The giant Cereus cactus flower greets us as part of the most vibrant abundance of cactus blooms we’ve ever seen living in this neighborhood. The cooler summer we’ve been experiencing and the wetter monsoon season, at least here in our corner of the Valley of the Sun, must be contributing factors. When the saguaros bloomed back in late springtime I didn’t manage to snag an image to share, somehow they weren’t as spectacular as in some of the previous years. With the evolving seasons, nature responds accordingly as conditions are always changing.
As we too are part of nature, we are always changing with it. Caroline’s foot has been mending nicely according to her doctor but also her experience, allowing her to slowly return to normal. Today was her first walk that took us out for 3 miles, the previous nearly 2 weeks saw her only collecting steps in 1-mile increments. This bodes well for a fast-approaching road trip that sees us traveling 706 miles (1,136 kilometers) over to Monterey, California, on the coast. It was just last Wednesday and only 20 days after her foot surgery (bunionectomy) that she was able to leave the recovery boot behind. Her foot is still being iced multiple times a day as there’s a tiny bit of residual swelling going on, but by and large, things are looking great and seemingly always changing.
The surgery derailed our August travels though we did attempt to escape Phoenix a couple of times. This first trip of September taking us northwest is one of certitude; we are going. And since I mentioned Monterey you should know that it is the Monterey Bay Aquarium that holds the main attraction for us, not the bars, restaurants, trendy shops, swanky seaside hotels, or golfing. We will be putting on the miles walking along the ocean from our motel in Pacific Grove to the aquarium and then back to our motel late in the day.
Something less prone to change is my abhorrence of shopping for clothes, but after 8 years and 8 months I finally need to go buy new shirts and that’s what I’m going to do this morning after I save this as a draft post. You might wonder how I can be so accurate regarding my last date in a department store to buy shirts? I went back through old posts to see the approximate date when I changed shirt designs. You see, I wear my shirts well past the time when they should have been tossed in the trash and when I go buy new ones, the current shirts all head for the bin, and if I’m successful today, all of my shirts you’ve seen in my travel photos since December 2013 will be gone. So even if it doesn’t look like it, even my clothes are changing though it might take something close to a decade for that to happen.
I finally did it, I drove the 25 miles south to a mall I thought I’d have a good chance with, and while Macy’s let me down, Dillards came to the rescue. Buying clothes for myself gives me anxiety as bad as when buying a car, but it’s done and my salesperson Linda deserves a lot of the credit as I told her what I was looking for and without any dithering, she took me exactly where I needed to go. I am now the owner of 14 new shirts with a dozen marked down 60% because it is the end of summer and the store needed to clear them from inventory to make way for fall and winter lines. Lucky me. With this replenishing of shirt stock, I’ll be dumping all but one of my old shirts as it’s still a favorite that’s NOT coming apart, yet. The top orange shirt demonstrates how much it faded in the sun and the purplish one below it (maybe bluish, I’m colorblind) shows the collar separating.
In celebration, I stopped at Hodori Korean restaurant in Mesa for some spicy pork bulgogi. My next goal, not really a subject to be talked about as lunch is soon to arrive is that when I get home I should look for the prescription for my colonoscopy I’ve been trying to ignore. At 59 years old, I really should get my “Shit sock” and Schließmuskel looked at to see if it’s all in proper working order. If I could do that and get a couple of things repaired in our apartment, I will have crossed everything off my list of things to get done this year. Then, during the last third of the year, I can put my attention on what major things might be accomplished next year.
Got home and packed up the old shirts for Goodwill, even if they don’t want them they know where to recycle fabric and then I called the Gastroenterology Center, already filled out their form, sent it back in and now I’m waiting for them to fix me an appointment.
A surprise day where everything was moving towards change.