2026 Life Logs, Day 220: New Balance
Date: Saturday, August 8, 2026
Weather: Sunny, Hot, with a Wonderful Breeze; High Temp 83, Low 71 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I do wear New Balance sneakers, but my ‘new balance’ is trying to mesh my life with my sister’s life in memory care. How much time should I spend there? Every day? Once or twice a week? And how do I balance this with my already too busy life? These are questions that are going to take me a very long time to come to grips with. But right now, I just need to keep dealing with dealing with all of my sister’s different health issues while still trying to live my life. Not easy.

Today I divided the day into thirds. I spent my morning visiting my sister and then driving to Centerville to the Masonic Lodge there that has free medical equipment. I had emailed them to see if they have what is called a high-low hospital bed with a scoop mattress. At least that is what I am told to look for. Since I did not hear back from them in the 24-hour period promised, I drove there this morning and met the gentleman in charge. I found out that the beds are kept in Mashpee and that you can’t really see them. You just tell them what you need and they deliver it with a minimum donation of $100 expected. Once I figure out how to get Patsy’s present bed disassembled and out of her room, I will call and the Masonic Lodge will deliver.

By the time I got back to Falmouth, it was almost 12:30 pm, so I went directly to the Green to check in with Jim Newman on things we need to do this coming week. I then went home to spend 30 minutes with Shadow before heading out to do door knocking for local candidates. I have volunteered to do this for about 6 hours each week and today was my first 2-hour shift. A lot of people are not home on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, but you leave literature and do catch a few people.

So , my morning was dedicated to my sister, my afternoon was dedicated to civic responsibilities, and tonight was dedicated to me. I watched three episodes of Grantchester on public television. I am feeling incredibly guilty for spending almost 3 hours watching television, but it was what I needed to do. And I am considering doing a similar thing tomorrow morning by going to the local theater to see The Odyssey at 10 am. Then I will head to Bridges to visit with my sister in the afternoon and spend tomorrow night preparing for Tuesday night’s Board of Library Trustees meeting. As treasurer, I have to generate the annual report to the town and present the proposed budget for 2026-2027 for Tuesday night’s meeting. And in between, I will spend as much time with Shadow as I can. He seems to be doing fine, but he has been left alone a lot in the past two weeks.

2026 Life Logs, Day 219: Hot Drive Home from Boothbay to Cape Cod
Date: Friday, August 7, 2026
Weather: Sunny, Hot and Humid; High Temp 86, Low 71 degrees F (Falmouth)
Location: Back Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

The power was still off when I went to bed last night, but it was back on this morning. Heather, Jed, and boys got home from the gathering at The Rock at 11:30ish last night, and Heather said the power came on around midnight. I tucked in just after they arrived and I must have been in deep sleep by midnight as I had no idea it was back on until this morning. I left the farm around 10:30, stopped in the first town on the way home, Wiscasset, to fil up the gas tank and get an iced tea, and I was on my way. There was a fair bit of traffic, not really too bad, and with only one other drive-thru stop for another iced tea, I come over the bridge just a little over 5 hours later just in time to pick Shadow up from his grooming appointment at Pampered Paws, just on the Cape side of the bridge. They texted he was ready while I was waiting in the traffic to cross the bridge, so the timing was perfect.

But after hours in my very hot car (the temperature in Boston was 92 while I was driving through), and without stopping to get out to walk around, it has taken me all evening to feel somewhat normal. I do not have air conditioning in my car, and even with the window wide open, it was really hot today. I felt ‘baked’ when I got home. I even worried I had some sort of heat exhaustion. But I am fine now. It was hotter in Boothbay yesterday and today than it was here, and this morning there was absolutely no breeze there. I didn’t feel a difference in the temperature until I was about 5 miles from the bridge. It was still hot, but there was a marked difference in how it felt.

I think Shadow and I will sleep on the couch in the living room tonight, closer to the window air conditioner. The coolness does not reach my bedroom on the other end of the house, and after being so hot today, I do not want to spend the night in a hot bedroom.

2026 Life Logs, Day 218: Celebration of Life for Sue Welsh Reed
Date: Thursday, August 6, 2026
Weather: Sunny and Hot; High Temp 90, Low 69 degrees F
Location: At Home with the Goldstones in Boothbay, ME

After a lovely breakfast with my friends Detta and Tom Porat on their back deck overlooking Great Bay in New Hampshire, I headed to Boothbay in Maine. I arrived at Marti’s ( Jed’s mother) summer home where all the Goldstones were staying at about 10:15 am. At 11 am, we all drove to the southern tip of Southport Island to the Newagon Seaside Inn for Sue Welsh Reed’s Celebration of Life.

