Last Day of September

Here's the exhibit at the gallery, or at least most of it. One of Elizabeth's sculptures is out of sight on the right. The poster is a reproduction of Elizabeth's portrait of me, which can be seen better on David's blog (listed in my links).

This was one of the days that is taken up primarily by my therapy appointment. Since I drive one and a half hours to get there, spend an hour there, then drive the hour and a half back, there isn't time for much else unless I really get going early. Today I didn't. Walk the dogs, read the paper, make some phone calls, check my email, take a bath, and that's about it. Before heading to Harrington, I had to let Lucy and Harry out (the dogs I take care of every day for Greg), and get gas. The price of gas is so high that I would worry, if I let myself, about how I can afford to continue to make the trip at all, let alone twice a week. It costs about twenty dollars worth of gas every time I go, plus the cost of the appointment itself. Nevertheless, as long as I can find a way to do it, I will. Nothing is any more important to me. I have become a different person in the years I have been seeing Alice, and I continue to change. It has been a Godsend in the later years of my life. It is so much easier to be alive.

After two days, I went down to the chicken house to see how things were going. I wasn't up to it before, not ready to encounter another corpse if there was one. Thankfully, Annie was up in the nesting box, relaxing and looking pretty healthy. Demeter strutted and clucked in greeting. I am feeling confident that Annie will survive now that she has made it this far. Within a very short time I will have to get some plastic and cover the windows of the chicken house. It's getting cold at night now. I'll also hook up the light for the nesting box so that there will be a warm place when it really turns cold. I still have the metal warmer that keeps the water from freezing. That needs to be plugged in too. There's an outlet in the cellar, I think, that will work if I can get enough extension cords to reach the house. I ought to get one more chicken to help keep the place warm. It's so hard to believe that another winter is upon us. Time passes so fast.