Before the deluge, Day with Sister Donna, Meeting with the Christians, Lo Blood Sugar, Recycling with Scott

Everyone is scurrying around today as Hurricane Sandy gets ready to pound us. Lemme find some recent fotos of her.

 Hey I like this one. Obama is keeping tabs on it. Judy Diaz and I are fearful he's gonna lose. Women watch out!

Eastern Cuba. Dig the old car! And lift the g'dam embargo.

Cautionido while wading thru the streets in Cuba.

Thother day my little sister Donna Cartagena of Hatboro, PA and I went on a fun driving tour of Eastern Montgomery and Bucks County. We're both losing our minds and can hardly remember anything.

Would you like to come driving with us?

Oh, you don't want to?

Look at what you'll miss. But first lemme change the CD from Bela Fleck to Joe Bonasso who I got free when I donated to WHYY-FM, along with Newsweek mag, which will no longer be published after the first of the year.

Dare you to find one interesting article in there, Tina Brown! Other than the Afterlife one.

Me and my beautiful houses. Gosh, I wish I lived there.

Oh, there's mice in the basement? And the inside floor is missing some planks?

 What's this, Ruthie! Oh! It's Solly Farms in Bucks County getting ready for the influx of schoolchildren to pick their own punkins.

You can actually enter this huge pumpkin at Solly's.

We're back in Donna's neighborhood. She lives directly behind Crooked Billet Elementary where her kids Melissa and Nikki went to school.

Two years ago a junkyard was erected right next to the school.

The noise has ruined Donna's life.

From her window she sees these steel beams ruining her view of the tranquil green grass at Crooked Billet.

The owner of the company, she said, is a very nice man, one of her customers at Starbux. At Donna's request he made a few changes, but basically nothing can be done about the noise.

Klang! Klang! Kerplunk!

Dig this house right next door to the junkyard. Pure junk.

Coming home from Donna's I saw these two beautiful matching couches on the grass. I slowed down and looked longingly at them.

What does it mean that I love couches so much? Hmmm, maybe I'll write an essay about it to discover why. Or see a psychoanalyst. Maybe Robert Gordon in Allentown.

 Donna called today and asked if she could sleep over on Monday nite when her condo falls into the creek.

Sure, I said.

Broken bridge across troubled waters, the only way to get to Donna's condo. So you use a bridge further down. They're awaiting a buyout from the township and the state. Donna had fish swimming in her living room.

Last nite I went back to the Willow Grove Bible Church, 7 minutes away on Division Avenue and Everett Street for their monthly COFFEE HOUSE.

 I'd said on FB to Kim Ruby, the event planner, that I would come hungry, and I did.

This is the prior month's food.

The theme of course was Halloween so there were lotsa pumpkin treats. Baby, I was outa control! When I left I didn't go directly to my car but walked at a fast pace around the dark neighborhood for 20 minutes. I only meant to walk for 10 but I got lost.

An awesome band named Lotus Hill performed.

What do they do during the day? Software engineer, electrical engineer (I think), music teacher, band teacher.

Really good.

This foto of the CoffeeShop was on FB but is typical of the family entertainment offered.

I sat with a guy named Kevin McKay and two of his four kids. We played a game with blocks, gosh I wish I could remember the name. Zenga? Junga? Mahjong?

Wanted to converse w someone and Kevin was a great talker. I asked him what his green wristband meant - a horrid disease perhaps? He said it was a reminder to pray for two people.

I told him that as a Jewish nonbeliever I don't pray.

He was really curious about how someone couldn't believe in God.

It certainly has a lot to do, we agreed, with the way a person is raised. I used to believe, but I stopped. Can't rightly remember why.

Told him that I did pray the other day, tho. I'd sent Tom Murt, who's running for PA state rep, an email that Scott's Transportation Workers' Union endorsed Murt, the only Republican they endorsed.

Murt wrote back thanking me for the email and said his dad just died. We were a very close family of five boys, he said, and of course he was upset.

He asked me to pray for him. So I did. I just closed my eyes, put my hands together the way you do in Here is the church, here is the steeple, and asked God to bless their fine family.

Quite honestly, now that I'm thinking about it, Obama's insane performance in the first debate, where he behaved like a boxer throwing the game, seems like an intervention from God. How could this famously articulate man lose the power of speech?

When Judy Diaz and I were talking earlier she mentioned Romney's amazing transformation into a gifted speaker! How could that happen?

I said, Judy they drilled the man. He took off work and they taught him how to talk.

Now, here's the exciting part of the blog, the real reason I wanted to get on here.

So, when I came home from the Coffee House, where I had eaten two scrumptious chocolate chip cookies, an iced soft pumpkin cookie, and a fabulous pear tart (OMG), I looked at my blood sugar.

205.

Then I made my near-fatal mistake, injected 12 units and went directly to bed, exhausted.

Oh dear. Wrong photo. This is when I was 302d (involuntarily committed) for my first manic episode and lying in Bldg 16 at Norristown State Hospital.

Actually, this foto is by the noted Mary Ellen Mark, who did Prom Photos at the downtown Art Museum.

Okay, I'm fast asleep and wake up with a start at 2 am.

Something is not right. I do not feel good. But my mind is not working well.

Aha, thinks I. You're having a lo blood sugar attack.

I pull myself outa bed, turn on the light and walk downstairs into the kitchen.

I don't know what to do.

I can't think.

I lay my arm and head on the kitchen table. "This is how you die," I say to myself.

"Eat something!"

Intuitively I reach on top of the fridge and luckily one of my Kashi bars is up there. I eat them only when I have lo blood sugar. Sarah eats em when she comes to visit.

I grab a scissors, open the wrapper, and crunch it down while I'm pacing thru the dark living room.

Then I reach into my pocketbook and find another one to eat.

I am saved!

Okay, today is Recycling Day at Springfield High School, anything with a cord.

Scott and I set off with the car loaded!

We passed the beautiful Curtis Arboretum.

Look, Scott, I said. Here's the beautiful Curtis Arboretum.

"I seen it before," he said.

"Well, look again!" I said. "Maybe we'll go here on one of our Sunday walks."

Then we spot what we think is Springfield Township High School. We pull in and no one is there. How can this be?

Well, it's the middle school.

A woman is running around the track far away. We ask her where to go and she gesticulates over to the right.

We arrive and everything is beautifully organized with orange cones and men directing traffic.

This is my old MacIntosh computer. I believe this is the one that was donated to New Directions by Rohn and Haas in Bristol PA. I used it a long time. Palatino became my favorite font.

Bye bye sweetheart!

Nice gray keyboard doesn't know what's gonna become of it, but we do. We keep mum.

This handsome devil helped us unload the car.

Oh, dearie me, I'm feeling so sad for getting rid of the Macs which were gathering dust on the top shelf in Dan's old bedroom.

Need a big fat ole TV anyone? With tubes inside?

Three or four tractor-trailers were parked waiting for their cargo. Montgomery County works with WeRecycle and served 10,000 households last year. They earned $34,000 for all these antiquated items that made us so so happy when we first bought em!

On the way over, there was a lotta traffic. We were stopped at a lite and a guy was laying out Obama signs. I rolled down my window and asked for one.

Altho I'm not a praying man, I'll put in a prayer for Obama THAT HE WIN!!!