It has been four days since I have touched the pipe organ. I have been deliberately taking time off this week in an attempt to pull myself closer to equilibrium. This morning I have an appointment with Curtis Birky, my therapist. I am looking forward to hashing over with him the highs and lows of the past two weeks.

At this point, after the appointment I am planning on sitting on the bench for an hour or so. This is a routine I have fallen into: shrink appointment, drive back to Holland and go directly to practicing organ.

Then Eileen and I have another beach day planned. This means grabbing something to eat and then after eating it at the beach sitting and reading for hours on the sand.

Yesterday I ran interference for Eileen to allow her copious time to weave. Normally she handles the Social Security and Medicare/Insurance tasks. But since the task yesterday was to sign me up for Social Security Retirement Income (probably not the exact nomenclature), it seemed only fair for me to do it myself. This turned out to be the best solution. Eileen was in the room weaving and open to questions as I plowed through the web sites, filling in information. Afterward she insisted that it had been much easier for me to do this than for her, so that worked out well.

I went to the post office and dropped off a package of stuff my brother left behind, went to the library and grabbed books for my Mom to read at the nursing home, then stopped off and said hello to her and gave her the books. Eileen stayed at the loom.

I have been getting a bit of reading in even when not at the beach. I’ll end with a short passage from Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Farthest Shore I read yesterday and marked for further pondering.

“But his heart went out utterly to his companion, not now with that first romantic ardor and adoration, but painfully, as if a link were drawn forth from the very inmost of it and forged into an unbreaking bond. For in this love he now felt there was compassion: without which love is untempered and is not whole, and does not last.”