The house I moved from had 11 rooms not counting the attic, the basement, the screen porch, pantries and hallways. If I remember correctly, at one time we had five sofas. It didn’t seem excessive at the time but looking back now, managing it was a full-time job even though I had several other full-time jobs.
 
My new home has three rooms counting the bathroom. Now, I think of each chair as its own room. The recliner is my TV room where I try not to sleep. The yellow chair is my reading room where naps are sweetest. The other yellow chair is where I write. The red chair is where I eat. And now I have only one sofa on which I sometimes watch TV, read, write or eat. Maybe I’ll call it my rumpus room.  
 

Milwaukee’s Fire Department just can’t stop dreaming up new ways to help people. Besides the usual heroics of dousing fires, manning Jaws of Life and saving lives now they’re in the business of averting health crises, of actually reducing 9-1-1 calls.
 
It’s called the Community Paramedics (CP) program. Specially-trained paramedics visit Milwaukee residents who suffer from chronic health issues and then these firefighters find ways to enhance citizens’ health and limit their need for 9-1-1 services. It could be as simple as purchasing a small refrigerator so that an insulin-dependent woman does not need to walk to her friend’s house when she needs her medicine. In 2017, 9-1-1 usage decreased 62% for enrollees in the CP program. 
 
That’s what I call above and beyond -- and inspiring.

https://city.milwaukee.gov/ImageLibrary/Groups/mfdAuthors/media/2017AnnualReport.pdf
 
 

Watching regular network TV is more relaxing than streaming videos because someone else curates my evening with police dramas cleaved by commercials and I can time pantry visits accordingly. Nothing salty or sweet can arrest my hunger as I try to pacify this false sense of intimacy.      
 
Streaming video is fussy with its endless options. And because Amazon and Netflix cycle to the next episode whether I’m conscious or not, the next streaming session requires futzing around to figure out where to begin again. Streaming feels floaty, ungrounded. It’s all sky. Food anchors me, breaks my trance.  
 
I rarely eat when I read. The oily fingerprints I might leave. The tea blot. Then the library fines. Hmm. Reading might be an organic appetite suppressant.

My car warns when me I’m about to cross a line – into oncoming traffic, onto the shoulder. It also tells me when I should take a break from driving. With a cute little coffee cup.
 
Which got me thinking. I wish life naturally warned me when I cross a line or need rest -- when I discount the reality of someone’s malice, when I ignore my needs, when I don’t ask for help. I work so hard to stay in touch with my self, to fend off latent funks.
 
Breathe. Write. Breathe. Walk. Breathe. Talk. Breathe.
 
I even designed a checklist to help me get back in touch every morning, to hold myself accountable. No funk stands a chance of 24 hour survival when I complete it every morning. It’s my daily rubric, my morning prayer.
 
And I’d be happy to share it with you. Or you can wait until the book I’m writing about it is published. Let me know.

In Geneen Roth’s new book, This Messy Magnificent Life, she wonders if America’s preoccupation with women’s weight is another way the patriarchy controls women’s bodies.
 
“I don’t know of single woman (and I’ve been privileged to be allowed entry into the inner lives of hundreds of thousands of them) who hasn’t struggled with the size of her body. And when a woman’s energy is tied up in judging her body, it ties up her power as well.”

I love my daily emails from Matt Ogle in which he shares a poem for the day. Here’s a recent one that made me smile.
 
Each man
has a way to betray
the revolution
This is mine

Leonard Cohen (1972)
 
pome@mattogle.com

After ugly mushrooms started nosing out of my tallest houseplant’s soil, yellow and translucent and unnaturally leggy, I thought maybe I was finally done with growing and caring for anything that wasn’t me. If the responsibility of the weekly watering, the repotting and the shaking off deadness on my three houseplants didn’t get to me, this fungus would. Down to the basement with them where one of my neighbors would surely make room for them. Or to the compost bin.   
 
But then I remembered how I first thought of my Dracaena as a roommate as I settled into living alone after 40 years of marriage, how the tiny succulent my dear friend gave me as a housewarming gift now fills my sill, how kind the florist was who sold me the cascade of waxy-leaved fronds.  
 
Not yet, I said to myself just like I used to say about my marriage, always one ugly reveal away from divorce.

I hate when I’m tricked into reading a whole book even when it repeatedly promises a bombshell and never delivers, even when the writing is so boring and clumsy and confusing that I think it must be me and I stay with it anyway like it was a marriage, even after limping through lame metaphors and confounding phrases like this one:
 
“He felt a sickening pain rinse through his body, as if he’d spilled something on his shirt; he wasn’t able to be able to be able.”
 
So after I hung on recently through the last page of a going-nowhere book and even consulted reviews to see if I was crazy, I renewed my vow to stop reading, to divorce that sheaf of words if I’m left unfulfilled and used up by page 100. 
 
I don’t have time for stinkers anymore.
 

People yell at you when you fall. “Are you alright? Are you alright?” they shout, even if you are clearly conscious. They respond as if you not only stumbled but also are deaf.
 

And they want to get you on your feet as soon as possible.
 
After falling twice this summer, once at a pebbled beach on my way to a Native American healing ceremony and once on my way to an antique store, I understand a helper’s impulse but I recommend another strategy, if the person is not unconscious.
 
Sit down beside her and be quiet. Maybe hold her hand. And maybe say just once, “It’ll be ok.”
 
“It’ll be ok,” is never a lie.

I charge nearly every purchase on my credit card mostly so that I can more accurately budget and earn reward points. My monthly statement also reads like a diary, a record of my movements through the world.
 
Mostly, this month there are dining excursions. A boulangerie sandwich with a friend. Sangria and a salad at a street festival. Freshly made lasagna from an Italian market for a camping trip.
 
Then there are charges from MKE Film and BP Gas and TJ Maxx and Antiques on Main and one that makes my wrist ache. A charge for a wrist splint from Stratton Drug reminds me of my accident this month.
 
As my sister-in-law and I were walking and talking on our way to the next antique store, I tripped on a deviant sidewalk and fell with all my weight onto my left wrist. A bystander reached to grab my hands to immediately stand me up but I demurred, cradling my arm.
 
When I finally stood, I remember looking at passersby, envious of their healthy wrists. I nearly laughed out loud at my internal whinery. Later, my sister-in-law concocted a story we could use about a bar fight in which I led with my left fist because I didn’t want to set down the beer in my right hand. And we laughed. And laughed.

Luckily, no hospital services needed to be charged on my credit card as a result of the fall. Nor the laughter.