Local news bulletins

Our neighbor who is the mayor of the village we live in gave me some sad news a couple of days ago. Her daughter has passed away. She was diagnosed with lung cancer last year. She was not a smoker. Then the cancer spread to  her brain and she had a stroke. She was in her early 50s and has left behind her husband and three children, the eldest about 20 years old. I met her a few times over the years but didn't really know her. She lived about three hours from Saint-Aignan. Her mother and father who live here have spent a lot of time on the road driving there from here and then back for months. They are both nearing age 80 and are exhausted, I'm sure.

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A few weeks ago, I had a collision with our mailbox. It was mounted on one of the posts that frame our front gate. I was taking the car and the dog out for a ride in the vineyard early one morning (long story...), and was turning right coming through the gate. Usually I turn left, which is the way down the hill we live on and to places like Saint-Aignan, Montrichard, and Blois, Anyway, I misjudged the space I needed  to make that right turn. The result was a long but not very deep scratch on both of the car's passenger-side doors. I hope it doesn't start rusting. The mailbox didn't survive. We bought a new mailbox at the local hardware store and our landscape contractor was good enough to mount the new box on the fence post for us. All in all, the incident was a five or six day ordeal. I'm sad about the car, which is nearly 20 years old and is only now starting to show its age.

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Meanwhile, I've been having a lot of problems with my eyes and eyesight since the beginning of the year. I have spent a lot of time worrying and complaining that I can't figure out what the problem is. Does it have to do with the cataract operations I had in 2024? Or am I just suffering because of pollen allergies? We had a few months of rain nearly every day in the spring, and that weather pattern has changed only recently. I spent a lot of time trying to get my eye doctor on the telephone. When I had the cataract surgery in 2024, the doctor told me I would need to contact him again in two years' time for a follow-up appointment to see how my eyesight has evolved and which would probably lead to a laser procedure to make sure lens implants I have had since then are doing to job. I asked him if his office would notify me that it was time for the check-up, because I might forget. He looked at me like I was crazy and just said Non! So when my vision went blurry earlier this year, I figured it was time to make an appointment. But I couldn't get anyone on the phone. On some days my vision was better than on others, so I couldn't be sure if allergies were the problem, or something else. I finally got somebody on the phone last week. She located my file and quickly told me that the follow-up appointment would be scheduled for the month of October. I'll need to call back for an appointment in July, not before. I hope I don't have to live with blurry vision until October.