The last couple of days have been dreary weather-wise, but is was a nice week nevertheless. Mom got her hearing aids. They made an immediate and large improvement in her hearing. We went to an audiologist off the Charlestown campus to get the discounts offered by Mom’s insurance. The audiologist we saw used to work at the Charlestown campus, so she had lots of experience working with older people. She did an excellent job in understanding Mom’s needs and offering very practical solutions. This was definitely a case where the high cost was worth it. It takes a person a long time to adjust to the hearing aid and get the full benefit. We’ll be making frequent trips to the audiologist, including one this coming Thursday.

I saw my cardiologist last week. He gave me a two-year warranty on my heart and kicked me out. ;-)

We had a neighborhood Chill ‘n Grill with bad hamburgers and good conversation. Unfortunately, they decided to put us on the covered porch downstairs near the pool. There was enough room for 50 of us to be under cover, but the noise level was much higher than it was when we were upstairs. All the concrete walls and glass windows reflected noise. Everybody was having problems hearing other people at their table. They were slow setting out the desert, so I did a little reconnoitering. I saw Pumpkin pie and either Apple or French Apple pie. They hadn’t even started cutting the pie slices, so it was obvious desert wouldn’t be served for quite a while. I’m not a lover of pumpkin pie, and neither of us are lovers of most commercial apple pie, and we just happened to have some very good ice cream in the freezer. So we left a little early and enjoyed desert by ourselves.

We got big news last week. The construction project will start working on our building this week. They basically work on two units at a time. There are 6 units in our building. We will be in the last group of two. I’m guessing they will get to us early in November and be done before Thanksgiving. They will remove stone from the back of the house and keep on going as long as they find water damage. So far, other units have had to have all the stone removed. Then they build scaffolding to support the deck, separate the deck from the house, and repair all the wood rot, including the ledger board that holds the deck to the house. Then they put everything back together using new stone. (It’s not real stone. It’s spun cement. For reasons I don’t understand, they can’t use the old stone.) Some of the rot was caused by improperly installed flashing. Other was caused by the doors to the deck leaking. Like most of our neighbors, we have taken the option to get new doors. They actually put up a plastic sheet wall 5 feet inside the house so they can do their work. We are promised a lot of noise and vibration. We are advised to clear out the work area and take pictures off the wall so they don’t dislodge themselves and fall. (Banging and falling pictures. Sounds kind of like a haunted house.) Of course most of our neighbors have already been through this process. I’m grateful the construction on our unit is likely to be done before the weather turns bad. Things should move quickly. They’ve finished most of the other buildings, so we benefit from the problems they solved repairing earlier buildings. They have one more building to do after ours. We are very lucky to have a great condo board. They have found solutions to many issues and have taken care of every detail.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.