It’s Orangemen’s Day today, and I remember my maternal grandmother telling me once that her grandfather was a member of the Orangemen and how proud he was of that. We come from a family of Protestant Irish folk, and July 12 is the day that the Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland—in 1690. I don’t know whether my great-great-grandfather didn’t like Catholics or whether he’d be upset that one of his decedents (me) married a lapsed Catholic, and an Englishman at that! But I’ll take pride in not holding a grudge against anyone who practices different spiritual beliefs than me. How far humanity has come—and how far we haven’t. I’ve been thinking a lot about my ancestry, partly because my oldest sister is retired and now finding time to catalogue our genealogy files and partly because, well, the old folks are growing more feeble by the day and soon won’t be with us any longer. I think about how many stories are lost but also how it’s okay to let them go and create new ones with each generation. I won’t have any direct decedents, so my nieces and nephews and stepchildren will have to carry mine, if they want to.

I wore THE BOOT all day, taking it off only for my big outing to Walgreens, 7-Eleven, and Home Depot for various bits and bobs. Half the summer is gone, and I haven’t had a proper walk in nearly three months. Hubby had his giant wart alien scraped and burned on Saturday again (a bi-weekly ritual) and is also limping around; only where he’s in chronic pain, I’ve gotten off lightly with having a clunky BOOT. We’re quite the pair these days. Well, at least we can enjoy each other’s company working side-by-side on our separate puzzles of an evening—like a couple of old-age pensioners. I’ve been slogging away at the this dog puzzle for about three months now, one paw, one nose, one fluffy tail at a time. And such is life: putting yourself back together one tiny piece of a body part at a time.