Wednesday's Words on a Friday

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.
The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.
If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along and read it.

This month the prompts are supplied by Cindi and can be found here.

This week's words/prompts are:

write a diary entry dated 10 years in the future


Dear Diary; I notice you are still almost as pristine as the day I bought you. So many crisp, unused pages. I guess I'm not so good with writing things down on a daily basis, nothing much happens on a day to day existence anyway. I look to the previous page and see my last entry was December 12, ten years ago. That was the day Missy died. You were already three years old, but had so few entries. 

Not much has happened in those ten years, certainly nothing as exciting as moving to a house of my own, closer to my kids, who are now all middle aged. I'm still here in this little flat. I still get up each morning to feed Lola, who is now as old as Missy was when she died. Lola is also slower and a little crochetty, as Missy was, that comes with age, I know, I'm that way myself now, sometimes at least. These days I often go back to bed and wait for Lola to join me, we get another nap before I need to get up and eat. Maybe I'll turn on the computer, maybe not. Most of the people whose blogs I used to read have stopped writing, a couple have died.

Same in real life too, with some of the neighbours I used to visit with, a couple have died, several have moved into nursing homes to get the care they can no longer give themselves. I'll visit them there if the weather is nice enough. It's often far too hot now to go anywhere that isn't strictly necessary and just getting to the shops and back is a slower journey than it used to be. Some of the newer, younger neighbours have offered to shop for me, but I still prefer to choose my own fruits and vegetables. I'll do it as long as I can still make the distance. 

I look in the mirror now and see much more white hair with just a hint of the colour that used to be there, the wrinkles have advanced, more of my teeth are artificial, but in spite of all that, I'm still me. And 77 isn't so old anyway. I still have reasonably good health, can still laugh at life, laugh at jokes, ignore the TV news if it is too upsetting, with the dryness of our Earth being so widespread now from the global warming, too many countries have droughts where before they had lush greenness. 
There are scientists who keep daily track of what's left of the polar icecaps, which still look large to me, but I guess they are shrinking faster now. So much damage in so little time. How? Why? What can we do?

Behind me, as I write, Lola struggles to jump down from the bed, I go to help her and she hisses at me, but accepts the lift to the floor. 

This is probably the longest entry I'll ever write. Maybe I'll write again tomorrow, maybe you will have to wait another ten years to feel the air on your pages and the pressure of my pen. Perhaps I'll remember to write about my trip to the beach. The Aged Care Community Bus will be picking me up tomorrow morning and a group of us are going to lunch at a café then go walking along the jetty, maybe even along the Esplanade a bit. I miss the ocean even more than ever, now that I can't go so often. 

I look around me as I think what else to write, my helper is coming today to vacuum the floors, which still get a daily covering of cat hair. The place looks empty now that I've given away so many things. I still have my favourite books and dvds, but many have gone to my children and grandchildren. Even the great grandchildren have chosen a few things. Knick-knacks that gathered dust have all gone too. 
I don't miss them. 

I'll clean up the breakfast things before the helper comes, I get a different girl each time, some are talkative, others just get the job done and leave as quickly as they can. Maybe they don't like to be around elderly people, perhaps we scare them with thoughts of their own mortality. 
Anyway, that's enough for now. Goodbye Dear Diary, until next time.