Climbing up the sides of the pit is going slowly. I have discovered that one reason eating does not appeal is that my tongue is sore. It feels big in my mouth, and everything kind of hurts as I chew. Things are tasting normal right now, though. Yay!

Penelope has not been happy, though, and I can't figure out how she can make my right arm hurt. Maybe it's because I tend to hold that shoulder higher without noticing, to try to ease her discomfort. I keep making myself relax whenever I notice, but my neck muscles are tense. Maybe she heard Dr. Wallentine talking about getting rid of her and she's trying to let me know she loves me.

I went to the posh retirement home to play my flute today as part of the Relief Society lesson our ward provides every January. I have played there quite a bit for their Sacrament meetings because Sister Isaacson calls and asks me so enthusiastically. Besides, I love playing and where else do I get such an appreciative audience? Afterward I went up to visit Florence, my organ/piano playing buddy whose husband performed my marriage all those years ago (has it really been that long? Do I really have such an old first child?). She had fallen down yesterday and was lying on her couch. One of her knees would seize up every now and then -- very painfully. I sat on the floor close to her and we talked about all sorts of things. She told me about when Dr. Kohler operated on Dorothy because her side was very painful, and how he was crying when he called Todd to say that she was full of cancer and he gave her only 45 days to live, which turned out to be almost exact. I told her how my cancer, even though it was so tiny, would have had to be growing for four years at least, to become the size it was. We both thought but didn't say how long that probably meant Dorothy had had cancer without knowing. I thought how it could actually still be inside me. I said as much to Steve the other day, and he shrugged and said don't we all live without really knowing what's going on inside?

Florence told me how her two boys had had polio as children and they had traveled every day up to the clinic in Salt Lake City and how sad she had been to see all those children in wheelchairs. Supposedly it's not a threat now, but with people deciding not to immunize, the threat is always there, in my mind. Do diseases hibernate somewhere and wait for someone infectible to come along? Can polio be a creation, a thing, like an amoeba or a water bear, that is so tiny we can't see it, but is still a living thing that exists on earth without people to infect?

We talked about the organists in the ward and my other musical callings, and she told me I should tell the Bishop he needed to release me from something. I laughed and told her about my unmusical calling, but said I would tell him she was telling him instead. I thought about how much fun I was having and how many times I've thought about her lately and how I haven't dared go visit, just as I haven't gone much of anywhere. I was told to avoid crowds and places where lots of germs would be.

I hugged her head gently and kissed her before I left. I love her. I miss her. I need to make time to go see her more often.

The best part about being in heaven, in my opinion, would be visiting and spending time with and sharing stories with all the people we love, including those we can't fit in down here. There are, after all, only 24 hours to every one of our days, and I for one have so many things on my List that I'm going to have to live forever to get to them all.