TGIF

A hodgepodge of my week:

Tara Crowley, 2016

September is here with its promise of cooler temperatures and bursts of yellow and orange in the trees.  We got a taste of fall weather while traveling on the Monterey Peninsula last weekend.  Chill and fog enveloped us and I loved it.  Just shirt sleeves.  No jacket, no bundling up for me.

The kids are back in school, and so we hear the school bell signalling recess, followed by the shouts and laughter of many many exuberant children.  Yes, our dogs continue to bark at them.  This fall, however, we have had no repeat of the kids gathering at the fence to see the dogs or taunt them.  The school put up an arboretum of sorts just outside the fence, and the kids are instructed not to run there.  Brilliant problem solving.

Tomorrow we have our second session with our Personal Trainer at the gym.  He's a young man, maybe 30, well muscled but no overly so, cleared eyed and energetic.  A good role model.  He's given us a routine to begin, and begin we have.  Warm up on bikes, followed by strength training, and then back to bike for cool down.  Not wanting to overdo, I have a lot of room to grow the number of reps I do on the strength training.  I really was not up for it on Wednesday, but Steve insisted and I'm so glad he did.  I always feel clear and energized after a round of exercise.  It's a great feeling, and my lungs fill easily with air from being well used.

I watched a compelling movie on the life of film critic Roger Ebert, called "Life itself."  

I highly recommend it, especially for those of you who enjoyed his critiques.  I always did, and he was my go-to guy when it came to guiding me to good movies.  There are things I discovered about his life that I won't share here in case you haven't seen it.  Suffice it to say it's a candid portrait of an imperfect man.  Watching it, I was reminded time and time again that he was a great humanitarian, an egalitarian of the highest order.  I miss him more, now, after seeing this movie.  More often than not, now, when I see people who have died, or who live with great impairment of various sorts, I am reminded that life is short and I've got an actual living, working body and I'd better use it now because now is all I've got.

Speaking of impairments, when I saw Mom this week she was moving more easily and less stiffly than she has in months!  Her neurologist put her on a new med called Requip which was developed for PD to ease muscle stiffness and tremors.  I don't know why this wasn't prescribed years ago, as it's been on the market for a long time and was made into generic form in 2008!  Anyway, time will tell if her recent improvement is the medicine or a freak occurrence.  I hope it's the Requip because her improvement just knocked my socks off.  Hers, too.

Perhaps the highlight of my week was when my photographer friend, Ted, called on the phone from Canada to exclaim over the black and white photograph above.  I took it at Asilomar last weekend.  I wasn't sure if it was a strong enough image to post on the two photo group pages I belong to, but I went with it anyway.  The response on both groups has been very positive.  I just never know.  Or rarely know.  The Artist's Way is confusing more often than not. 

Happy Friday.