change

My grocery store closed. There's no grocery store within walking distance of our house any more. (well...there are two that are a half hour walk away. Abe Lincoln would have considered that walking distance. And there's Target, which sells safe groceries. No meat, no produce, mostly prepared things frozen, boxed, or canned... but no real grocery store close enough that you can get milk home before it turns sour.

My newspaper is going out of business. It's the liberal, evening paper. Albuquerque must be the smallest two-paper city in the nation, but...no more. I'd go out of the daily newspaper business entirely, but my son loves the comics and we need old papers for the iguana cage.

My gym class got less and less satisfactory and I finally quit. Of the two classes that fit my life, one is so crowded that it's unpleasant and the the teacher of the second class moves so fast and includes dance steps...I feel incompetent. It's bad enough that I have to lift weights for an hour...oh, do I hate lifting weights...but to also feel incompetent...it is too much.

Yesterday a hurricane-induced front rolled through Albuquerque during church. The wind blew, the clouds rolled around and it was suddenly very humid. Some people clearly found this exhilerating. "Change is in the Air!" they quipped as the came on to the church patio. "Fall is here!" Others were clearly uncomfortable and uneasy. I was one of those. Too much is too much.