Dear George,
It’s been quieter than normal
around our household recently.
Katja flew to Sacramento last week for her nephew Tyler’s wedding. She, her sister Ami, her brother David,
and her sister-in-law Susan drove down to L.A. for the big event. The wedding, Katja reports, was a great
success. Katja has never been to
Southern California, so it’s been an exciting adventure. I chose to stick around here with our
aging sheepdogs. Mike and Duffy
have never been in a kennel, and, given that they need extra attention at their
creaky ages, boarding them at this point in their lives seemed out of the
question. It’s actually
enjoyable being home on my own.
It’s quiet and relaxing, the dogs are faithful companions, and I get to
set the air conditioning wherever I want.
Dog space
You’d think that with only
one human in residence there would be excessive room in our kingsize bed. The dogs, however, have taken it as an
opportunity to enlarge their dominion.
There’s always been an unspoken rule in our house that the dogs get
whatever spaces on the bed that they like. Since they claim the entire lower half each night, it means
that I lie sideways at the top.
That works out all right.
The dogs get about nine hours of sound sleep a night. I get at least six.
The new Moroccan restaurant
The exciting addition to our
neighborhood business district is the new Moroccan restaurant.
We’ve had five Indian restaurants on our street for years, and, when one
of them closed, the Moroccan Restaurant opened in its place. Katja and I visited it on its second
day, and we liked it a lot. The
service wasn’t perfect. Katja’s
Bastilla dish arrived on time, but they entirely forgot my order until I went
up and reminded them. The waiter
was better the next time around, and I’ve been there a couple more times
since. It’s definitely my
favorite.
Buying a share in the co-op
Our local IGA shut down three
years ago, and our neighborhood business district has lacked a grocery store
ever since. There’s been a serious
move afoot to establish a co-op grocery store, and residents have been invited
to buy ownership shares for $200.
They’ve now reached about 700 members, though they need to raise $4 million
to make the co-op actually happen.
I’ve been besieged almost every day by e-mail to buy a share, but I’ve
put it off to get a better sense of whether the venture has a hope of
succeeding. Recently I got an
e-invite from an acquaintance who was holding a house party to promote the
co-op. I didn’t recognize any of
the invitee’s names. I promptly
walked down the street and purchased my $200 share. This suggests an effective strategy for fund-raising with
introverts. Invite them to a house
party with strangers, and they will pay practically anything to get out of
it.
Checking our breath for liquor
Katja and I were coming back
from a Thursday night outing via one of Cincinnati major north-south streets
when we ran into a sobriety checkpoint staffed by around a dozen sheriff’s
deputies and police officers. One
of them stuck his head right into our window to smell my breath, asked me a
couple of routine questions, then waved us through. My initial reaction was relief at not being caught drinking
and driving. Later I got more
indignant about the police stopping me and thousands of other drivers
indiscriminately with no probable cause to check us out for criminal
violations. My understanding from
a quick Google search is that about 1.5% of motorists wind up being arrested at
such mass traffic stops. I guess our checkpoints in Ohio are fairer than New
York’s stop and frisk procedures since the police here stop a lot of white
people and not just black and Hispanic males. Nonetheless, they treat a lot of people as potential
criminal suspects with no justification.
(Un-)controlling my blood sugar
On my last annual physical
exam all my lab tests turned out normal except for my blood sugar. That’s been running above normal for a
few years. The doctor gave me a
self-testing monitor and a batch of test strips which I use every morning. If anything, my readings have been
steadily creeping upwards. I saw
in a tabloid at the grocery store that Jennifer Aniston had lost ten pounds in
ten days, and I decided that I could reduce my blood sugar if I were to lose
five pounds in eight days. I went
on a strict diet of water, salad, and red wine as soon as Katja left town. After six days I’ve lost one
pound. My blood sugar is higher
than it was a week ago. I’m
still confident I have complete control over my own body. Unfortunately, my inner organs don’t
seem to be listening. Perhaps the
next step is to cut down on the water and the salad.
Duffy’s pee
Like myself, the dogs’ recent
lab tests were mostly good, though one of Duffy’s liver enzymes was running
high. They did another blood test,
and it was still high, so the vet ordered a urine test to check for the
possibility of liver disease. I
gathered a sample of Duffy’s urine in a plastic cup on our morning outing the
other day. That turned out to be
easy to do, and Duffy never noticed this intrusion on his privacy. Now we’re awaiting the results. I guess at Duffy’s and my age we can’t
expect everything to be perfect.
Sculpture garden
I bought a tall and handsome
plastic rabbit at a neighborhood yard sale last year, and I was thrilled to
find his identical twin along with a short pudgy rabbit at a Dayton thrift shop
this summer. My vision is to create
a sculpture garden in our rear patio.
I wasn’t sure that Katja would be as taken with the new rabbits as I am,
so I kept them hidden behind the porch for a few weeks. When I did bring them out and tell her
about my plans for a sculpture garden, she was less than enthusiastic. I hid the rabbits temporarily, but now
I’ve brought them out again during Katja’s absence. I’ve never been to Disneyland, but I think it might look
like this.
School starting soon
Just before Katja left we
registered for OLLI courses (for people over age 50) at the university. I was wary of being back in a classroom
when I started OLLI last year, but then I discovered it was more pleasant to be
a student than to be an anxious teacher.
We are both signed up in the autumn quarter for “Poetry Writing
Workshop” among other things.
We’re sort of apprehensive about it, but perhaps a few poetic rhapsodies
will show up on this blog.
Love,
Dave
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