December 27, 2014

The season is over! From Thanksgiving to X-mas a cloud comes over me. But I fought it mightily with morning doses of BBC mysteries and with the help of good friends and family … It comes over my brother, also, who is 91 now and not in great shape. So, it's a family thing.

But I'm grateful for having had more than a decent time and for the lovely moments with friends.

All my new photographs are locked on my glorious new iPhone, so there's nothing special to put up… wait a week and they will appear…  I can't tell you how much I love this expensive toy which I bought to start a new series of daily self-portraits. I'm allowing myself the luxury of composing backgrounds into which I peer. They have a formal quality which I'm not generally interested in, since I like a bit of mess here and there. But it's been an interesting month of following this particular idea in this long project….   and, even though using the face of the phone as the camera produces a smaller file, that's what I've done. Did I say all this before? Probably.

And the great thing about my phone/camera is that it counts my steps. I always get up to a mile. And with effort, I get to two or three miles…   which hasn't helped because I gained 8 tens of a pound this month. I go to Weight Watches on the last Saturday of every month to check on myself. The problem can't have been the  wonderful apple tart that Mim made…I know she used very little sugar and only the minimal amount of butter in the crust…but I caved into cake and icing at Jim and Orson's….rather than eating his pear pie…      So, it's back to kale soup and 3 miles a day.

Maybe I've showed Big Face before. I'm hoping that in 2015 that the fellow who rescues cats is able to get him. He's been out for years and comes around for food fairly often. I put cat nibbles on the  first floor porch (which the birds also eat) and bird seed upstairs which gives Sherlock something to watch from inside.

When I sent to the eye doctor a week or two ago, he confirmed that my vision really is worse, nothing like the way it was after cataract surgery. And he thinks it's caused by a membrane that fills the space in back of the new lens. In 20-25% of people, this becomes like wax paper, with wrinkles. This has most probably happened to me which makes it harder to write since I can't accurately tell what I've written unless I enlarge the image on the screen, which I just did. It's not a serious problem and can be corrected with an in-office laser treatment. Magic of modern medicine…or the skill of modern medicine.

It's been hard not to be depressed by the new of the CIA and the so-called enhanced interrogation. Read torture.

But the sun is shining and I'm glad to be alive, missing a dear friend who died last year, but still very glad to be alive and grateful to other friends...

And wishing happy new year all around….