This is for Grace. You missed an interesting class today. As I walked into the facility, teacher called my name and put her hand on my shoulder–very friendly. I guess she was flattered that I finally came back. I was impressed that she knew my name. There were a lot of new people today. One woman walked in barefoot. Teacher told her she was very brave; who knew what was on the floor. As usual, a little hostility was evident. Barefoot left after about 10 minutes. We did not stop moving for the first 25 minutes of the class. Altogether she led us through every complex motion she has ever used. My brain was going nuts trying to keep up with right and left. She does seem to make things more difficult when there are new people. You are right about that. The class is more fun when you are there. Come back soon.

I have new neighbors. The house I live in is a duplex. The second and third floors, which constitute the second apartment, have been empty since before I moved in. My landlord lived there previously but had moved out leaving most of his belongings behind. He kept saying he would get the place cleaned out and then rent it. I have enjoyed living here alone; it was certainly very quiet, but sometimes I wished for company. At the beginning of May, while I was in New York, Gene moved in. His wife came two weeks later with their dog, a cute little dachshund. So it’s not so quiet now. I can hear them walking around upstairs, but I find it very reassuring. I think I will like my new neighbors very much.

All morning I’ve been thinking about Ronni Bennett’s post about slowing up as we age. I know this is true but I think it’s not an over-all slowing down. I’ve been taking college classes for the last few months, and I know that Intellectually I am as fast or faster than most of the "kids" in my classes. But physically it’s a whole different ballgame, especially trying to learn new physical moves. I was never very well coordinated. Richard used to say I couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time, so I stopped chewing gum. Also, I have some left-right confusion. That’s actually gotten somewhat better, but not when I’m trying to learn new moves.

All this new move stuff is about my tai chi class. This is the first time I’ve been there in several weeks. When I last attended the instructor had us line up behind her and follow her moves from the back. Today she had us back in a circle–bad news. I try to stand directly opposite her and I tell myself to do the opposite of what she is doing. Sometimes I hear her say right when she means left, and then I’m really in trouble. The man next to me has similar problems, so I can’t count on him. The worst thing is when she is moving her feet and arms at the same time, especially if they are in different directions. I can actually feel my brain trying to direct my feet–arms are easier. I confess to always having these problems, but Ronni, you are right: it’s worse now.

Yesterday afternoon I had tea at the little table on my front porch. All of the trees are blooming, the grass in the front yard is greener and nicer than I had anticipated all winter, and I could hear the birds singing. What a contrast from New York. Renee’s apartment is near the FDR so we hear lots of traffic noises and sirens. Michael kept saying he could hear the ocean. This is not to denigrate New York. I love the energy on the street. But it is very nice to listen to the birds.

Today is another beautiful day.
My Japanese maple is glowing in the back yard and there are mystery shoots coming up underneath it.
I have never taken much interest in gardening, so while I feel the need for trees in my life, their identity, and the identity of the stuff underneath, remains a mystery.

This afternoon I am going back to the eye doctor for the (I hope) last checkup on my cataract surgery. I want to go back to my contact lens practitioner in New York for new lenses, but I’m hoping to be able to use the old lens in my left eye until I get to her on May 10.

My Japanese Art class ends on Thursday, to my sorrow. I wish it would go on all summer; I have really enjoyed it. I’m working on the last paper, due on Thursday. I’ve been thinking about it for a month; now I have to get down to business.

As I get older it has become important to me to celebrate. I celebrate birthdays, other milestones, sometimes just being happy. Today I am celebrating a friend who has earned my great respect and admiration, even though we have never met. Each morning as I read her blog, I admire her wisdom, her thoughtfulness and her ability to give voice to so many of my concerns. I particularly admire her ability to use exactly the right words. So have a wonderful birthday, Ronni Bennett. I wish you joy and happiness and many more celebrations.

