Day 96

High point yesterday was a catch-up conversation with Barbara Clark. Her good news is her wedding with partner Linda after 22 years. She invited me but I wouldn’t know anyone. It sounds like a family and fellowship event. Usual Sunday morning routine: water orchids, clean bedding, walk, church, socialize after church, love my life. Maybe I will see Gene and Carol again on their morning walk. The garden is growing well. Won’t be long before the first greens will be ready.

POH

I had a 9:45 dental appointment on a Wednesday morning. I told the museum manager that I would be late for my 10 AM volunteer duty, and that I hoped to get there by 10:30. She forgot. There I was having a new crown fitted in perfectly oblivious that a storm of activity was going on. My phone rang three or four times but of course it went unanswered. Then I was finished and walked to the museum. I was met by Rick who said, Where have you been? At the dentist. We were so worried that something was wrong that Karen is out looking for you. A deputy sheriff came in and asked me my name. I told him. He said scanner land was looking for me. Karen called my daughter Hollie at nine minutes after 10 and upset her. When she arrived here, Jon and Chris were sitting on the couch as Karen had knocked on their door to ask for help. Then a deputy sheriff came in the house and looked all around the house and yard, including reading my journal that lay open on the kitchen table. Meanwhile Karen had driven up and down streets, stopped people, gone into stores asking if anyone had seen me. She made more stops than Paul Revere. Hollie knew that I kept a calendar and when she looked she saw the dental appointment listed and called the office. I had just left for the museum where I was accused of making Karen’s life miserable by scaring her. Wait a minute, I went to the dentist, that’s all I did. At home, Chris told me the deputy had even looked in the closets and she saw him reading my journal to see if I had left a suicide note. Karen told the story over and over with herself as the hero and me as the villain. Finally I had enough and told her clearly how her behavior had affected my life. The intrusion left a bruise on my sense of privacy and took away any kind of trust in Karen as a manager. It took a while to get over it with her multitude of teary apologies and obsequious behavior toward me. I tried to see it from the point of view of the total stranger, the trained officer, and wondered what he knew about me from coming into my home. It was months before I opened my journal again and to this day I cannot leave it open on the kitchen table.