Cancellation and Connection in Everyday Ramblings

Here is the view from the kitchen window. No doubt what month it is. November here is yellow. And brown.

Two hours before I left for my big surgery yesterday, after months of planning, I got a call saying that my Periodontist wasn’t feeling well and had to cancel. At this moment it has not been rescheduled and either I now have to wait until next year after the holidays or will get shoved into a patient cancelation spot at some unexpected time over the holidays.

I like my Perio, (even though he does quiz me like I am one of his students) and I hope this is a cold or something and nothing more serious. But this blew a big hole in my schedule and plans. So, regrouping here.

This week I met my League of Women Voters mentor and learned about the job I have taken on. So far it seems manageable. It involves numbers. I like numbers. They are much easier than people.

It turns out that my mentor is good friends with one of Mrs. Sherlock’s hiking buddies and close friends. So, we have overlapping circles of connection. She also practiced yoga for a number, of years and is fit and goes to a gym. I am finding a number of folks in the League practice yoga. One needs to stay fit to fight for democracy.

This last week I also had tea and cookies with the woman with the beautiful blue eyes that I met at the garden last month. We will call her Ariel. We spent over two hours nattering away at each other and could have gone on longer, but I was backstopped by needing to teach.

She is a decade older than me and had done many jobs but mostly worked as a hairdresser.

She’s been married a bunch of times as well. She now lives with her daughter in a house that is quite lovely from the inside with beautiful wood floors and a modern open kitchen that also tastefully refers to it’s past. Her kitchen is green, a forest green that would be claustrophobic if it wasn’t so open.

We hung out in what she calls her studio. A basement room where she and her daughter still cut hair and she paints.

She has the most adorable year-old girl cat named Baby, who is one of the rare female orange tabbies. Her fur is lighter than Sammy’s. I fret for her because Ariel lets her outside, but she is an experienced and caring cat person and has made this choice.

It turns out that a few years after I was living with Mr. Finch’s illness and death, she went through something remarkably similar with her 3rd husband, who died of lung cancer as well, in the house we were in. Her story of dealing with his family is pretty harrowing. But like for me, it was a rich and deeply meaningful experience.

We have much to talk about yet. She got involved when she was a young woman in a yogic cult. She doesn’t practice now and identifies herself as on a Zen continuum. She was born in L.A., as was I.

Oh, and she knows Charity. Not well, but to chat with.

There is much more, meeting her was a lovely experience and I hope to get to know her much better. One of her ex-husbands is a modest poet that I know I have seen at readings.

How cool is that? Getting that garden plot has paid off in unexpected ways. It looks so sad now that we have had the first frost.

How many months to Spring?

Now I need to settle, retrench and turn my attention towards the holidays. Oh, and catch up on notes here.

Last updated November 12, 2022