Hanging In Thin Air

The spiders are just amazing this summer. That one in the top picture has a web that must be ten feet across. If you click on the bottom picture, you can perhaps see her on it. It's hard to capture what it looks like, that spider hanging in space if the light is such that you can't see her web.
I tell you- there is beauty there and strength. I am in awe of these spiders. They live such a short, fierce, productive life. A few months and they are gone but they leave their eggs behind and so, life goes on for them.

I love that.

I met another walking woman last week. We stopped and chatted in the road and her name is Shirley and she is retired and her doctor told her to walk and a friend of hers told her to get up every morning and go walk, just as if it was her job.
Good advice.
It's so easy to get all emotionally wrapped up in should-I-exercise-today sort of thinking when it's really best not to think about it at all. To just have a routine and stick to it if at all possible. I have felt in the last few days as if I am losing motivation and I really don't want that to happen. In the past five plus weeks, I have walked every week day except two and really, that in itself is a sort of success. I have lost about eight pounds which is a good beginning and now is not the time to lose interest. I do find, however, that in the past few days I have gotten sloppier with the diet. Again- there is too much thinking going on. Mayonnaise is delicious (have you tried the olive oil kind?) and a little tiny bit won't hurt, right? but...
It is not helpful towards my goals which are more about health than about looks although I surely would love to wear some of my old clothes again and not just the fat clothes.
It doesn't help to read MFK Fisher who never met a stick of butter she didn't like although many of her recipes are for simple things which don't necessarily require a lot of fat. Still, hard to read this book written by a woman who lived to just shy of her 84th birthday and who seemingly enjoyed her food and her drink to a great degree her entire life and not rationalize that if it didn't hurt her so much, then why would it hurt me?
Well.
My mother is 85 and she has been a moderate and healthy eater her entire life and has eschewed alcohol to an obsessive degree and was a passionate walker and she is physically, well, okay. It is her mind which is failing her.

It is so vastly unfair that our minds and our bodies seldom match as to their degrees of wellness and health as we age.
Sometimes I think that it would be better and more comforting (to me at least) if there WERE death panels but of course, not really.
But maybe sort of.

Well, I'm off to town today to do something with some of the children and the grandchildren. We were talking about Wakulla Springs but it's supposed to rain so probably not. It doesn't matter to me. I just want to be with those kids, the grown ones and the little ones. I haven't seen my boys since Friday and that is long enough to do without. I am constantly grateful that they live close enough for me to get my hands on them whenever I truly need to and to be able to observe the incredible changes in them which happen, at this age, with astounding swiftness.

Our lifespans are far longer than those of the spiders but it is all relative, isn't it?

Yours truly...Ms. Moon