Thursday, January 2, 2025

     In the early morning just as the heater begins warming my bedroom, I check out my 84 year old hands.  Wrinkled, dark spotted, a couple of bent fingers.  They move, open and close with ease. No pain. Yes, good hands.

     A flock of tiny birds graze quickly in the red flowers of the bottle bush trees. The sun is out and the air is still cold, cold.

     I watch another episode of Northern Exposure in the early evening. The college student keeps reading his book. I also have been slowly watching the Barack Obama’s show on the ocean. The film makes everything too beautiful to believe. I want to see how the filming was done.

     Now that the antibiotics are working, I am back to reading another Shanghai detective novel. INSPECTOR CHEN AND THE PRIVATE KITCHEN MURDER by Qui Xiaolong. Comfort reading.

 

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

      We store the leftovers in the refrigerator believing they will eat them. They are us and we want new fresh foods. I throw out leftovers to make room for more leftovers. The dance goes on.

     50 degrees in my bedroom in the morning, 37 degrees outside.  I close my window and turn on the heater.  I wear my artic fleece pants and my orange puffer jacket while I eat breakfast. All is well.

    The three of us watch CONCLAVE in the early evening.  We agree to stop talking while watching the movie. No running commentary please. I am disappointed with the movie.  All these old men wearing uniforms, hard to tell them apart. And really I don’t care who becomes pope.

     I think about the middle aged woman wearing a pink bathrobe in the ER waiting room.  She paces around the room with her throw up bag, obviously sick. We avoid eye to eye contact in the waiting area.  Maybe we need an infirmary (like those in colleges) with warm beds for some sick people, not a hospital.

 

Tuesday, December 31, 2024

     She tracks the apple tag in her wayward suitcase 3000 miles away. She tells me her suitcase is still at the airport in New York and she is sitting here in my living room. I just don’t understand how this is possible. The created world in my mind does not include apple tags and cell phones.

     Trash and garbage accumulate in the kitchen and bathrooms. The bins are much too small for all of us. But still, we try to squeeze more in before the garbage trucks arrive.

     Sitting outside in my green puffer jacket I see the gnats moving in random directions in the sunlight near the moist earth. I watch while I restart my chair exercise.  I am feeling better.

     Finally, I am seduced by the book AMERICAN BULK, essays on excess by Emily Mester. Wonderful clear memoir writing. This one I will finish.