Sue was Jed’s aunt, Marti’s sister. Mark and I knew Sue and her husband, John Reed, and spent many nights in their home in Cambridge when Mark was undergoing chemotherapy at Mass General in Boston. I knew some of her life history, but I learned so much more today. Sue was born in 1936, attended Smith College and then went on to get a graduate degree in Fine Arts at Harvard. She worked at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, becoming the Curator of Prints and Drawings. When she retired in 2005, she was named Curator Ermita of Prints and Drawings and was most proud was the award of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, awarded by the French Ministry of Culture in 2006. As part of her work, she traveled to France and Italy and was a treasured mentor to others in the world of prints and drawings. Today, many of those people were there to celebrate her life. Some spoke, but others just quietly shared their wonderful memories of Sue. After the formal tribute to her life, we had a lovely buffet lunch and many of us spent some time walking the outside paths at the lovely seaside resort.

Then this evening, family members gathered at The Rock on Southport. I have heard about The Rock for years but had never been there. I knew it was a summer cottage where Sue and John spent their summers. John’s family was from Southport. ‘Auntie’ owned the cottage known as The Rock because it literally sits on a huge rock overlooking the water.

‘Auntie’ was an artist known for her hand drawn maps of the area. What I didn’t know until tonight is that the cottage is filled with family history with written descriptions on all of the wooden trim pieces around the windows and doors in the cottage. I loved it when tonight someone pointed out the written description of the main events from the day of Heather and Jed’s wedding in Boothbay, September 6, 2003.
I left the younger crowd at The Rock and returned to Marti’s just as the last light of the day was fading. But when I drove up the driveway to Marti’s, there was no light anywhere. It was pitch black. Sue’s best friend from childhood, who remained close with Sue for her entire life, is staying at Marti’s and the two of them did not go to The Rock tonight. I just couldn’t figure out why they would be sitting in a dark house. It was too early for them to be in bed. I had to use my phone flashlight to find my way up the stairs to the front door and when I entered, I found them upstairs scrambling to find flashlights and a lantern as there was no electricity. Marti got a notice that 4,000 customers were without power and about that time I heard from Heather that there was also no electricity at The Rock. The group there didn’t care as they were outside sitting around a fire. But the three of us talked for bit and then decided to turn in.

2026 Life Logs, Day 217: From Cape Cod to Greenland, NH
Date: Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Weather: Another Beautiful Day; High Temp 82 Low 62 degrees F
Location: At Home with Friends, Tom and Detta Porat, Greenland, NH

After a busy morning, I left Falmouth headed for Greenland, New Hampshire. This is near Portsmouth and it is where my good friends, Tom and Detta Porat, live. Their beautiful home sits right on the edge of Great Bay and it is always a delight to visit with them and enjoy their beautiful surroundings together. Tonight, we had dinner on the back deck and watched a gorgeous sunset.

Unfortunately, I have to move on tomorrow morning, and they are headed to Connecticut. But I was very excited to hear that they might be coming to Cape Cod in their small trawler on a weekend trip That will give us another chance to visit!

2026 Life Logs, Day 216: A Full Day
Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2026
Weather: Beautiful Day; High Temp 80, Low 62 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Shadow and I were up early to take our walk before I left to take neighbor Andy to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston for a scheduled heart ablation. We left at 7:45 am, and when we got to Route 24, Andy wanted to stop at the service area to get one last ‘liquid fill-up’ before the surgery. I waited in the car and immediately I saw a message from Bridges pop up on my phone. It just said to call the nurse on duty as soon as possible. Patsy was found on the floor beside her bed again this morning for the third time in seven weeks. That got my heart pounding. When I called, I found out that Patsy was fine, but it is time to investigate renting a hospital bed with a special scoop mattress that is supposed to keep people from falling out. A job for next week.

Andy returned to the car, Patsy was fine, so on we went. The trip took two hours door to door, but that is about par for the course at rush hour. On my way home, I drove a little out of the way to stop at the Wrentham Outlets. I really needed a pair of shoes other than sneakers. One pair was $80, but if you bought a second pair, it was half price. So now I have new summer casual shoes. The ones I have are about 8 years old, so it was time.

I stopped at Bridges on my way home, but Patsy was getting her hair done and I couldn’t visit with her. I wanted to check out the ulcers on her feet that were reported to me last night, but I traveled on home as I had to be back there at 4 pm for a support group meeting. I could check out the ulcers then. Shadow and I had some nice playtime outside in the sunshine and then it was time to go back. But just before I left, I saw another message pop up on my phone. This time it was a Bridges Facebook post featuring the artwork of my sister Patsy from the morning. Someone was working with her one-on-one and she painted a fruit tree in bloom on a green hillside. I was amazed. Her hair looked awful, but I was impressed with the artwork.

