The Nothing Grind

 I call it the Grind---when I just have to slug through.

I'm doing that here, with this darn knee thing.  The isolation it produces is staggering.  I feel for people without ability to get out much who don't have family or nearby friends.

Still, I'm surviving just fine.  

My former neighbor stood me up yet again last night.  She'd invited me over for pizza and game playing.  I asked what time, and got no response.  At 5:30, I finally texted her again and she was in Springfield or Eugene with her roommate at something her roommate had tickets for.  

I cut it off with her.  Makes me feel like crap when someone does what she does so often.  To plan on something, get ready, not plan dinner here, and then she doesn't even have the courtesy to let me know?  But this is her way.  She's not going to change.  I told her by text this morning, goodbye, to never ask me again to do anything with her.  Should have done so quite some time ago.  

We're lucky here in the valley.  Outside of a couple really hot days, our weather has been mild.  High 70's yesterday.  Low 80's today.  Same for rest of week, maybe even a bit of rain Tuesday.   It's actually been perfectly wonderful summer weather here, not too hot, not too cold, a bit of rain here and there, with the  thunderstorms (last Friday).  Can't complain about the valley weather so far.   Not when central and eastern are scorching and on fire and floods in parts of the country.  We are Lucky!

I make myself get out of the house daily.  I take drives, to see if I can slowly get back into it, with my knee, if I do it daily, gradually increasing length.  I went to a vender event at the church a couple blocks from here yesterday.  Gleaners were doing it, for a fundraiser.  It's a different Gleaners group than I was in.   I wanted a donut and found one there, at the church gym kitchen counter. It was not a donut, turns out, even though it looked like one.  It had a cake bottom turned soggy, because they'd been packaged probably while still warm, in an individual food storage container.  I tried one bite and then accidentally dropped it.   Oh well, the $3 went to a good cause.

Then I went to Lebanon, to a Saturday vendor market set up in a parking lot.  There I got a piece of fudge from the old man who sells his baked goods to, as he told me one year, get out of the house, and I also bought a palio muffin.  The lady who made the muffins is a bee lover and the bits of muffin she had for samples were delicious.  There are greens in the muffin!  I saved it for breakfast this morning.   The fudge was too sweet. I couldn't eat more than  a couple of bites.

I went on to the Mennonite Store, where they sell overstock of all sorts, and damaged goods, etc.  They didn't have any especially good deals there.   With that store, because their goods vary tremendously, I check back once or twice a week, if in the area, to see what they might have on deals.

Today I'm going to head to a park by a river.   Maybe down at the Calapooia River or up the N. Santiam.