My family is very big on memoir writing. My grandmother wrote in Yiddish, and privately published her memoir. Aunt Flo wrote a wonderful memoir, and my father filled 18 composition books with a combination of memories and paranoid ravings. I was, for awhile, a technical writer. I learned my craft so well I became crippled. Much of what I am writing today is an attempt to erase the technical writer from my being. To further that goal I am taking a class in fiction writing. I wrote one story years ago, and I have been polishing it ever since. So I turned it in and got some very interesting feedback from the professor. The story is about two sisters who live together and, when one of them marries they all continue living together, a veritable menage a trois. The story, in its bare bones, is true. The sisters were distant relatives of mine whom I met as they were aging and dying and I was still relatively young. The story originally interested me because of the possible sleeping arrangements of the three of them. As the story and I have aged, I have become much more interested in the caregiving and responsibility aspects of the relationships. The married sister dies leaving the much older husband with the younger sister. My instructor said I have to answer the question of why the younger sister remained unmarried, and why the husband chose the older sister. The husband courted both of them and never seemed to have a preference. I had to develop a conflict. I worked on the story last night and went to bed thinking about all of the possible reasons for what happened ranging from older sister stole the husband to younger sister was a lesbian. I did not like any of it. I finally settled on a possible solution and hoped I would remember it in the morning. My conflict was with family customs and demands, notably, the older sister has to get married first. This morning I realized that in some ways this was the story of my life. I was always in conflict with my family’s demands. They say you should write what you know. This is the only thing that feels comfortable to me.

The first thing I do every morning is look out at my backyard. Since I don’t have my contact lenses in, I am mostly looking to see if the sun is shining. The other day I walked into the yard and was dismayed to see what I thought was a dead duck lying under the little table in the back corner. On closer inspection I realized it was a very motley stuffed animal. I don’t know how this thing got under the table. The yard is fenced on three sides, reached only by a long driveway. I looked at my backyard pictures and found that it doesn’t appear until January 20. Possibly this solves another mystery for me. One day, after a snowfall, I noticed that someone had walked down the driveway and a short distance into the yard. The footsteps made an oblong loop into and out of the yard. I couldn’t figure out why anyone would do that. Maybe they noticed the duck from the street and came to look at it. I never noticed the duck until I walked into the yard.

When I lived in that large apartment building in Fort Lee I threw my small bags of trash down a chute, put large items and the recycle stuff in the appropriate bins in the service room. Since I got it out of the apartment very quickly I was never really aware of how much of it there was. Now my situation is entirely different. The trash can is in the garage. Trash gets picked up every week, but the recycle stuff only gets picked up every other week. I am aware now that I have very little trash but a lot of recycle material. This has become a management problem. My kitchen is not big enough for those fancy containers which allow you to sort and store. I keep trying to get less recyclable material, but the food industry won’t cooperate with me. Maybe it’s the way I eat but almost everything I buy has both inner and outer packaging. I don’t usually get a newspaper. I get my news from public radio and I read the New York Times and Pittsburgh Post Gazette over at Robin and Steve’s. Then they can recycle it. I try to find someone else who wants to read my New Yorkers. I hate to throw them out. I’ve done my best to minimize the junk mail, but it still keeps coming. At least we can recycle it here.

In addition to watching my contact lens go down the drain, I destroyed one of my bathroom rugs in the washing machine and I knocked the TV off the stand. I was lucky; none of these events was catastrophic. I didn’t destroy the washing machine (only had to clean it and replace the filter on the drain hose), and the TV did not break. Each of these things was something I thought about ahead of time and ignored. The rug was old and I knew I shouldn’t wash it. I knew the TV was too large for the stand and I knew it might fall, but I did nothing about it, until now.

Before I went to the airport to pick up Renee last week I stopped at Ikea and bought a new, large, heavy TV stand. Of course it comes broken down in a large heavy box. I wrestled the box into the back of my car and left it there until after Charna’s play. Fortunately my family did not need chauffeuring that night. When I got home I wrestled the box into the garage and there it sat. The garage is under the apartment and I did not want to ask anyone to carry the box up the stairs. Wednesday was a nice warm day so I went down to the garage, opened the box and carried the pieces up the stairs, one at a time for the big ones. I spent the last two nights putting it together. I actually enjoy doing it. I get a great sense of satisfaction. Also, I admire the Ikea directions. They are almost entirely visual, using only parts numbers. As a former technical writer I can really appreciate the person who creates these. So the stand is all set up and in place. The TV is still on the floor; I can barely shove it, let alone lift it. Now I have to ask for help.

Sometimes conversations in the locker room strike terror in me. Twenty-some years ago I was in a locker room at a YMCA in Chicago. An older woman (seventyish), looking exhausted, came in and sat down on one of the benches and announced she had just come from a terrible hour with her mother, who, I assume, must have been in her nineties. I was always having terrible hours with my much younger mother, and I had this terrible look into the future. Fortunately, it was not a prescient moment.

Today I went to exercise for the first time in a week. As I entered the locker room one woman said, "I have to call my parents and remind them they have a party to go to at 11:30." Another woman asked if they couldn’t remember by themselves. First woman said, "They don’t know what day it is. Every day is the same." Another day I hope I never get to.