I’m struggling with our money as I start to demolish our finances in order to save them. I’m to cash in our stocks and bonds to create an annuity for me, me alone. And it’s all legal!

Why? My husband’s in a nursing home and the monthly fees including a bill for his medications is considerable. The state has decided not to pauperize the spouse of a nursing home resident in order to avoid having two people receiving welfare instead of one.

My mother used my Aunt Mary’s own money to pay for Aunt Mary’s seven year stay in a nursing home. But the money ran out and Mother had to put Mary on welfare. Mother was very upset over the idea of her sister receiving welfare from the state. To her it was demeaning. But she knew she couldn’t afford to support her sister. It had to be done.

I feel a touch of that myself. But I’m tougher than my mother was, at least in this respect. I’ll bite the bullet and raid our joint bank accounts and all the rest of it.

I must.

In my living room chair, waiting for Bernie to come home, come back from a walk or a trip for the newspaper.  Or maybe he went out to buy ice cream for me.

But not any more.

This week is odd. The weather keeps changing. First it’s cloudy, then sunny, then not. And the temperature goes up and down.

I get faintly confused sometimes, about the day of the week. It’s Tuesday but it still feels like a weekend day. And is it Fall or Spring? Sometimes the sun on the grounds here at Creamery Brook Retirement Village look like Spring and not October. Then the clouds come and it’s windy and Fall again.

There’s pure pale blue sky beneath clouds in the Southwest corner of the sky. But the sun is in the West, ready to sink and a large grey cloud keeps us from the sunset. But Hurricane Matthew is coming, said a woman who likes to be the first to give the news, mostly bad.

Matthew won’t be so different from the weather we’ve been having. Except for the wind, of course. And the torrential rain. And the loss of power.  But otherwise it’s the same.

P.S.  The sky has cleared and there, delicate as can be, is a sliver of the moon, a round sickle of light.