I was so tired yesterday I was in bed by nine–most unusual for me. It was a long, but interesting day. First was my pacemaker phone check. It's a simple procedure, every eight weeks, requiring the use of an old telephone, the kind with the separate handset and round ear and mouth pieces that get placed on receptacles in a box to which both of my hands are tethered by bracelets that look like expansion watchbands and I'm supposed to move things around and sit and relax. I have yet to find a good place to plug in the phone and put both phone and box at a comfortable height where I can sit and relax. The whole thing becomes an exercise in clumsiness with lots of tension on my part, but it all seems to work.

After I finished this and completed my usual morning activities, breakfast and blogs, I got on the bus and went to tai chi. While there is no aerobic exercise in this class, my legs get a big workout and ache afterward. Then back on the bus for a ride downtown. I've been offering to work in so many places someone finally wanted me. I went to Oasis, another group providing educational activities for older people, which meets at Macy's, which used to be Kaufmann's.

I must confess I had never been inside the store, which was originally one of the largest department stores in the country. I've been reading about it in Franklin Toker's book, Fallingwater Rising, a wonderful book about how Fallingwater was built and about the Kaufmanns who built it, so this was an opportunity to look at the store, although I am sure it no longer resembles the place Edgar Kaufmann built. Oasis, being on the tenth floor, gave me the opportunity to ride the escalators and get some idea of what was for sale. After meeting some of the people at Oasis and getting a tour of the facility I went to lunch.

My volunteer stint, helping out in a computer class, began at 1 pm. There were six people in the class including one who is about to celebrate her hundredth birthday, or maybe it was her hundred and first. She was a writer and wanted to continue writing. She had published her autobiography, a formidable book, and had a lot more to say. The word processor she had been using no longer worked so now she needed a computer. I was to be her tutor. I tried to keep her following the class work, but it was very difficult; she never really mastered the basics, like moving the mouse and using the buttons.

Truthfully, there is a lot of things about a computer you don't need to know if you just want to write. She really only needs to know how to turn it on, get to Word or whatever, open a document, save, turn it all off, with cut, copy and paste thrown in for good measure. But that lady is so smart she wanted to know about back ups. Bravo to her. She doesn't have a computer, yet. I promised to give her my phone number when I come back next week and help her get started when she got a computer.

By the end of the class I was pretty tired. I guess I have to figure out a way to sit while I'm teaching. I took the bus home, had a cup of tea and went out again. I have tiny black ants infesting my kitchen. I went to buy borax, which is supposed to kill them, then went over to Whole Foods for a few other things. By the time I finished dinner there wasn't enough of me left to finish the day and I have to go spread the borax now.