I am so pleased to see that they have her doing things like this. But the hair … this week her hair set lasted 6 days instead of the 4 days the week prior. That was an improvement and maybe I am just going to have to get used to a couple of bad hair days for her each week. The only alternative would be for me to transport her out to hairdresser every Friday as the Bridges hairdresser only comes on Tuesdays. In the scheme of things, this is not the priority right now. But Patsy has always been meticulous about her appearance, so I want to help her continue that tradition.

After the support group at Bridges, I visited with Patsy and took off her compression stockings to take photos of the two ulcers to send to my friend Jane Woodin, a retired visiting nurse. Patsy’s primary care is coming to check on these sores tomorrow and an order has been initiated to get a visiting nurse to visit to do wound care. Neither spot is terrible, the one on her left heel better than the one on the right. But when you have diabetes, ulcers like this can easily get out of control. I am so thankful that the CNA’s at Bridges noticed these places and reported them right away. But Jane wanted me to document what they look like now and so she could give me advice on what needs to happen. Thank you, Jane, for your sage advice.

Tomorrow morning after an Indivisible Steering Committee meeting and an oil change, I drive to New Hampshire to have dinner with Detta and Tom Porat, and maybe their son Matthew. I was Matthew’s first grade teacher and it would be wonderful to catch on his adult life. Then on Thursday morning, I drive on to Boothbay for the Celebration of Life of Jed’s Aunt Sue. And then I will head home on Friday.

2026 Life Logs, Day 215: One Step Forward, One Step Back
Date: Monday, August 3, 2026
Weather: Cloudy and Windy, Rain PM; High Temp 80, Low 62 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Plans for working in my garden just didn’t materialize today. I wanted so badly to do some serious weeding to try and save the kale that is dying because it is being choked out by weeds. Gardening has always been to me what I think meditation is for others. And I had really hoped to be on a bi-monthly Zoom meeting with the Falmouth Immigrant Rights Coalition. That didn’t happen either. I ended up dealing with bureaucracy regarding my sister’s change from NC Medicare Advantage to MA straight Medicare with supplementary insurance. The changeover was supposed to happen at midnight on Friday, August 1, but I still don’t know if it happened. But other than the bureaucratic challenges, everything else seemed to be going ahead on an even keel with Patsy. The switch from insulin injections to Jardiance, a pill, seems to be working, so I was beginning to relax a bit. But when I visited this afternoon, I was told by one of the CNAs as I was leaving that Patsy has developed two ulcers, one on each foot. That is not good news for a diabetic. But they had already taken her to dinner when I found out, so I didn’t want to disturb her eating. I will go tomorrow to check this out. Memory care nor assisted living facilities are allowed to do wound care, so I either do it myself or get a referral for a visiting nurse. I came home and did the communication necessary to get a referral going, but that will take a few days. In the meantime, tomorrow afternoon I will go examine the ulcers so I can describe the problem in detail to my friend Jane Woodin who just retired a year of so ago as a visiting nurse in facilities like Bridges. I am taking my neighbor, Andy, to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston tomorrow morning as he is having a heart ablation for his Afib tomorrow. But when I get home, I will go straight to Bridges and deal with my sister’s situation. I never, ever, never ever wanted to be a nurse, but life happens and you have to rise to the occasion. Thankfully, I have nurse friends who are willing to help me. So the bottom line is that the blood sugar numbers are looking better for my sister and that is one step forward. But now we have the ulcers, and that is one stop back. So, we’ll call it even. At least things are not just going backwards!

2026 Life Logs, Day 214: Out of Focus
Date: Sunday, August 2, 2026
Weather: Partly Cloudy; High Temp 75, Low 66 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I made the decision to not visit my sister today, to try and get back to life as usual, but it was a very slow process. I just can’t seem to focus, so I did a little gardening, some necessary shopping for my sister, and truly not much else. With the help of a friend, I did find a high school student who will take Shadow for walks and feed him while I head to Maine once again on Wednesday as my neighbors who usually take care of him are both unavailable. The last couple of months have been so intense that I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it is so hard for me to regain focus on my life as well as my sisters. But I am finding it harder than expected. It is obviously going to take more than a few days for me to get back into the swing of things. But I will get there.

