Just a quick report this morning before church.  Anne came home this week and we played at being love birds after being almost a month apart.  Alex makes slow improvement and is tying his shoelaces, undergoing therapy, and fearful of relapses into intense hand pain.  The hand therapist encourages ongoing exercise and to focus on other things when he fears any reaction after use.  He must restore function despite mild setbacks.

I'm now home.  Anne is in San Francisco.  Today she and Alex watched the colorful Bay to Breakers run that passed Alex's apartment.  He has begun hand therapy and is showing some improvement.  With luck he will tough it out and restore full function.  We dread painful relapses.

So, Anne has arrived.  I am glad.  She and Alex are off to physical therapy this morning.  Progress is being made, but Alex has to be coaxed to slowly but steadily remobilize the hand.  That is not so easy when fear of painful relapse and swelling is so strong and may in itself increase sensitivity of the limb.  Rehab is further complicated by today's programming of medicine and the complications of coordinating among various providers who may not entirely agree.  Then too is the cost.

It is probably good for every 64 year-old to have their schedule totally disrupted.  I write from Alex's new apartment on the sixth floor looking out the window a Alamo Square and hills to the south and west.  From another window of t his corner apartment we can see the towers of the Golden Gate bridge and the hills to the north.  

So, we are making progress in the Golden City.  Alex has a new, lovely and (for SFO) spacious apartment just off of Alamo Square with its famous "Painted Ladies" Victorian townhouses.  The movers come tomorrow at 10:00 A.M.  He has bought enough furniture to get started and we have packed most of his belongings.  Tonight we pack the kitchen.

I, Chuck, am here without Anne providing aid and comfort to Alexander who while still dealing with his repetitive motion injury has to move next week.  While enjoying an opportunity to be him I feel a bit of a prisoner in being unexpectadly away from home and Anne at this time.  She, by the way, is in a bus on her way home with a group of quilters from a quilting convention in Padukah KY.  I'm not sure when or where we will next snuggle; that is in the works.  Our spring RV tour is scuttled.  Anne will have to cancel reservations when she returns home tomorrow.&nbsp

The maples are in bloom and the cypress trees are leafing out.  Swallow-tailed kites are appearing in the sky.  Spring must be here.  Current weather is splendid here even as winter makes a last blast across the Northeast. 

This morning is cloudy, breezy, warm, and very humid in south Florida.  Yesterday, Fort Myers had the highest temperature in the 48 states.  How that contrasts to home where it has been another frigid week with snow and ice.  Anne and I made our jog this morning, but almost didn’t.  Dad and Mom were awake and up.

It is a dark and stormy day in Fort Myers.  At 58 degrees the snowbirds are shivering outside.  Very few are venturing forth.  It is 71 degrees inside the apartment, brr.  I spent much of this rainy day preparing a long overdue annual plan.  Anne and i will likely make an RV cruise along the coast from Jersey to Carolina this spring to see this season’s bird migration along the Atlantic coast and seek out rails.

We, Anne and I, are at Heritage Cove this evening for our winter stay in southwest Florida.  We arrived last Friday after hectic weeks at home preparing for the trip, celebrating the holidays, and enduring the passing of my mother. 

We had planned to make a canoe trip into the Ten Thousand Islands region of Everglades National Park before settling in with Mom and Dad Woods.  That trip was inspired in part by my reading of Peter Matthiessen’s novel, Shadow Country, last winter at Fort Myers.