Ed’s contacts at the literacy program he is now volunteering with held a fund raiser cocktail party at a yacht and country club on the Caloosahatchie (that’s a river – hatchie means river in the Calusa language). We went to it. It is a gated community, beautifully landscaped, lots of boats, and a lovely dining building called The Blue Coyote. What a dumb name. The snacks were good, the wine was good. The other guests were decent but dull, so we left after 45 minutes and, as for us, no one seemed to notice.

I lost track of a plastic Chinese container in the dishwasher and it was interfering with the blade so it wasn’t spreading the soap and the water and it wasn’t cleaning the dishes. I washed one load 3 times and everything was still cloudy and dirty. So Ed found the problem and things are back to normal. Quite frankly, I had no idea I would feel all meaning had gone out of life without a functioning dishwasher.

To make matters worse, there was an old movie on: “Men in War” with Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray. Ed loves war movies. It was set in Korea in the 50s, about a unit fighting in an unwinnable situation. There was a colonel, an older man, who was shell shocked and stared into the middle distance. Aldo Ray cared about him and helped him because no one else had ever called him “son”. The soundtrack was music so dreary and dark that soon I felt suicidal. It was dirge-like. I was puttering around with chores and getting more and more depressed and feeling overwhelmed. I finally caught on and changed the station and not a minute too soon.
Then the dishes got clean and I saw a ray of light. The future was possible.

There are residual bugs in the pool that I hope to skim tomorrow and I hope the pump gets rid of the last of the cloudiness. I’d like to swim again.

I didn’t stretch today and that means a week of catch-up. That’s what age does to ya.

Finally, my iPod connected to the shoulder bone wasn't charging and wasn't syncing. A sweet young man named Jason at the support line said he would send me a walk through E mail so I wouldn't have to pay the $29 for real help that would be charged when the warranty was no longer in effect. I told him he was a dear and said I'd put him in my will if he just told me where he lived. I got a chuckle out of him. He sent me the E mail but you all knew it would be Sanskrit, didn't you?

But it turned out that the device that connects to the USB port had gone belly up. Ed told me (on the phone) to unplug the device from the computer and to plug the iPod line straight into the computer and that solved the problem.



xx, Teal