Patience...

 June 24, 2026

Welcome to Summer, 2026! The solstice is in our rearview mirrors, the longest day is behind us, and now we begin our long crawl back down from the summit of that mountain. I prefer the days with lots of sunlight to the days when darkness lasts until breakfast and then falls again before supper. But time has its own agenda, and really, the best we can do is enjoy what we can of each day as it comes.

This has certainly been the year for sports so far, hasn’t it? On thing I have noticed this year is that the fans of these various sporting events are the all-in sort. Humans crave to be a part of something bigger than themselves. It’s in our nature. But this year the fan frenzy has reached next level fever-pitch.

Dancing and screaming at the top of one’s lungs, giving one’s all in order to party hardy (or hearty), would be an excellent way to burn off any strong negative emotions smoldering under the rug, wouldn’t it?

We’ve had a great deal of rain over the last couple of weeks. Enough that there’s been no need to water the gardens. I’m not going to complain. I recall the summer of 2023. That, too, was a summer when little water was needed from the garden hose. And that was also the year of the bumper crops—green beans, yes, but the tomatoes! Oh, the tomatoes! Big, luscious and plentiful.

I’m salivating just thinking about the possibility of an encore to that summer. There’s a dish I like to make—stuffed tomato casserole—that begs for nice big Beefsteaks. I read several recipes then just came up with my own. It’s the one thing I really look forward to in the summer. And it was a dish I couldn’t make last year, because our crop didn’t cooperate.

My fingers are crossed for this year.

We now have sod in the area where our lawn was torn up for the water main work last year. Then, late last week, the equipment and the crews arrived, their goal to tear up the new road laid in the intersection—the corner to the south of our house. They’d done a really poor job laying asphalt in the fall, and by spring there was already the beginning of a pothole. So for the next little while, we are destined to listen to the sound of roadwork once more.

But not, apparently, today.

After this intersection has been completed, the concrete crew will return to fix the curb on our side of that intersection and then—Please, God—they will install a step or two so that I will finally be able to walk a straight line from the bottom of my porch to the road. When I spoke to the project manager at the end of May, he told me that I should see that crew by the end of June.

I remain hopeful.

It’s sometimes really difficult to let those close to me have their little rants about “they should do this or they should have done that”. Maybe they should. But they didn’t. I called, I discussed, and now I will wait and see. If I’m still left with the cliff from my lawn to the concrete pad they installed by the second week of July, I’ll call again.

I’m trying very hard to give patience a chance.

Even when it comes to the matter of my surgical recovery. Yes, today I am at the keyboard, composing this essay. Yes, I am using my right hand as well as my left. But I won’t work for very long. Soon, I will retreat to my recliner with my iPad. It’s an easy matter to use my foam whatever it’s called to rest the device upon. And I will swipe pages, as I read, with my left hand.

My right will just lay there and look pretty while, open to the air, my wound heals, little by little.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

 

An update...

 June 17, 2026

Good morning! It’s Wednesday—aka hump-day to the work-a-day world. And it is also time for my essay.

First, and briefly, I did see the surgeon who performed the carpal tunnel procedure on me last Thursday. He changed my bandage, gave me new and looked me dead in the eye. “You have to baby your hand!” And I have to see him again in three weeks time.

All right, then.

For the record, I’ve been trying to baby my hand, but patience has never been my strong suit.

When I told him that I had been wiggling my fingers, he said that was good. Now, I’d like you all to do a favor for me. Hold your right hand up. Wiggle the fingers of that hand. Kind of looks like typing/keying, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought!

Moving on.

I have been watching more daytime television in the last few weeks, which I don’t mind provided I can find something interesting to watch. I’ve stumbled on a home/design program that was filmed in Canada and shown on HGTV. Only 8 episodes, so I am parsing them out. Since I’m about to watch number 7, I decided to see if there was something else similar on that network. So I searched and I found another, and it has 10 episodes. So, I should be good for a while.

But on Sunday, the sound bar I had bought in 2019 decided to quit. I had bought it because our TV’s sound had gone a bit muzzy. We had purchased this television when our granddaughter, Emma was 7. She’s going to be 27 in September. When the sound bar died, I began searching online and found they had gone up in price, slightly. Daughter and I discussed the situation. And she asked me if I knew how much a brand-new TV similar in size to the one we have (55 inches) would cost. I had no idea. Our current, beloved one had set us back nearly three thousand dollars when we bought it. It had been one of the very first “smart” TVs and even had been three-D compatible! Now to its credit, this television is early 20 years old. But its sound wasn’t the only issue. The picture has not as sharp as once it was, lately, either.

Daughter took a moment to look up on her phone and showed me a new television, comparable in size—for under four hundred dollars. It made more sense to get a new television than a sound bar for about half the price of the new, when the appliance it would be used on was clearly nearing the end of its life.

Monday afternoon, she and David went out and bought the new one. Once home, they easily carried it inside, and it took her less than an hour to take out the old and set up the new.

She’s off this weekend and is going to “play around” with the color to get it the way we like it. A new television hadn’t been on my bingo card for this year. I’m just happy to have it, and to not had to have blown up the budget to do so. And, as with our last new one all those years ago, I can say with some authority that I won’t use many of the new and “smart” features on this one, either. I’m okay with that. I can do what I can do and watch what I want to watch, and that’s more than good enough for me.

The temperatures have dropped from the near-scorching highs of a week or so ago. I’m a happy medium sort of person. I like mild, warm weather, as long as I’m not gasping in the heat. And I like cool, as well, but don’t want to be conflicted as to the fate of my freshly brewed cup of coffee (i.e., do I drink it or do I simply hold it to warm my hands?)

