2026 Life Logs, Day 236: From What’s App to Monarchs with Lunch In-Between
Date: Monday, August 24, 2026
Weather: Beautiful Day; High Temp 81, Low 59 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
The weather is perfect right now. Warm days and cool nights, no air conditioning needed, and today beautiful sunshine. My day started at Bridges getting my sister Patsy on a video call with her daughter Janet. Janet has a rare form of Alzheimer’s that causes blindness before total mental decline. At only 64, Janet has to live in an assisted living facility that can accommodate her needs. She has lost all executive functioning, but she still knows most people. It is a very sad situation, but getting Patsy and Janet connected via a What’s App video call today was wonderful. Our nephew Rex and his wife Diana were visiting with Janet this morning in Columbus, Ohio, before they traveled on to Cincinnati. Rex was able to handle the technology on Janet’s end and I on Patsy’s end, and we had a great conversation. And prior to the call, Patsy was reading a card sent to her from her sister-in-law, Judy Aylestock.
Patsy seems to be settling into her life at Bridges and was animated and happy today. The move here has been hard, but I think it is paying off. It is wonderful to see her be so contented.
I left Bridges just in time to be only 10 minutes late for a birthday luncheon with the Sensational Six.
This is my new name for the group of us who get together to celebrate our birthdays. We are the women from our dining-in group which was formed in 2017. Somewhere along the line, the women in the group decided to also get together for birthday luncheons. Today was a celebration of Olivia White’s 89th birthday which was actually on July 26. This was the first date that all six of us were available and we met at The Chart Room at Kingman Marina in Bourne. I decided to give us the name of the Sensational Six today, but tonight when I was searching for the French translation (six sensationnels), I saw that the original Sensational Six were the original six core Disney animated characters—Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy, and Pluto. I do not think those characters apply to our Sensational Six, but I thought it was an interesting piece of information.
On my way home from lunch, I stopped by Bruce and Jane Woodin’s to participate in the release of a couple of Bruce’s Monarch butterflies. For many years, I did this with my first grade students and I still love seeing them fly into the natural world. At release time, my students used to chant, “I’m free, I’m free. And I can fly anywhere I want to be.” That place for Monarchs is Mexico.
The last activity of the day was picking Ollie up from an afternoon of playing golf. He was not happy with his performance today, but he said he was nervous as he was playing with new people. He is glad he has the rest of this week to practice before tryouts for the high school team.
