Summer 2019

After 35 years together, my husband and I have a lot of the routines down as routine, and it's easy to go along thinking that summers will always mean the same thing. Teaching some summer school, doing some maintenance and driving back to Wyoming to visit the grandparents.  Somehow, even 7 years after the youngest child graduated high school, 5 year old granddaughter having led the way to tree grandkids so far, it took the death of our final parent, my Mom last November to really convince me that going to visit the grandparents has become being the grandparents.

 My husband has been in a new job for a year now and no longer gets summers off, and my health has deteriorated to the point where this summer I have been in a foggy state induced by trying various medications to see if my racing heart and high blood pressure and painful joints and muscles can be less disabling.  So fr I'm not sure which handicaps me more, the ailments or the treatment.

 but summer, I'm a summer baby who has always loved summer more than any season, and yet this summer even our coastal cool, feels like a steamy heat wave and I'm sweating an complaining at 68* and my cat died, leaving me with two parrots I've had for 30 years and am not sure I can keep cleaning their cages and feeding them.  I love them but they get ignored when I'm feeling too sick to stand and the granddaughter needs must come first  I don't want to sell them to someone who will quickly tire of their noise and mess and realize they don't make good pets, but if I could find a good parrot sanctuary, I might be giving them up.

 I have been reviewing my writing and writing something every day, and I think the medications are finally almost at the right balance.  I'm feeling better and hope it continues as the weather gets colder again.  My fear is that the warmth is really all that is soothing me at the moment