2026 Life Logs, Day 213: A New Month, A New Beginning
Date: Saturday, August 1, 2026
Weather: Mostly Sunny; High Temp 80, Low 68 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA

I spent a great deal of April and May dealing with my sister’s health issues from afar. Then we decided to move her here and figuring that out took the first 3 week of June, and then we moved her here and the last 6 weeks I have spend totally dealing with all of the challenges of moving a 93 year old from assisted living to memory care and re-establishing her life in a new place. New ‘home’, new furniture, new doctors, new schedule, new physical therapists, new health challenges, new insurance, new issues of dealing with diabetes management, and on and on and on. But all of a sudden, it feels like we might be over the hump. Still plenty of details to attend to, but I an almost breath again. Maybe it was leaving for a couple of days or maybe things are just getting better. But today, I lived on Judy time. Instead of getting out of bed early to get to Bridges to see Patsy, I slept in, went on a nice, long walk with Shadow, sat down and ate breakfast at home instead of in the car and on the run, and I read a bit of yesterday’s Enterprise for the first time in weeks. By then it was time to go to the Green for the weekly rally for democracy, and afterwards, I came home and ate relaxed lunch before going to see my sister. Life felt almost normal for the first time in 6 weeks. I had a nice visit with my sister who continues to be very confused, but I even saw a difference in her today. She is still living in an alternate world of the past, but she was more alert than she has been since she arrived. On this first day of August, I have begun all out effort to get my life back to some semblance of normal. A new beginning.

2026 Life Logs, Day 212: Back Home from Visit in Boothbay, ME
Date: Friday, July 31, 2026
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds; High Temp 77, Low 67 degrees F
Location: Back Home with my Shadow, Falmouth, MA

Not much to report today. I left Boothbay at 10 am and arrived at Bridges to check in with my sister at 4 pm. She was fine. But I could only stay for a short time as I had to get home to call North Carolina Blue Cross Blue Shield Medicare Advantage membership services office to cancel her North Carolina health insurance. I talked to them a month ago and as I understood them, I was to call on the last day of the month to report her address change which would cancel her policy. Her Massachusetts coverage begins tonight at midnight. But evidently, I totally misunderstood. I could have reported the address change anytime during the month and it would not have been cancelled until tonight. And then a bigger problem came up. Although I have sent them my Healthcare Power of Attorney document twice before, they do not have it on file and I cannot cancel her insurance or change her address until they have processed the document. That takes 5-7 days. I was on the phone until 6:30 pm and was very frustrated. I have no idea if Patsy is going to affect the start of her switch to Massachusetts, but no one in North Carolina can talk to me about this until they have processed the Healthcare POA document. It was a very simple process to add Patsy to Massachusetts, but seemingly near impossible to exit North Carolina coverage. To be continued.

2026 Life Logs, Day 211: Happy Birthday to Coco and a Celebration of Life in Maine
Date: Thursday, July 30, 2026
Weather: Overcast, Misty Rain Off and On; High Temp 82, Low 65 degrees F (Boothbay)
Location: At Home with the Goldstones in Boothbay, ME

Today was a day of celebrations. At Finca Maravilla in Puerto Rico, Justin, Jo, and Ziggy were celebrating Coco’s 14th birthday. Jo wrote in a Facebook post that Coco is “a force of light and love” and I think that is wonderful description of my only granddaughter. She is smart and beautiful, caring and loving. She can be very dedicated and serious and the next minute telling silly jokes. Happy Birthday from Oma!

The other celebration today was in Boothbay, Maine, where we were celebrating the life of Becky Welch, wife of John IV, brother of Marti Goldstone, Jed’s mother. There was a funeral at the Congregational Church and then a celebration back on the Welch farm.
John Welch I bought the farm in Boothbay as his retirement home when he gave up his career as a sea captain. It was then inherited by John Welch II, then John Welch III, Marti’s father, who lived to be over a 100 years old. When he died, the farm was passed on to John IV, Marti’s brother and Becky’s husband. Before he died, he gave Marti, Jed’s mother, a plot on the farm where she and Donald built a seasonal home. Jed spent his summers growing up on the farm and it is a tradition for the family to have Christmas there. John IV’s son, John V was here today and his son, John VI who is 15. If John VI lives as long as his great grandfather, he could take the family far into the 22nd century. A lot of history and a lot of Johns! But the focus today was on Becky. I first met Becky on September 5th, 2003, at Heather and Jed’s wedding rehearsal dinner which took place on the farm. I didn’t know until today, that Heather and Jed were married on Becky’s birthday, September 6. Becky was a writer and because of that, at some point she started following my daily logs. I always welcomed her ‘edits’ that she passed along from time to time. Our writing endeavors made us kindred souls. Plus, we were born in the same year, 1947, just six months apart. Today was a wonderful celebration of Becky’s life, and I am thankful that I was invited to be with Jed’s family to share this special day.

Since there was a church funeral, the Goldstone ‘boys’ (I include Jed, along with Sam, Jonah, and Ollie) were all dressed in suits today. It is a rare occasion to see them all dressed up in suits at the same time. In fact, maybe it was a first. I got a photo when we got back to the farm, but not before they shed their ties. Regardless, they are a handsome foursome.