Sometimes, these question just hit the right buttons or maybe I’m punchy from lack of sleep.
A couple of times a year, I get a night when I can’t sleep. At all. It happens in spring or fall, as if my body is trying to adjust to seasonal changes. This time, it’s also trying to adjust to some of the wackiest weather EVEN for New England. Hot, cold, rain, dry. Broiling heat preceded by temperatures near freezing plus one of the worst pollen seasons ever. My inability to breathe without choking, coughing, or sneezing a dozen times has reached maximum levels. I feel as if I haven’t been able to take a full breath for weeks. Or is that months?
Mind you, I’m in a good mood. It isn’t my brain buzzing around. It’s physical stuff. I need to sleep almost sitting up to breathe but then my back goes into collapse.
I have a doctor’s appointment Wednesday (annual physical) and was supposed to get blood tests today. I’m too tired and terrified of trying to breath in the hot soup we are currently calling “air.”
Tomorrow is another day, or so Scarlett said.
QUESTIONS:
What’s the worst commercial you’ve recently seen (or heard)? Why was it so bad?
No matter how many times this question comes up, I get lockjaw trying to figure out the really WORST one. I think at the moment the insurance commercial where they are trying to sell hot wet teddy bears from a hotdog vending truck. In what appears to be Coney Island in Brooklyn.
I think it’s supposed to be funny.
It’s not funny. It also has absolutely nothing to do with the product they are selling — supposedly auto insurance. Actually, I’m not sure that a warm, sodden teddy bear has anything to do with any product of any kind OR why anyone would want a slightly cooked toy Teddy that smells like hot onions.
Is it me? Have I lost my sense of humor?
What takes a lot of time but is totally worth it?
I used to feel that way about practicing piano, but since I don’t even own a piano anymore because my hands are too arthritic to make practicing practical, I guess the next thing that takes tons of time and is sometimes worth the effort is not taking pictures, but processing the photos.
It takes too much time — maybe because I’m using old tools, but I suspect the problem is I’m really nit picky. I over-process pictures, don’t like the result and start over. By the time I’m through “fixing” half a dozen pictures I have two feelings about it:
- You mean I just spent four hours for a mere five or six photographs? What is WRONG with me.
- After all that, I still haven’t created a post? What is WRONG with me?
Have you ever smiled at a stranger and then wished you hadn’t? Why or why not?
A long long time ago, I can still remember …
Riding the subway from Queens into Manhattan. Smiling pleasantly at the man in front of me. I was sitting. He was standing. I looked down at the book I was reading and his penis was slung across the book.
I slammed the book closed. I really wasn’t intending to hurt him, though I certainly didn’t MIND hurting him, but to say that he was unprepared for the results of this early morning F-train interaction would be putting it mildly.
I’m pretty sure he never used his penis as a bookmarker again and I gave up smiling at anyone in any subway for the rest of my life as a New Yorker.
What do you think is the nastiest tasting food?
We have a tie vote on this one. In the slimy-salty section, olives and anchovies take a joint first prize. In the slimy yet hairy department, definitely okra.
I’m sure there are many others, but these spring quickly to mind.
GRATITUDE:
Are you at peace with yourself? Your world? Please share, whether you said “yay” or “nay”!
I am as much at peace with my world as (considering one thing and another) I can be. I am incredibly grateful to the guys who fixed my deck as well as my oil-delivery company who patiently waited almost a full year for me to pay them the $8000 it cost to replace our boiler — and that they only charged us $8000. Everyone else wanted at least two or three thousand more.
And no one else would take payments, especially since I had no idea how long it was going to take to pay them off!
You know how people say “Money can’t buy happiness”? Well, really, depending on what your problems are, it can. Every single thing that worries and/or obsesses me is about money. How can I afford to fix my teeth? Get Garry a new hearing aid? Replace my sunglasses? Get a green t-shirt to go with my green floral skirt? None of these would be problems if I could simply pay my way, but I can’t. In the more than ten years Garry and I have been retired, our income has remained the same, give or take maybe $50 each from Social Security “cost of living” raises.
Our income will never go up. We will never get a raise or a bonus. I doubt we will be able to take a vacation. I’ve come to grips with realizing we aren’t going to travel and feeling lucky that we live in a beautiful place. But gee whiz, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a few choices? Wouldn’t it be great if I could afford a daily inhaler so I could breathe when the pollen is high? Or replace all my missing teeth? The other day I discovered I couldn’t eat cashews because I no longer have any grinding teeth. They’ve all been pull because they were cracked (yes, I’m a tooth-grinder since forever) or infected.
Garry’s cochlear hearing aid is going slightly extinct and no, even though Medicare paid for the surgery, they will NOT pay for a replacement hearing aid, even though the surgery removed all the “hearing” pieces in that ear. Does that even make any sense? At least he still has teeth.
And, we have a usable deck, something I didn’t think could happen in this lifetime.
Life is not all bad, but it definitely could be improved by receiving enough money from Social Security and Medicare to take care of things we really need. Not luxuries. I can do without the vacations or a matching tee shirt, but being able to see, hear, chew, and breathe doesn’t seem excessive.
