen french fries and ate them for dinner. Certainly a first! I could have ordered something to be delivered but I hate to pay the price…and I certainly can afford it, it just seems to speak of my being lax in self-care. I’m laughing. That is true and makes no sense really.

Lest someone worries.; I had a very nice meal tonight of baked chicken with baked apples and a sweet potato, some spinach, and no-caffeine espresso. I will have my knee checked, soon. Since I have had no illness at all in my aging process, I tend not to take any little setback as seriously as we did with my husband who regrettably had so many serious things happen in the last decade of his life. Unconsciously I may compare my small complaints to his needs and not take them seriously enough I suppose. Not to worry. I will take care.

I finished reading a beautiful and heartbreaking historical novel. I wanted to cry at the end and I wanted to go right back and read it again and again. I actually held the book against my breast and simply couldn’t believe how dense and meaningful the prose had been. It had a lot of press in 2012… The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng. Won the Man Asian Literary prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, both in 2012.