Warm at last

the flag irises seemed to recover from the heavy frosts of the past week Croci (crocuses?)look damaged though

What are the chances of a boy who loves to read and look at screens and has 2 parents with glasses escape this fate himself? Nil but at least glasses are much cuter than in my day. I had these incredibly ugly wingtips with cameos in the corners

Did I need a rose purse (and I now have nails to match it) when I have a perfectly functioning leather Costco purse?

decorating the dog head I have hanging in our bedroom

We were able to sit comfortably well past dark on our porch drinking wine (more than my one glass per week allotment..this is why I will have to extend my big plan beyond the 6 months I had promised myself). Cloud to cloud lightning flashed every few minutes in the distance but never seemed to come any closer; peepers were singing their love songs in the nearby wetlands. A beautiful night. At about 11, a cold wind suddenly blew in from the west. The day of warmth (74 degrees) was over.

My bike isn't ready yet though it was a bit windy to enjoy a ride. This weekend will be cooler and non-stop rain. I ran a bit in the cold drizzle this morning. But then on to warm Arizona (though it will be below freezing once we go up to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon in the mornings).

So the ACA is safe for now, thanks to the Freedom Caucus (whose name is a perfect antonym of its purpose). Steve and my health insurance would not be affected much but Naomi and Maya would lose theirs along that of many non-thinking Orange One's supporters. Next crisis: removal of most environmental controls. Back to polluted water and skies.

In the 60s, I stayed with a penpal who lived in a southern suburb of Pittsburgh. It was there I learned I had an accent. Midwesterners especially have shortened short 'o's . Conveniently both her and her boyfriend's name (now husband) contained a short o so they would have me say their name over and over laughing. And 2 of my good buddies from the Pittsburgh area (Soulmate and RastaMan) have real names with the same short 'o'. On that trip, I decided I didn't have much in common with a homecoming queen to be who already had a boyfriend at 13. We are now Facebook friends after I was reminded of her going through her former town on the GAP which I will repeat this August. The steel mills were still going strong in Homewood. Lights needed to be on in the middle of the day. On the trail, is an acid waterfall from all the unregulated coal mining south of there. By the time I finished college and was visiting Soulmate in Pittsburgh, the steel mills were shut down and the city was sandblasting off the thick layers of black soot that covered most of the buildings.

At the nail salon, they always have Fox News on. All of the salon workers are immigrants and seem oblivious to the anti-immigrant rhetoric. When my worker uncovered one of my big toenails, she gasped at the purple quadrant. What's that? she demanded. I pulled out the cancer card and said how Taxol destroyed my nails. They had turned black and some of them fell off. My fingernails had brown ridges on them (Mees' lines) and were threatening to fall off too. I guess this made my toes susceptible to toenail fungus which has gone away except for the corner of that one toe. I must have bruised it too (when I was running marathons, bruised toes were common). But I can't believe this was the first case of toenail fungus she came across. She also remarked about how abnormally long my calves were as the towel barely covered them. The workers talk amongst themselves in Vietnamese probably making fun of my big feet. But at least they are now pretty as I will be wearing sandals.

I watched some TV this week aside from seeing Michigan lose their lead in the last 30 seconds. Two guilty pleasures: Big Little Lies and This is Us.