Kinda Perfect Day.

No more rants right now. I'm just tired of being angry.

I love the protests going on all over the country. I love the "Occupy Wall Street." I think we are finally seeing a "grass-roots" response to what has been going on in our country. The Tea-Party was never grass-roots, as we've all finally discovered. (Though some members may still believe that so.)

I had a beautiful day. My husband can no longer walk any real distance at all. He has always taken himself to a particularly good dentist in West L.A. by himself. (He's been seeing this dentist for a very long time and when we moved was not willing to change dentists.) Parking in West L.A. and very adjacent Brentwood is expensive. In the past, he'd find a meter on the street and could use his handicapped placard and his cane. (The dentist is in a medical building that provides handicapped spaces, but they are always in use and are always VERY expensive.) He can't walk from "up the street" anymore. I drove him today. I let him off and we agreed I'd come back when he was finished with his appointment.

Well. We were very far from our home. But. We were very close to to my first school. Down the block and on the same street as Phil's dentist, St. Sebastian's School where I started kindergarten 52 years ago last month. I was 4. My mother was in labor with my sister so my older brother and my Dad had to take me to school. I didn't know it then, but my brother hung outside the kindergarten room and watched me thru the window until he was sure I was ok. Yeah! Brothers are good!

I walked around a neighborhood I hadn't walked since I was about 6. I parked near the apartment my mother rented for us all on Ohio St. I gazed up at the 2nd floor apt. and made the walk to the school as I'd done many times in 1958-1959. I remembered there was a field we crossed as a short cut. The field is long gone, all apartments now. I once lost a precious piece of jewelry my mother let me wear to school one day. A crucifix. I lost it in that field. I looked for it yet again, today.. over the paved parking lots and outside the new buildings. How could I not?

When I started school St. Sebastian's had a small wooden church across the street from the school. The parish tore it down and built a larger church. I remember, at 6 years old, "Oh, no! My Church will be too big!" I was sad. I'd had my first communion in the old church. When the new rebuilt one opened it seemed overwhelmingly large and too new. Right at that time Vatican II came in. Everything about the church was less magical. I can't explain it right now. But, at 6 years old, it all felt different, foreign and ultimately less.

I went into the church today. You know? It is still a tiny little church. It smelled right. It was open to all, in the middle of the day. I looked for someone to talk to... to say, "I've not been here in 50 years.." and there was no one. The church was wide open. I was astounded by the trust, as I trusted when I was young, that no one would dare defame a church left open. I felt welcome and safe. Hm. Hope.

Thinking I still had time I walked up the very long hill to the Dentist's Office hoping to use the restroom. By the time I'd walked a much longer distance than I'd expected, Phil was done with his appointment and ready to leave. Oh, great. The car is 1/2 a mile away. Uh. Sorry, honey, wait right here!  (I walked very quickly back to the car.)

We decided to get off the freeway early to stop at Forensis Farms. (My dad knows the farmer... his name is John, so we call it: Farmer John's!) Phil and I bought the always amazingly good corn and the most beautiful and tasteful tomatoes ever grown. We bought a huge green/red/yellow/orange pepper so perfect I want to display it and never eat it. Then, encouraged, we went to Trader Joe's. Phil was feeling up to it.

Back again to home. I made some necessary calls to our insurance company and arranged for another round of meds for my dear husband. Then, both of us sat and played online on our separate computers until dinner. (I made BLT's with those beautiful tomatoes and cooked some of the luscious corn.) We watched a little Keith, we watched Ken Burn's Prohibition, we watched a little Netflix.

Right now I'm listening to coyotes howl.

Kinda perfect day.