Thursday, November 20, 2025

 Finally, the last few days it's become cold autumn and I'm enjoying it.  Our summer is desert hot, naturally, and lasts into October.  Generally we can count on it being non-sweaty by Halloween.  This year it cooled down but remained in the 70's low 80's a little past.  The rainstorms we're having now have cooled it right on down. Today the lows and highs were both in the 40's. I enjoy all the seasons, having spent the first nineteen years of my life growing up where there were two ... cool and warm/hot.   I can only recall one time during that time-span having frost on the window of my car and was positively in a tizzy at the craziness of that.

I lived in a few places between nineteen and thirty? thirty-one?  I came to enjoy having four distinct seasons.  I find that I'm always glad for the new season, but then ready for it to end before it does.  (Kinda like my marriages.  😐)

I've been in this high desert mountain valley for thirty-nine or forty years now ... I'd have to think harder than I want to just this minute to be positive which.  The area is no longer primarily rural, and I miss that small-town feel, but any small town can become big over time; particularly when the property prices are significantly lower than the larger cities 'down the hill.'

Today was gym day, and after the workout I snapped these shots as I snarfed down protein and carbs at Cafe' Car in the parking lot. The view of the mountain is only the top portion, the rest being obscured by clouds. The mountains have gotten a bit of snow, but none has fallen here in the valley. It's quite something on warm clear sunny mornings to watch the clouds slowly roll up over the top of the mountains and down the side while the sky is the bluest blue and the sun is bright.  I never tire of it. (It makes me think sometimes of Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. It's been years since I read it, but I remember passages about the sky and clouds in juxtaposition to the landscapes of New Mexico, so different from France where the archbishop grew up. I'd go back and read some of those passages but donated most of my books several years ago as the print was too small to read anymore.)  Today was rainy and cold, so the light was subdued and the sky all clouds.

Concerning the gym, I've been working out with a trainer for about four months give or take, and it's a good thing.  While I enjoyed the senior-focused gym, and it was a good starting place after decades out of any gym, I am gaining more at this larger gym.  I'm building muscle safely for functional fitness.  The trainer teaches me how to be safe while I do it, factoring in my previous injuries and arthritis. He helps push me just that little bit more than maybe I'd push myself.  I still ride my seated elliptical bike at home, and complete PT moves for my shoulders and knees, but I work out a little harder. Going to the gym in person was the impetus needed to get me re-motivated to work out.  I have purchased a several new sets of dumbells for home as I progressed up weights.  The serendipitous thing about my trainer:  I was his seventh grade English teacher and we attend the same church. We discovered this when he was my assigned trainer at the new gym. He recognized me vaguely, then checked his yearbook and brought it in to show me.  He is in his forties now, and it is delightful to have a friendship with a former student ... we talk through the workouts and I tease him some Sundays about how sad it is for a church brother to try and kill me in the gym.  I did tell him that I'm glad I was a teacher he liked, or as my trainer he could really hurt me for life.  

It's time to get off this screen and move or I'll be stiff.

Happy Thursday evening!  💋💕