Month: August 2026

I talked to the grocery man filling the shelves with lettuce this week. I am no longer buying bagged salads or boxed mixed greens. We have a Cabinet member who could be the most ignorant Secretary of Health and Human Services ever in our history, who has removed all measures to safeguard our foods. The lettuce man told me there were, so far, no issues with our store’s produce, but to be safe, buy foods grown and processed in California. So here is my first several times washed Romaine lettuce. We here in the states have some very stupid voters heading off to the polls to cast votes for those who have learned how easily those voters can be manipulated to keep the CEO’s pockets spilling over with the money saved by unsafe practices.

The front entry is finished this week. Next, when the rain subsides, I will have the concrete floor coated in the color of the exterior paint. Just a bit of repotting and changing some plants around yet to go and then I can move on to getting the garage floor treated. I moved the gong to the sunroom where it seems to fit better.

The new pillows arrived.

And the new placement of stones opposite the bench.

Because of handling these stones, I thought I should write about them at my weekly Shut Up and Write session at the library. Here is an excerpt.

Stones    S. Webster

I thought I should write something about stones today. You know, the ones we pick up just to feel their roundness with both hands. Holding their weight with such tenderness as we turn them this way and that to feel the smooth surface, knowing it will have to come home with us. Georgia O’Keefe stole her friends’ stones to line up along windows and floors in her own home. She felt justified in this because she said those friends would never love the stones as much as she did. I saw them in her house and wondered about those she stole from. Did holding onto the friendship mean more than holding a stone? I would have retrieved my own stone from her house and thereafter watched her closely. At least she understood how holding a stone can matter. How keeping stones within reach just to touch in passing can bring such calm. Mine are formed into a snake in the garden. Others in a line from that garden along the walk to the front door. Inside there are bowls filled with stones just waiting to be held. One bowl has a stone someone gave me – a stone she coated with a clear acrylic so it would forever have the wet stone look. She even pointed out a face she saw in it as she pressed it into my hands. All I see is a stone choking on someone else’s expectation. The next hole I dig, that stone is going deep inside where it is free to rub itself back into existence. And hope by the time it works its way up to the surface, no one is waiting to do anything but toss it back down.

I am back to working on the Concertina Story Book. Just laid in the second illustration. The poem that will go with it will be about a warrior chief that you can see taking form….love where his head dress is heading.

I should have it finished by the end of the week. Sadie will keep an eye on my progress.

Til later…

This was the last of July this year and the last time meeting with old men at MJ’s coffee and mailing center. She is retiring to a new life in Georgia and will soon be moving there. Only returning to dog sit her regular customers and go out to eat with her old friends here. I will miss her being the answer person for everything local and movie related. She is a font of knowledge.  Her mother graduated two years ahead of me at a school in Florida. We live in a small world and I will miss seeing her five mornings a week over coffee and old men talking. Nothing lasts forever. Several years ago when I moved here, I gave her a letter of how to get into the house, where the cat food was and who to call in case I missed showing up without letting her know first. I had to retrieve that letter this week. Not sure there is anyone as dependable as MJ has always been for many of us. We did find a new place that is happy to put the coffee pot on for a bunch of geezers and myself if we remember to bring our own mugs.

I am doing a bit of tidy up here at the house. The front door is painted and one of the new rugs in place. Tomorrow the painter will return to do some touch up and help get the next rug under the bench.

I am trying to get the Lost Time book into a Publisher layout so I can see if I want to publish it at KDP on Amazon. The problem is getting the color and contrast right. Also Microsoft keeps reminding me that Publisher will cease to exist after October 13 this year and to move files into Word. I will eventually, but now need to take a day or so to switch them all to PDF files. I wish companies would just leave things alone. Publisher has been so easy to use. But again, things change and I need to adapt or come up short.

There is not much else new going on. Monday I can sleep in if I want but may just get an early morning walk in. It is still so bloody humid here…like everywhere else!

I went to “Shut Up and Write” at a local library and wrote the following. It is part of a longer piece written in the one hour allotted.

There are things needing doing. And they are taking too much time to do right. So, slightly wrong becomes good enough. We can so easily lower our level of satisfaction. So easily settle for less. And what strikes me as odd is how we are so easily satisfied with “the less than”. How little it matters if the upper sheet has a fully tucked-in corner or the dishes are completely wiped dry before going back in the cupboard. Or if a shower has to be every morning. And these “less thans” ease their way into other parts of our lives. We stop being attentive to old friends under the guise of minding our own business. We skip a meal because not cooking is so much easier if there is a container of yogurt and some corn chips to go with that glass of wine. We are not quitting doing things. Just managing what is left of our time. And becoming overly proud of what has been done, with so little effort. Now we have time on our hands. We can go to bed earlier, sleep in, watch the whole season of a British crime mystery. We are not going to take up a new hobby. We don’t need to learn anything new because we know so much already.

Some will arrange the memory objects of their former selves within reach. When touched, they are holding on to what they know. There is a kind of comfort in that, re-living what they have knowledge of. Holding it close and they are what they were. I’d rather not do that. Not now when I can keep everything and everyone at a distance. Far enough away to feel the freedom of moving on at my own pace. I don’t need to look behind me or touch the past. I just want to be in my own skin, dressed in comfortable clothes, and ready to react to each new moment heading toward me. Convinced that none of them matter enough to hold on to. Isn’t that an interesting way to be? Isn’t that wonderful?

Anyway, it seemed worth sharing in case you are tempted to understand someone who is settling into old age.

Til later….