…I tried going to bed at 9.  I couldn’t sleep. I tried meditation but it didn’t help. Then I suddenly realized I’d forgotten to take my pills, two of which help me to fall asleep and stay asleep.

I had been misled by two things. First, my eyes were bothering me. I have dry eyes and I need to put drops in them regularly, which I rarely do. So my dry, sleepy eyes convinced me I was tired and sleepy.  Tired, yes, sleepy, no. After 45 minutes in bed, my eyes are no longer sleepy and neither was I.

Second, I’ve been falling asleep very quickly these past few nights. I assumed this was another such night. No, it wasn’t. That’s why I wrapped myself in my old, warm red bathrobe and sat in my chair in my cottage at Creamery Brook. I started watching, as I had before I went to bed, the headlights of a vehicle parked at the apartment building. They were slowly dimming as they have been on for over an hour.

Why would someone do that? If they have no headlights, they can’t drive home. I assume anybody with a vehicle wants to drive home or is asleep in their bed at Creamery Brook. But I sat and watched until I felt sleepy. Then I went to bed and to sleep.

Good luck to the owner of that truck.

P.S. The next morning…no truck or vehicle there. A mystery.

…helped me find my way home two weeks ago. I got lost on Route 91 from TE Greene Airport. I missed the turn onto Rt. 295 (I was driving too fast) which would have taken me to Rt. 6, to Connecticut. Instead, I found myself on the streets of Cranston. I now know that it wasn’t a sensible place to be. I ended up at a Mobil Station. I went inside, leaving Mollie alone in the car. She promptly locked the doors.

I started asking confused questions of a woman who said nothing but pointed to someone else, the one who turned out to be the smartest woman in Cranston. She understood my anxious questions. She said she could help and picked up her cell phone. She plotted out the directions and then took a 81/2 by 11 inch sheet of plain paper and printed the directions for me. My God! the only person in the U.S. who can print! Did you know that nobody can print anymore? Or write, either.

I took the directions gratefully and went out to the car. Molly unlocked the doors. I/we followed the directions and Bingo! I was on Rt. 295. I cautiously made my way to Rt 6 and happily bounced over the terrible road that Rt 6 is in in Rhode Island. Gad! What roads they have.

We made it home, to my house,  I mean. Mollie put her bags in her car which we had left in my garage and gratefully took herself to her home.

I just wish I could thank that woman and her directions. It turned out we wanted Exit 2, not 12 as she had written on her direction s, but that wasn’t a problem. All I saw was Route 295, the gateway to the road home. Hallelujah.

P.S. I don’t want to focus on this woman too much. I can see her boss, after she’d told him how much she’d helped us. “Did she buy anything? Gas or something?”                                   “Well, no. She…”     “Well, hell, you coulda sold her some gas, or a pack of cigarettes. Is that too much to ask?”   Surly boss leaves.     Smartest woman wishes she’d never laid eyes on me.

I’ve been to Florida, I’m glad to say. As the trip came nearer, I thought–oh! is it worth all this preparation: remembering pills and swim suits and summer shorts (but hasn’t it been cold down there?), and a clock and some teabags, and so on.

Then there’s the plane trip. Trips: of course we changed planes in Baltimore, and then we had to pick up our rental car which I couldn’t figure out how to drive and so made  Mollie, my traveling companion, drive to Ft. Myers Beach. Which took a full hour. How come?

At any rate we made it to our cottage. And then we needed dinner. Tequila Joe’s was down around the corner. Really awful. But we got enough food in us to fall into bed.

The next day was lovely but I wore my parka for our walk. I need to walk so I can stop using a cane. Every morning thereafter, I’d have my hot tea, write in my journal and then walk to the end of the street and back, about 25 minutes. Or less.

The weather was not always good, but we did fine. We seemed to be eating or talking about eating all the time. At four p.m. we’d join our landlord and his partner at happy hour under the breezeway. The outside bar had burned down due to overworked wiring. Our Tennessee friends, Tilly and Shirley, joined us too.

I never did swim in the pool or soak in the hot tub. But that’s okay. Florida didn’t look at all like Northeastern Connecticut and that was what mattered: a complete change of scene. Once I recovered from our drive home the day we came back–lost in Cranston, Rhode Island!–that is what I realized. Happy to be gone, happy to be home.