The work is cut out

Whether it is due to the unseasonable weather or my wonky thyroid, I don’t know, but my personal body thermostat is haywire, one minute telling me to bundle up and seconds later – “Phew! Take it off!”

Just be grateful it’s not hot flashes, I tell myself. No, its not that bad!

At the same time I am adjusting to new eyeglasses which is proving to be frustrating. Just as well I was not expecting perfection, but I was hoping for improvement.

The frames are lighter and not as uncomfortable on my face as my previous pair that made grooves in my head and cut furrows into my nose, the problem being that I had to constantly tilt them to bring the world into focus.

A recent examination determined that my eyes are no longer just out of sync vertically but horizontally as well. A new set of prisms would correct the problem.

But I seem to have a permanent opaque film across my eyes. I think a second set of glasses for reading and computer work may be required. Sigh.

Mother told me I would go blind reading in the dark. Maybe she was right.

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Surprisingly, I did get an end-of-year letter written and I thought perhaps I’d print a photo to go with it, but I should know better by now than to expect so much from my printer. I ought to be satisfied that it concedes to print the letter.

In the end I added a photo of Little Man with a pink tinge.

Now my mouse is fighting me….

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Lily decided to offer a distraction. She likes to go for short walks…

Well, usually, they are short. She asked to go out and after a while Grant looked up from what he was doing to ask if she’d returned. Often the girl walks around the house and comes to paw at the front door but she had not, so I went to look for her.

Nowhere to be found.

Grant came out and we both walked up and down. Now that the leaves are off, we can see beneath bushes and into the undergrowth. No pussycat. No point in calling for her because she’s stone deaf.

And because no cat I’ve known ever came when called unless it chose to.

Luckily, I had not yet began to panic when Grant got a text from Ed, our neighbour.

“Is this one of yours?” and a picture of our girl.

Lily is an old girl now, with defective kidneys. Mostly, she seems fine but since yesterday she has been very restless which is always a worry. I woud prefer her to stay in all the time, but she loves going out, so I suppose we will just have to follow her around as we did Sophia in the last year of her life.

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Apart from leaf-peeping, we’ve spent quite a bit of time on the road lately in pursuit of Grant’s newly-recovered hobby, – bicycles.

Collecting, cleaning, repairing, trading…

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Oh yes, – riding.

It’s a harmless occupation and I like the idea of resuscitating old bicycles and getting them back in use, though quite a few are currently in residence, I believe.

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Going in search of bicycles takes us to new places which is always fun.

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Although we often find ourselves in familiar territory.

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When this happens, we endeavour to deviate from the usual route as on this day.

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How these avenues had changed in such short order.

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Though there was still colour on the slopes.

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Tall trees with yellow leaves stood out like beacons. I could almost hear a cry:

“YELLOW!”

In case we didn’t notice.

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Since the election, I’ve not paid a lot of attention to the news, but noticing a mention of hysteria expressed by supporters of the Republican Party, I thought I’d see what it was about.

When our current president was elected, I know why I was distressed and my fears proved to be more than justified.

One should attempt to put oneself in the shoes of ones opponent in order to evaluate their perspective, so I try to imagine what it is like to believe such utter rubbish about people who are different from them only in their political beliefs.

But how is it possible that they believe democrats take children out of school to perform gender-changing surgery on them? Even if it was possible, why would they?

They believe democrats are communists who will “take away everything we own”, yet it is their man who cosies up to communist leaders.

They believe American women will have to wear burqas, just because two moslem men were elected to high offices. Ridiculous.

Of course, all this nonsense has been fed to them by their politicians and the media who support them, but people ought to have enough sense to think for themselves.

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Just now it’s been announced that Steven Miller will replace Susie Wiles as White House Chief of Staff and I cannot imagine anyone more poisonous or dreadful.

Here in New York we’ve managed to end up with a complete dud too. He got in by a very narrow margin which makes it hard to take. This oaf began vulgarly insulting and abusing reporters the moment he was confirmed. A real class act.

There are some very decent young people in politics here these days, but boy do they have their work cut out for them.

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