Thursday

I have done well today for walking. This morning I went out and walked for an hour. This afternoon I did 55 minutes. The only reason I didn’t get an hour in this afternoon is that in the last ten minutes or so, it started raining. Now, if I was still living in Mississippi, I would have kept right on walking because rain in the South, even in November, tends to be warm, but here in Vermont rain is definitely NOT warm. I was wearing a quilted vest, and an ear-warmer Turtle Fur headband and gloves which kept me warm enough in this temperature of 47 but didn’t help one bit with rain, light though it was. Tomorrow I am going to start my new routine of going walking before I turn on my computer. These days I am sleeping late in the morning {9:30 this morning– what a slug-abed!} and by the time I have eaten breakfast and had my coffee and checked my mail, newsgroups and OD, three to four hours have passed! I do go for a walk but since it gets dark so early now, occasionally I am not able to get in an afternoon walk at all because I really don’t feel safe walking in the dark…

Thinking about being safe, I brought this up in the book club meeting the other night. The book we were reading was The Secret Life of Bees which is set in the mid 60’s in the South. Now, I lived in the South for over 30 years so I gave the group some things I had experienced. Although I was 30 years old and not brought up there. I am ashamed to admit that I was influenced by the prevailing not-stated-aloud-but-definitely-understood attitude that black men were all after white women. {Lor’, now I write it out in words, I can see how absolutely ridiculous this statement is!} Anyway, I learned that after dark the “safest” thing to do was to cross the road when I saw black men coming towards me. The really interesting point for me was that when I was asked did I feel that way now living here in Vermont and I realized that no, I was no longer scared of black men but I did have a fear of teenagers of any color, and if I was walking alone at night, I did cross the road so I would not walk on the same side! Now, I have a certain amout of justification for this since I AM 70 years old and no longer as strong as I used to be. But the other thing interesting thing I realized as we were talking about this is that if I know the teenager, I am not scared of him! And I learned the names of many many of them when they came to the library!

Fred just left to go to the grocery store. He told me when I came in that while I was out, he had called both his daughters and told them about this colon cancer. He was originally going to write to them both but, he said that thinking about what he was going to write made it clear to him what he wanted to say. He said he told them that he did not want them to come–not because he didn’t love them but because he was quite sure that he would come through the surgery on December 14th and {this bit brought tears to my eyes} that he had me help him and we would get through this together. He also said that I would call them both after the surgery and report. I had planned to do this anyway even going so far as to check my box of phone numbers to make quite sure I had both their numbers. Both his daughters have made it quite clear to me that they like me and am glad I am living with their father, and I also like them. {I don’t approve of the way one of them treats her children, but I still like her.} Anyway, I am glad this is settled.

I am still enjoying the feeling of having nowhere to go or nothing to do now I have left the library. It is not that I sit around all day eating bon-bons. {Incidentally, a wonderful book is Angry Housewives Eating Bon-Bons. I think it is by Lorna Lanvik. I highly recommend it!} I have things to do that I choose to do and that is enough to keep me busy, or idle as depending on what I feel like, or not feel like, doing!

Until later…