Today I’m thinking that cup would make a good hand/finger warmer. But carefully, because, you know, still-healing incision here.

Our gardens are doing well. We have two of the large box gardens filled with green beans, and the other two with various varieties of tomatoes. As well, daughter managed to get her hands on a few very large pots. We have two holding zucchini, and two holding beets. David used a large tub to plant some potatoes in, and the only other veggie we have, also in separate pots, are Spanish onions.

I decided to ask Google what sort of summer was in store for us, here in my neck of the woods. The answer was warmer that normal, but with periodic episodes of cool, with an unpredictable amount of rain thrown in. I wasn’t fooled. I can translate “damned if I know” from several different sources.

Enjoy the great days and be patient with the not so great.  That’s what I plan to do. Or at least, I’ll try to.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

 

Reporting in...

 June 10, 2026

Did you miss me?

It’s funny the way we human beings get toddling along our life’s path, confident in our sense of ourselves, and where we’re headed. Just be-bopping along to the rhythm of our own drummers. Then, one day, when you least expect it…wham!

Yup, I had a wham.

When last we met, which was my essay of May 27^th, I announced my carpal tunnel surgery scheduled for the 3^rd of June.  What I had failed to mention is what had been happening in the week or so prior to that last essay. That was a failure on my part. I’ve promised, since the beginning of Wednesday’s Words, to be fully transparent with you, and in the last month I haven’t been. I sincerely apologize. I’m going to fix that now.

I suffer from dentophobia. It stems back to my childhood and a monster masquerading as a dentist to whom I was subjected. That was in the bad old days before the ubiquitous “they” realized that children were not just miniature adults. Lack of adequate freezing and just generally lack of adequate care, and I became a quivering gelatinous mess when it came time to go to the dentist. This became a deep-seated phobia which I could not overcome on my own. It took a lot of maturing on my part, and sincere prayers to begin to do that.

I began not going to the dentist regularly, which wasn’t good, either. To my credit, my children never knew I was this way and so they thought nothing of going to the dentist through their childhood.

So here I am in my 70s. I wear a top denture, gained when I needed my upper teeth removed in my early 40s after root canal procedures resulted with teeth breaking. Then, over time and one by one, I lost some of my lower teeth. I knew I was going to have to face getting the rest of them pulled and perhaps getting a bottom denture. I lost one in 2023 (with a new dentist but one who had won my trust) and then another one the first week of April this year, same dentist.

I had made a plan to get the rest taken care of and was working on my mental preparations to do just that. I’d been thinking September, after my carpal tunnel surgery.

I awoke on Tuesday, May 19^th with the most stunning, electric, and horrific pain in my mouth that I had ever experienced. No medications touched it. Sensodyne rapid relief tooth paste took the slightest edge off for a few minutes. So early the next day—Wednesday the 20^th—I called and got an emergency appointment to have another tooth extracted just after noon hour.

When I arrived, the dentist I trusted said he couldn’t tell for certain which of the three teeth on the left was causing the pain, as none of them were very good. So, with my agreement, he took all three.

The pain eased, of course, with the freezing. And then it was back the next day, Thursday. The Dentist had told me that if pain persisted to Monday, to call him. It did and I did.

He saw me Monday and told me I had a dry socket! He packed in something that was supposed to take that pain away and last for 24 to 48 hours. Whatever he gave me lasted exactly four hours.

It has improved slowly since then. By yesterday the pain was down to intermittent twinges. But for almost a week it was nearly unbearable. I have faith that the worst is over.

And now I have a wounded paw, as I did have my carpal tunnel surgery on June 3^rd , painful mouth and all. The hand hurt only the first day after surgery. Now, there’s no real pain in my hand at all. But I can’t yet use it for more than the simplest of tasks. For example, scratching my nose or assisting my other hand in putting on my glasses.

My husband noted that I have had one hell of a rough few weeks, and he’s right. Since my hand surgery I have been doing little more than resting. Tomorrow, I go back to the surgeon for my follow-up appointment.

Since it’s my right (dominant) hand that is in recovery, David helped me make temporary changes to the living room seating. We have a sofa with a recliner on either end. He has a table on his left, and I have one on my right. Between us lays a simple cushion that the dogs usually use. But the seat back of that middle cushion does fold down, to provide a flat surface on my left side with a couple of cup holders which I have been using, because I cannot yet pick up my water or my coffee cup with my right hand.

The dogs now use his (un-extended) recliner, and he has moved temporarily to the only other chair in the room, an electric powered chair that not only reclines, but will stand you up, too, if need be.

Daughter has been doing all cooking since the pain exploded, and husband has been taking good care of me, and all that is wonderful, but strange. I’m not fond of doing nothing. However, after everything I’ve experienced over the last almost-month, I’m allowing myself this do-nothing period, because I worry about doing something stupid and complicating my recovery.

There is one good thing—well, other than the excellent care with which my family has been treating me, and it’s this: I’m beginning to suspect that the reason that I didn’t particularly remember my last round of carpal tunnel surgery (on both hands, a couple weeks apart). It was probably too stressful and traumatic for me to remember.

I’m on the mend. And yes, I am very much aware how fortunate I am, that really all I’ve suffered is pain and inconvenience—though that tooth pain was excruciating. At my age, with that and my arthritis—well that’s not really much at all. So many others have it far worse.

Certainly, what I’ve been dealing with is nowhere near enough to cause me to stop being grateful for my blessings, every single moment of every single day.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury