Eating well - The Cost of Being Sick / Poem: Rustle of his Skirts

Right outside my front door are these fragrant white bushes. Shhh! You can hear the buzzing of the bees.

Judy Lipshutz came to visit. She's a librarian at Beth Sholem synagogue, the Frank Lloyd Wright one in Elkins Park, PA.
Judy told me amazing stories of people she has 'saved': People on the verge of suicide whom she stopped in their tracks.

Not only does Judy have a master's in library science, but she has another one in Dance Therapy, which she got from Hahnemann, where I got my master's in group process and group therapy. We studied under many of the same teachers!

Speaking of the other kind of 'saved,' dyou believe they are beatifying Pope John Paul II after his horrific record protecting priests and bishops who were pedophiles!

Pope John Paul II, Karol Józef Wojtyła, 1920 - 2005

This is disgraceful and a blight on any religion.

That said, he wielded an enormous amount of power and was truly a pope of the people. He published Apologies to many people - including Galileo - and groups that the Catholic Church had hurt since its founding, including the Jews.

Now that takes chutzpah and conscience!
What's for dinner, Ruthie? My friend Pam London Barrett, the psychiatrist, was almost gonna come over for a home-cooked meal but she decided to go to the movies instead.

I asked her to be a guest speaker at New Directions in June and she said Yes!

Pam singing at SweetBytes Cafe, at one of our Fundraising Serenades.

Back to the phood:

Shrimp and cocktail sauce. I buy enuf for three days.

In front on L, is my delicious Lima Bean Soup, sweet soup from the beans which I soaked overnite and then cooked w/ low sodium chicken broth, sliced carrots, onions and mushrooms.

I sprinkled w/ parm cheese, left over from when Sarah was here in early April and made a scrumptious dinner.

Spoke w/ her last nite. She's hard at work as research asst for Steve Friedman on his book about Xtreme Sports.

Before every meal, I take my blood sugar. The lil strips on the right cost 80 effing dollars for a box of 50. I am experimenting on how to reuse the strips. After breakfast I ran to the kitchen sink, washed off the strip w/ water, and will re-use before lunch.

The machine on the left is the lancet, the thing I prick my finger with. Ouch! But only for a second. I re-use the needles once or twice.

Before I inject, I wash my hands w/ Purell, including every precious side-of-my fingertip, plus a spot on my - take your pick - belly, arm or thigh (the visiting nurse taught me this)- prick my finger, write down the result in my notebook, and then select an insulin site.

Novolog is the preloaded insulin in the BLUE container.

Lantus is in the gray container.

Scott's grandfather, his dad's dad, named Sy (short for Seymour), had insulin-dependent diabetes. He went blind. And had foot wounds.

That's one of the reasons I've gotta wear good shoes, like the new sandals I'm wearing now. You'll see em later.

On my front porch are daisies and some strawberries that I planted last year which never bloomed. Hopefully they'll produce sweet strawberries this year. Note to myself: remember to water them! Oh, there are my new sandals, made by SAS (never heard of em either) for $126.

This is my new tree stump. To get to the train, Scott cuts thru Keystone Screw, and he saw a bunch of trees they'd chopped down. We drove back there and I picked out this b'ful stump for my front yard. My old stump was falling to pieces.

Stumps are wonderful in nature. Insects eat them and the birds come and eat the insects. Then they can drink from my birdbath.

In my back garden are my pink bleeding hearts and ferns which grow like weeds.

After Pope John II died in 2005, I composed an ode to him. Unfortunately I can't find it. Hmm, I may have a printout of it.

Found this poem instead:

RUSTLE OF HIS SKIRTS

I always thought it was the dying
I was scared of,

The final blast of light, sputtering
but a few seconds longer

before its headlong rush into eternity.

Then I learned it was not the dying but
the getting there that scares me more,

The measuring out of days in shards of light
Hitting the backyard fence

The seamed brow weighted down by passing religious moments
that never truly declare themselves.

One summer I met a red-robed monk

traveling from Tibet.

We passed on the stair,
I going down for water,

He up to lecture in the Far East Room.

I could not help but smile

when out of the silence

I heard the rustle of his skirts:

A most pleasant and joyous sound
That lingered long after

he was gone.