It Was A Dark And Cloudy Day

It was cold here this morning. Around 42° when Hiker woke me up at 5:50 am to go potty. As of today, my “jury status” online shows that I do have to report the first day of jury duty but I am in the process of trying to get my duty postponed until next summer. Because of my retinal problem, my retinal specialist has told me that I should not drive in the dark and since it would be dark both going to and coming home from the courthouse during this time of year, I thought if I can change it to summer, it won't be dark driving there and back. I'm waiting for their reply as I requested it via their website. If I do not hear from them in a couple of days, I will call them. Also I'll talk to my retinal specialist when I see him in 2 weeks and see if maybe my eye problem can get me a excuse not to serve. I'm also considering taking the metro-link train from my area down to Union Station in Los Angeles instead of trying to drive in all of that traffic. I've never ridden the train before so I think I'll see if my friend Jean would go on a “trial run” on the train with me to see how it all works. I'm also thinking about talking with my regular doctor to see if my blood pressure problem could get me an excuse from duty. I went to my grief group this morning. We had another full house plus we had two new people. One lady who lost her husband of 62 years and a young woman who lost her father 4 months ago. Our discussion was pretty somber today which is not normal for us, but now and then it is that way. I did not go to lunch with the ladies because I wanted to get home and call the courthouse to see if I could postpone my jury duty until next summer. Stopped by KFC to bring some lunch home. They granted my request for postponement. I got to thinking how dark it would be going to the courthouse in the morning and coming back home in the evening during those 2 weeks and I am not supposed to drive in the dark according to my retinal doctor. They rescheduled me to be on-call for jury duty starting July 8th. In the meantime, I'm going to talk with both my retinal doctor and also with my regular doctor to see if maybe they can get me a permanent physical excuse from jury duty due to my eye problem and also my high blood pressure. When I received the summons, my B/P spiked pretty high and the result made me feel sick the next day, plus the high B/P can cause more problems to my eye. The stress of going to court may cause me health problems. However, just in case, Jean and I are going to plan a day to take the metro-link train from Canyon Country down to the Los Angeles Union Station so I can learn how the system works. The courthouse is just a few blocks from the train station so I would be able to walk between the two and not have to face the rush-hour traffic going to court and coming back home. So now I have a little over 8 months before I have to think about jury duty again. I think what bothers me the most is getting there and back home since it is 35 miles each way in heavy traffic and then also Hiker would be home alone for about 12 hours. She is sometimes home alone for 5 to 6 hours but never long than that and I'd be worried about her even though Jean said Hiker could stay over at her house while I was gone. It has been cloudy and gray here all day long and only got up to about 58° here today.