I woke up to a pleasant surprise this morning--rain. Since my TV is broken I have not been keeping up with the forecasts, so I had no idea it was coming. I went out to a few sprinkles of rain to sit in the patio and drink my tea. A resident I had met before came out and when we began to talk he said something about Utah. I found out he was born and raised just outside of Salt Lake where I lived for at least 7 years, going to high school, then college, and later with my husband and baby son Gary. So we had a great time comparing notes and experiences we had in common. He is an artist and had also gone to one of the Utah colleges and graduated in fine arts. He spent some time at the University of Utah, too, where I went. We talked fast and furious so the morning went by quick.
The workers arrived to work on the pool and I decided to go to the Silvercrest to drink some coffee. When I got there I realized that the single pool player who usually comes in the morning that I have played pool a lot of time with over the years was not there, leaving only a pool player with a companion. He had already said he had been chastized for playing with a lady pool player (more or less). His companion did not seem happy to see me so I whirled around and left. That is the hard part about playing pool, as there are few women players and you are always getting some woman's ire up who does not take kindly to seeing a woman's face among the pool players especially when she is not playing. I even used to have a bartender hating me named Rosie who was a better pool player than I am! But she hated me for another reason, I did not drink alcohol. She would try to bowbeat me into drinking, but as far as I was concerned the taste of alcohol spoiled every drink and I hated beer. I finally had to quit playing pool as they drink too much in bars!
I went about 10 years without playing, and then started again when the last manager's husband was promoting pool here to the Westward Ho. Pierre. He was a very good pool player and once he had recruited players, you had better show up every morning around 7am or he would get mad. His wife, the manager, finally complained she was compelled to eat breakfast alone, so he upped the time a half an hour or so and quit expecting us on Saturday. I finally got tired of being disliked over playing pool, so I quit. Pierre promptly quit, too and got drunk and stayed drunk about a month. I had not realized he was such a bad alcoholic, but his wife finally asked me to please come back and play pool again, so I did , he sobered up, and she acted nice from then on until their divorce. When she suddenly divorced him, put him in an apartment on the patio, and then got fired herself, he trusted me more than any other women, so I became his companion, all because I was a good pool player. But she could be a bad enemy, and she would call him at least twice a week from Texas where she went and ask him to forget the divorce and come back. Each time he would refuse, but he did not dare refuse to talk to her as she had threatened to put a contract out on his life. I heard her myself, and I also met the guy that Pierre feared might do it.
On his death bed he finally told her to quit calling as she was calling about 6 times a day and giving me instructions about how to take care of him. For one thing she told me that Pierre should be allowed to drink all the alcohol he wanted. What could it hurt? I said, well, it will hurt the caregiver more than it will him. She said he had always said if he found out he was dying, he would buy a big bottle and drink til he died.
I told Pierre if he was going to stay drunk forget about me being his caretaker, and the hospice nurse told him he would have to go into hospice under their care where he could not even smoke, so he agreed to give up alcohol (but not smoking).
Anyway I thought you might see a photo of the pool being renovated (header) and also a photo of the patio, under the gazebo. There are no people talking on account of the rain, but it is nice.
P.S. I walked back over later and played pool with all the regulars. I surrender my stick when there are too many regulars in the room to play, and just watch. But I did manage to get in a few games. I had a lovely lunch over there and came back home to take a nap.
