I have always said, acknowledging a fact about myself, that my will is stronger than my flesh. Until now.

Used to be i could carry on no matter what, tired or aching or hungry or distraught, i would finish what I started, do what I said I was going to do, keep my promises. Nope. Naps take priority now.

Take my balcony, but not too far because I love it and it is my summer home. It has taken me some time this year to get it ready for summer, first because of the long late cold spring, if you can call it that, we suffered through in Ontario, and then because I could do only so much at a time before I could physically do no more. I guess it’s called ageing, hard to reconcile oneself to.

And then there was the planting of the back-40 (it felt like that, just putting in bedding plants. for goodness sake), and the clean-up, and the same new rules applied, the rules that say take your time, wait till tomorrow, don’t bother. I have never left a task unfinished before. Now it takes me several days to complete it.

I’m just saying.

But I’m pleased to be back in the warmth again, and my fuschia this year has more buds ready to blossom than I have ever had—all those little ballerinas in their pink and white tutus.

I’m caught up now. It didn’t take that long.

We’ll find out-—but not today. You and i have both had enough sad news. I’m going to look at some more words:

gamalog: not online: This is a term for a simpleton, heard in the Gaeltacht region of Ireland.

sordor noun [ mass noun ] chiefly literary, physical or moral sordidness. the cleaned-up sordor of Soho side streets. ORIGIN early 19th cent.: from sordid, on the pattern of the pair squalid, squalor .

ghazal noun (in Middle Eastern and Indian literature and music) a lyric poem with a fixed number of verses and a repeated rhyme, typically on the theme of love, and normally set to music. ORIGIN via Persian from Arabic ġazal .

shambolic adjective informal, chiefly Brit. chaotic, disorganized, or mismanaged. shambolically adverb ORIGIN 1970s: from shambles, probably on the pattern of symbolic.

cannabinoid noun [ mass noun ] Chemistry, any of a group of closely related compounds which include cannabinol and the active constituents of cannabis.

HERE’S A NICE ONE:

hendiadys noun [ mass noun ] the expression of a single idea by two words connected with ‘and’, e.g. nice and warm, when one could be used to modify the other, as in nicely warm. ORIGIN late 16th cent.: via medieval Latin from Greek hen dia duoin ‘one thing by two’.

echidna noun a spiny insectivorous egg-laying mammal with a long snout and claws, native to Australia and New Guinea. Also called spiny anteater. ●Family Tachyglossidae, order Monotremata: two genera and species. ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: modern Latin, from Greek ekhidna ‘viper’, also the name of a mythical creature which gave birth to the Hydra; compare with ekhinos ‘sea urchin, hedgehog’.

That’s enough. I have to cook dinner — every night. Chicken livers and mushrooms with carmelized onions, mini potatoes, roasted parsnips, and if I’m up to it, steamed broccoli.

anon