Miss me? I spent almost a week in the Atlanta area playing golf with a group of women I met nearly 20 years ago. We are older and not without our share of medical maladies, but we still love the game and had a great time socializing over drinks and snacks after a long day on the course.
We are mostly in our 60s – the youngest 59 and the oldest maybe 72? I’m not sure. We are also mostly retired, although some volunteer, and those jobs sound way too much like work to me. There was lively political conversation, me being the only left coast representative but not the only liberal. There were a few who voted for Trump, but we managed to get through it without fisticuffs. Wine helped.
I was surprised by the cornucopia of shit gone wrong. Among us we had breast cancer, ovarian cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, alopecia and a 7-pound abdominal tumor. My friend with the abdominal tumor has a scar that rivals mine – I know because we looked. Twice. She was pleased to see it goes from kind of an outie to an innie after 18 years. I said if you squint, it looks like six-pack abs.
Sadly, I did not take cannabis. For my knees and other inflammation-related issues, I substituted with Penetrex with Arnica, and it worked great. However, my post-mastectomy pain is neurological, and Penetrex doesn’t touch that. I also have a weird neurological thing on my back called Notalgia Paresthetica, which stands for “Itches like a Bastard.” By the third day without cannabis cream, my back itched and mastectomy scars were burning. The stuff works!
In kind of a weird twist, I saw a Gordon Biersch pub at the Atlanta airport while I was waiting around for my return flight back to Sacramento. The brewery was founded here in California, but I’ve never been. I believe they either invented or popularized garlic fries, so I popped in and had some. Yum, yum, yum, although I did have garlic poisoning afterward. Funny I would finally try them in Atlanta.
As for other entertainment, I was #1 on the library waiting list for Lethal White, the new Cormoran Strike novel. I would classify this as detective fiction. This is fourth in the series by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith. It’s the best yet (and biggest yet at 647 pages). I was just getting to juicy parts on the way home when our plane began to descend, and I was mad. I could have flown in circles just to keep reading.
I’m kind of whipped after playing golf four days in a row and flying across the country twice. However, I had a great time! I hesitate to call it a vacation since I’m on permanent vacation, but it felt different than everyday life, which should resume today with a long list of stuff to do.
However, I’m on page 545, so I am going to call it a vacation, replete with vacation reading, and I will be extending it just a little bit longer.
My son challenged me with, “What do you need a vacation from?” the first time I went on one in retirement. Yes, it’s a vacation. As you said, “…different from everyday life…”
Oh, good! I hated to give up on the idea of vacation. We might have to talk about weekends next …