Walked

Finally Dusty's over her swine flu with an ear infection, Julie's seen the doc about her shin splints and got new arch supports for her crap shoes, and Mrs. Boss isn't on vacation so I don't have to work on Tuesdays so we can walk. Of course there's still 91% humidity so we had to walk in the mall (BOO!) but we walked. It's been 6 weeks since we were all able to make it. We agreed that we thought when we got to be "this age" that we'd have oodles of spare time to do everything and anything. Not true. All three of us are busier than ever, and Dusty and Julie only have part-part-part-time jobs. Life is crazy, isn't it?

August 30 (Happy 82nd Birthday, Mom!)--Greenwood, Maine. The morning mist rose from the still water of North Pond making the small island look as if it was floating. Like Brigadoon, the town supposed to emerge only once every hundred years, mystery lay easy on the small piece of land. Maura thought of centuries' old bonsai from Japan as she watched the light paint early-morning gold on the rising mist. The old cabin tucked under the trees was dark. Aunt Nora had always told her that a hermit lived out there. She remembered being afraid to paddle her canoe too close when she saw Frank Reynolds outside but once a sudden storm hit when she was out beyond the island and she was forced to go ashore there. He came out in the driving rain to help her drag her craft up out of the water and then heated some cider for her and told her stories to keep her calm while the wind wailed in the trees overhead. Turned out that Frank was an artist who painted the light under those trees and the wonders it illuminated. From then on every time she'd visited Aunt Nora she had spent a day or two a week sitting beside Frank on the island painting watercolors of wildflowers, pine cones, and toadstools.

Humph. Not bad.
--Barbara