Another full week

Our social life is heating up! I mentioned in my last post our trip to Maine. That was Wed-Friday of last week. This week, we made a trip to Northampton to see Tamar, Max and Ben; I spent some time with John at his place during his Zoom appointment with an electro-cardiologist, and we had supper with Andy and Robin. In addition to that, we went to Grandma Miller's Bakery for muffins, I had a dental appointment for cleaning and two physical therapy appointments for my shoulders! And we had a virtual lecture on contrapuntal music by Piffaro and our Swarthmore lecture on Faulkner's Absalom, Absolam!. We also cleaned up Shirley's grave and planted geraniums for the anniversary of her death on Monday. That's a lot for one week. It was great to see the grandkids. Tamar has 16 more days of school. She had a lot to say about her involvement in choral singing. Max had made pretzels, which we sampled and they were delicious. He is doing a lot of baking. He had a good year at Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, and is looking forward to next year. Ben has graduated from his undergraduate program at U Mass. He seems to be the most uncertain of the three about what comes next. He has not appplied to graduate school as of yet. We took the three of them to get ice cream at Herrell's. That's always fun. John learned a lot about his heart. An oblation procedure is not recommnded at this time. He does not have A-fib, but what he does have - SVCs and PVCs is very complicated and the recommneded treatment is a drug he will start on Monday. Can't remember the name. He will start at a lew dose, have an EKG, and then if all looks good, increase the dose. We're really hoping this is actually going to help. But the EC, a woman at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, was very helpful and forthcoming. After that Zoom appointment, J&C went to Panda for Chinese takeout and we all had supper on our deck together. The weather was perfect and we had a lovely time. We used our new chairs that we bought on our trip to Maine - we happened to stop at a Shaw's supermarket to use the restroom and saw just what we wanted on sale, so we got four. Omigosh, I tried to upload one photo of a new deck chair, and got oodles of Mary's house and garden in Maine! Ellen took them to illustrate how beautifully Mary organizes things. It's way easier to leave them than try to delete them!

Andy and Robin were really fun to be with. We sat outside for supper, but it got chilly and we came inside. The meal was delicious and the conversation lively. We're all going to an outdoor Sacred Harp sing tomorrow, and we spent some time getting music ready for that. We also talked about Emma a lot - she is really expending her life - she has graduated from her college program, has gotten a summer job and is looking at moving into her own apartment with others. A new era for her! I am making good progress on my shoulders. I have already increased my range of movement and flexibility, and have less pain. I am a firm believer in physical therapy! We are seriously planning a trip to Wyoming next month! I checked today on whether we could take out the passenger seat in the Subaru so I could sit in the back seat and stretch out my legs like we did 15 years ago with the Toyota. No such luck - it would disable the air bags, which is against the law. So we'll have to hope for the best and stop for stretches.