Six months ago, Gary and I stopped drinking altogether. Gary tells people who ask that he stopped because I asked him to as a birthday present. Okay. Maybe. It saves money, spares us hangovers, and mostly preserves our minds. We would deal with the pile of diapers, the alcove deep in gin bottles, and the damage—the work cleaning up the mess in our rental ADU had only just begun. For years, Gary talked to our longtime tenant most every day, sometimes for an hour or more. He’d been afraid the man would kill someone or at least himself driving drunk. Fortunately, he survived. We finished the repairs and improvements right at the beginning of last month.

Yesterday, we disagreed about how far to walk before heading out for the day. I said four miles, Gary lobbied for two. We were a few hundred yards out when the hail began. If we’d waited ten or fifteen minutes, we wouldn’t have been wet by the time we scampered home!

I’m running a mile every other day now. Not easily, but I’m making quicker progress than I had any right to hope for. I started with a challenging half mile on the April Fool’s Day—yes, a joke on myself and also the anniversary of my first run decades ago. I’m starting from scratch—no condition at all. Last year, I injured my feet doing very long planks, and then again while on my hands and knees working on that rental. Gary pruned (butchered) the escalonia in order to give the new tenants a broader and clear view of the ocean. Apparently, they don’t look west and hadn’t noticed. sigh I’ve been walking daily but had been injured out for most of a year. At my age, “coming back” is not a given.

The other morning there was only the gale wind and a little rain. Tuesday, there was a “dust devil” in the sand just up shore from where we walked. We walked about four miles, all the way to the waterfall just south of Hug Point. The rain started right then and poured all the way home, right into our face with a full gale. A dead owl, we think, lay in the tideline, head naked, short and dark hooked beak, dark flight feathers well over 12″ long, barred tail. By the time we got home, we were soaked and cold, had oatmeal for breakfast, curry for dinner, and went to bed early. But this morning I managed my planned 1-mile run. Best I can tell, I’m managing miles in under 12 minutes, which is not bad considering everything. My realistic goal is a 5k run by August. My “secret hope” is to do the Bridge Crossing in October again. That’s a 10k, 6.2 miles, and usually bad weather, but I’ve done it several times. At least Gary I expect to do the Zoo walk/run in Portland on Thanksgiving—that ranges from a 5k to 6k, with no warning in advance of distance—and we can walk as much of it as we choose. I ran it last fall.

In the mean time, Gary is playing his guitar as I began writing this post on Wednesday morning. That alone could make me cry. It’s been too long, his fingers sore and cracked, but he rested after our soaking walk, and maybe he’s back. He’s taken each one out and tuned it, played a bit. He says his guitars are “not in bad shape. I don’t see any bad things.”

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It’s a rare fabric, not stenciled or printed, but with both color and resist hand applied—spaced and dripped—and similar in process to the fabric in the quilt top waiting for quilting in my closet. I hope to be able to have this new quilt and the earlier “Otherland I”, below, machine quilted this summer.

In other news, I have chosen a press for self-publishing my novel. No money for it at the moment since it all went on repairs, but in the fall, perhaps. I am thinking of my birthday in October. A friend has given me notes on my ghost story, so there’s that to work on.

The sun is peaking through.