Looking into June

June 1, 6:15 a.m.

Walking to the dog to the creek yesterday, I kept smelling sweetness: lilacs, peonies, iris, roses are in bloom, all at once.

This early morning, sitting on the front porch, I can see pollen from the elm tree dropping through the rising light. I'm not allergic, but my eyes register the annoyance, and friends who are allergic can't sit in the front yard with me at this time of year.

Sister is coming over this morning for coffee on the porch.
In a little bit here, I'm going to bike a couple blocks to the corner bakery--an old American-style bakery with donuts and Danishes, but also croissants--they are American too now I guess.

Today's supposed to be the last pleasant day before temps rise into the high 80s (and above). With all the lakes and fields of corn pumping water into the air, it's a sauna here in summer.

(This is Minnesota, where the state is luring people to get Covid vaccines with offers of free fishing licenses.)

Looking at the weather forecast scares me.
So... don't look!
I just removed the Weather bookmark on my laptop, and I'm going to remove the app from my phone. Same as I take pictures with my phone, I check the weather compulsively.
Enough!
I'm STOPPING.

Not that I won't hear the number at work. People deliver bad news with glee.

I'll just deal with whatever comes our way. "It sure is hot!" is a good enough indicator.

bink & I are driving down to see Auntie Vi next week.
At almost ninety-six, my auntie is clearly weaker and slower this year, but she still planted spring flowers in her yard––with her feet. She dug a hole and pushed the pansies in by foot and stomped the dirt down. Too hard to get up and down off the ground, she said. Not like last year.
She's been on a  s-l-o-w  decline since she turned ninety.
But she carries on living out her philosophy: "Say YES!"

Sicilians are mules. At least most of my father's family are, including me, so far. (And my mother's Scottish relatives were no tender flowers either, not physically.)

The first thing my gym teacher had me do when we started meeting last winter was to practice moves to get up and down off the floor. Whatever muscles that takes, they are muscles to keep strong as we age. I think it's practically all of them, toe to neck.

I saw their importance the other day when a coworker not much older than me slipped off his rolling chair onto the floor. Health problems have weakened him, and it was a major undertaking for him to get up off the floor again, with the help of two of us.

My mattress is on the floor--always has been. I was looking at frames at IKEA recently, thinking it might be nice to lift the bed up in order to make storage space underneath.
Nope.
I'll take the exercise, getting up and down.

Gym class this afternoon.
We're working on adapting moves from the kettle bell classes (they're too heavy for my arthritic fingers), so that I can try joining in with the other children. (I feel lonely when I bike past the gym and see them exercising together outside.)

I'm a little loathe to give up one-on-one classes because they've been mental as well as physical therapy. But I'd love to play with the others. And as the city opens up, I think I'm ready to too.

 I'd like to meet more people in the neighborhood. I moved here Sept. 2019, and then it all shut down six months later.
Yet I have more sense of community here because it's such a slow and roomy place.

People are more open than they were in the crowded, dense neighborhood I've always lived in, where to get any privacy you have to shut everyone out.
Here, out for a walk people look at you and say hi, because you are the only other one on the sidewalk.
There, you were one of a crowd.

Okay--time to go get croissants.

I hope you all may have a beautiful June day!