The Suitcase is Out

Hello, The next two days look rather busy so the suitcase came out today. I put all the things I have been collecting in it. Leroy wonders if he will find room for some clothes. It looks like there is space, but things will have to be rearranged. Leroy went to the museum and volunteered this afternoon. He will do that again tomorrow. He came home tired and announced, “I am not sure if it is because I do not work or if it is my age catching up with me, but I am very tired.” He is helping to unload and sort a rather large donation. He tells me, “I will have to pick you up more to build up my muscles.” Maybe I should gain some weight to make it worth his while. I did go do a little more shopping. We are quite low on vegetables. It felt quite serious almost as bad as no fruit in the house. Paula

Hearing Aid Repair, Again

Hello, We made another 25-mile trip to get Leroy’s hearing aid fixed again. It was just fixed last week for a different matter. There was another trip about two weeks ahead of that. This place has a better price on the aids. Until they have worked quite well. Or at least if they needed fixing it was almost a six-month time between. Even though it is that far it is a fairly quick trip because we can use the interstate. It takes only about 20 minutes once we are in the car. There is usually some other shopping we can do, but this time we were stocked up plus we will be leaving for Utah on Friday. No need to buy much ahead of time. We got our Christmas letters in the mail. We also delivered more books to little free libraries. There are only two books left in the house and they will go soon. Our little free library is almost empty as were the other two that we visited today. Hope people are enjoying the books. Our youngest child is 45 today. Can we be old enough? It seems impossible. Paula

Technology Wrangling

Hello, Technology wrangling has happened before, but I am still not accustomed to it. This time it might have been partly my adding to the problem because I switch numbers. I was trying to get into an account and could not make it in. The chat person was some help, but I suspect I was not dealing with a real person, but AI. This seemed especially true because some answers were the same. The answers were also very fast without typing time. At least it is solved. We use a service to keep track of passwords. That works quite nicely until it does not. I finally learned that I could not access it on the computer, but only on my phone. It used to be good on both. That is perhaps another day or hour of wrangling to get it figured out. I had to keep asking Leroy to help me with numbers. If he reads them as single digits, I can get the form filled in correctly. It seems that has become more of a problem as I have aged. Paula

Almost used to cold Temperatures

Hello, Leroy and I have been walking outside a bit more and it does not feel quite so cold. Now it is starting to warm up. That will be for about three days then it gets colder again. It seems to me cold needs to hang around longer so we get acclimated to it. But I am not in control. I got some more things for Leroy for Christmas; he was with me to give his opinion. Not sure how it happens that we feel the need for the other’s okay on a gift purchase. Guess we are not so into the idea of returning and exchanging. We went to church this morning. While walking through the campus close to us we decided that it really is colder since all students we saw had long pants and no shorts. We had on warmer coats, but they did have light jackets with hoods pulled up. We did some random dusting at church, unloading, and storing. A person who was at church, but not a member commented on how clean the church is. I will have to tell the custodial staff. Leroy did not have the right socks in his boots for comfortable walking, but he managed. It is a chore to select the right thickness of sock to fill a boot, but not crowd the toes. How large should boots be? On the way home we walked past the community garden things did not look as frozen as I thought they might. Perhaps they were frozen and will show that when they thaw. Paula

Volunteering

Hello, Leroy will be doing some volunteering at the museum. He sounds rather pleased to be able to do that. Seems to me he has not gotten too far from work. This is just more on his time preference. Now I wish I could find something like that. There is an organization close to us, but they mostly want volunteers in the morning. Three mornings a week, I have scheduled with exercise classes. Then it seems that doctor appointments have taken up a lot of time. Volunteering in the community garden or the church flower garden are no longer needed, giving me some free time. Reading is only satisfying for a certain amount of the day. Cleaning is not as appealing as it could be. We had talked about deep cleaning a room after Leroy retired, but not one room has been tackled. Earlier we had excuses, but now? Paula

Snow!

Hello, I am happy to see snow on the ground in the morning. It was quite dry so it was fun to shovel. The wind was the only downside. Sometimes the houses protected us and sometimes not. Maybe it would work to just shovel in one direction, but we did not manage that. We had errands to run which revealed that there were some slippery spots. We had no real trouble. We got some groceries and I picked up some prescription refills while Leroy got the RSV shot. We are both covered now. Hopefully that means we will stay well. My dermatologist visit, today, went well. He did two biopsies. One on my face he said, “I can see it is not a problem, but the one on your leg might be or might not be. Only the lab report will tell us.” I am grateful to have doctors so close. It makes it easier to get some of these things looked at. Leroy got back to the library so he is supplied with books for a few days. We are grateful for libraries. Paula

Going to Church

Hello, The trip to church is much faster on cold days. We do not loiter, rarely stopping to look at something interesting. If there is no traffic we cross the street against the light. Perhaps I should not tell you that as we try to follow the rules or laws. This morning was one of those zippy walks. It is so wonderful to get into the warm at the end of the walk. There is new appreciation for comfort. The choir sang this morning. It is so nice to be able to sing with a group. It makes me feel good. There is research that shows this is a good thing to do fo. At church, I visited with a man in the choir whose wife is having some health problems. She is wondering if the rest of her life will be like this. That is one of the issues with aging. Thinking that there is no turning around, but that is not always true. A cardinal was sitting in the tree outside. It was beautiful. I enjoy the birds. Paula