July 21, 2026

Happy Birthday, Laurie.

My day was encircled by trips to Valley Medical, but between appointments I indulged my loves.  I had lunch with Don, I took photos and I wrote.  We had lunch at Upper Bend and then sat on a bench on Ave. A. for an hour.  The rain fell while we were in the restaurant and then held off until we got in our cars.

I feel so detached from my own life, but today I got to hear about Don's which is so extremely different than mine.  It's so fascinating.  He sees so much of the world and travels with big people and calls them on their birthdays.  Yet he is so unassuming and kind.  In some ways I think we face life in very similar ways.  

The canal was 67 degrees and raining and sky was a play unto its own. There were 10 heron, a brand new family of ducks, several kinds of ducks, some I recognized, others I didn't.  I have to start bringing my birdbook with me again.  I'm loosing retention or something.

I hung out for over an hour.  The clouds hovered in different values of thickness.  It is really duck weather.  There were plenty of geese, too, but I saw at least four kinds of ducks all throughout the heron.  

I'm thinking about making collages of each individual heron and trying to keep track of them. They really do have very different markings.  Sometimes I think one is not a great blue, but then I look closer, and it is.  

Can anyone identify this one?

After the canal I went back to the doctor's.  Didn't get new information at all except that my numbers are good and the afib is still not back.  I have call the Urologist to push the ctscan forward and won't see the doc again until the kidney work is complete. She really down played it.  Maybe that's good, but it didn't help me today. All I wanted was cheesecake afterwards, all of those buttons get pushed. 

No suggestions about pain, thinks we're doing all we can at the moment, keep in the pool, pay attention to blood sugar and go to sleep when you need to sleep.   It was not encouraging. 

As bleak as the weather seemed, I kind of liked it today.  It felt cleansing.