Yes we have tomatoes

tomatoes and rosemary. The tomatoes keep coming

Sunset over Shanna's neighborhood last night. We watched the kids so they could go out

Naomi hanging over glass hanging in glass. Since some of the rhinestones are missing, I got this for 50 cents. I save a few cents here and then agree to lose thousands of dollars with that stupid house

I have asters. Lemon balm in background. I used it once in a salad.

hospital art Back there today to deliver reading glasses to my friend. Finally her complication is being fixed and she might get out in a few days

I am wearing a sweater drinking hot chai tea (my Sri Lankan friend would tell me that is redundant). The Goodyear blimp makes tight circles over Ann Arbor as it is the first home game. We time our comings and goings accordingly.Things change so fast in just a few days. The cool weather means no bugs while I run through the wetlands. The lower sun though means it is now in my face as I head east. Annoyingly, my speedometer broke while I was biking today. I do have a GPS ap as a back-up though it is a battery drain. As the display is still nice and bright, it can't be the battery nor is it a matter of the sensor being moved away from the reader. Meanwhile the speedometer on Josh's bike is almost 20 years old and it still works.

 

Another 9-11 anniversary came and went. Shanna had the taped 'live feed' as it had happened when I went over there yesterday morning. Where was I 14 years ago? In my office planning my day with the radio on. A friend called for advice about which college admissions tests his son needed ( young man is now a physician). I was half listening how a small plane hit the World Trade Center.  The announcer thought aloud: it is so clear out, couldn't the pilot see it? When shortly after, the second plane hit, everyone knew it was no accident. I told my friend I had to go. A co-worker's sister lived in Staten Island but then commuted via ferry and transferred at the World Trade Center subway station. She wasn't answering her phone and my co-worker thought the worst. We went over her schedule; she should have been safely at work by that time. How do I know she wasn't running late that day? (she  turned out to be fine but getting home was impossible) Our boss said something  that if we didn't get back to work the terrorists win. My co-worker looked at him as if he had three heads and said he was going home. One of the Mom's daughters was a student at NYU. She lived in Chinatown and was walking north  to her class and saw the first plane hit. The second plane hit while she was in class. School was  cancelled. When the towers collapsed an hour or so later, her neighborhood became covered with toxic dust and was unsafe to go back to. I am not sure where she stayed for a week.

 

It was still sunny and warm when my friend and I went to Happy Hour in the town Josh used to live. We sat on a patio and sipped our tasty drinks while discussing our lives. Nice. Cool and rainy the next day. Steve and I spent last night with the grandbabies. We were assisted by 'screens'. The long school days mean less time on screens so  they were happy  to have them again and  we were happy not to play enforcers.  I read the kids bedtime stories though Oliver said he would just read his own to himself. He did occasionally look up to correct my pronunciation of various Skylanders.

 

This morning a painful discussion what to do with that house. I want it over and done with and I will never think about it again. But I guess I need to put things in perspective. What are other people dealing with? We have our health (excepting my eyes I guess but they are fixable and my deformed chest)

 

One of my friends should be receiving drugs today that will destroy her bone marrow unless the infection she had yesterday stopped that. It will be awful. My other friend so far has been in the hospital 2 weeks, most of it in pain though things are getting better. I dropped off some reading glasses for her as hers broke at the hospital. And another friend's sister with the missing primary tumor (they suspect breast cancer but can not confirm  even after 2 separate biopsies) that has spread all over will have to start chemo that doesn't target any specific cancer (as they don't know what she has) but will kill  or weaken the tumors already creating havoc. If they are ever able to figure out what she has, they will stop the general chemo and then give her the appropriate chemo for her cancer.