Weather, Or Not

I'm quite sure the Idernet is lying about how sweltery it is around here today. It is saying it is 88 degrees outside, but I believe it to be closer to 200. It's 80 indoors, ffs, and sure to get hotter. But then I'm lying about myself, though in a different sense. I'm lying about because I lack the energy to get up and move around. This will almost certainly be the day on which I finally turn the air conditioner on. I can't take much more of this. This weather is truly fecking awful, and the solstice still lies in the dismal future.

My niece made a quick run to a store for me and picked up some almond flour on sale, paying for it mostly with accumulated bonus points. I should get through the next few days okay, if my milk doesn't go sour. Shopping again on Friday. I hope they've got some good stuff on sale that week. That could save it. The only thing saving this evening is the fact that I don't have to go out in the heat and fetch mail. Sunday has that to recommend it, at least.


( Sunday Verse )

Trying to remember what happened two or three days ago, and it just doesn't work. There was some pretty serious indigestion and reflux but I can't remember which day that was. Much sleeping took place, and I believe there were some strange dreams, but the details have all evaporated. Right now there's a headache, and I'm thinking I could go back to sleep even though I've only been awake since a bit after midnight. Had no dinner, and intend to avoid it lest the reflux recur.

Triple digit highs coming up Tuesday and Saturday, but nocturnal lows staying in the sixties. The rest of the days will peak in the nineties, as have recent days. The fan is on now, and windows open. So far indoor highs have not topped 81 in the evenings, and I can usually keep them below 80, then get them down to 74 or 75 by morning. That won't last much longer. Our luck usually runs out in late June, sometimes early July, and relentless, sweltering misery takes over. This is my kill me now weather. Odds that it will have steadily increased. Age. Can't live with it, can't live without it.

Bits of past have been popping up to haunt me of late. A few days ago I discovered that a guy I knew in high school died in 2011, and his slightly older brother, also a really nice guy, had died as far back as 1988. All these years I've been thinking they were probably still in the world and it was possible, however unlikely, I might see them again some day. Now there's just that emptiness such knowledge brings. It's as though the past itself now has more holes in it. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to vanish from it myself, before it vanishes entirely from me.

Badder than usual the last few days. A lot of lying in bed not really awake or asleep, and not dreaming but having something like a movie of Finnegan's Wake (but about my life not his) running through my head. The puns are awful. But then the weather has probably been nice. I can't say for sure, as I haven't been out in it, but neither the furnace nor the air conditioner has been running, and the fan has kept the place quite comfortable most of the time. The worst ointment flies have been frequent indigestion, leg cramps, and a very tricky neck.

This will be a shopping Friday, and the sale selection from Safeway is crap again, but I suppose I'll make do as usual. The last few days have passed almost unnoticed, being all the same, but the next few will be quite noticeable, bringing the first heat wave of the season. Friday and Saturday will have triple digit highs, and Friday night will stay above seventy all night. Air conditioning is almost a certainty that night, and it's bound to continue running the next day. Summer is upon us. Most likely I'll slip closer to comatose. Now I'm going to go pseudodream more of Finnegan's Wake.

A while ago I finished eating what should probably have been Thursday's dinner. Displaced in time again, I'm thinking about taking the Friday afternoon nap I missed now. At some point I need to give myself last month's haircut. If I keep filling in gaps, eventually I might catch up with everything undone, but somehow I doubt it. Probably because in eighty years on this Earth not once have I had monkeys fly out of my butt. In time one does gain the ability to perceive what is likely and what is not, and anything in my life going back to balance and rationality is, at this point, one of those things that is as unlikely as me evacuating a flock of aviating butt monkeys. Too bad.

The apartment is currently down to 71 degrees from an indoor high of 76 yesterday. The insulation is now functioning as a heat storage system that slows the nocturnal cooling of fan and open windows. All the heat it prevented from entering the apartment by day it allows in at night. It's an imperfect system. Still, I've been lucky enough this year that I've had no power bill in April or May, and there is still 55 bucks credit toward June. It's possible I'll be able to keep my consumption down and have no bill again next month, but more likely it will be some annoying sum of one or two digits, forcing me to waste a postage stamp. The heat that will provoke air conditioner usage will be arriving this month, with triple digit highs next Friday and Saturday. After that, all hell is apt to break loose. If it does, my pre-credit bill could easily be eighty or ninety bucks, so the stamp won't be wasted. It will be carrying a check for twenty or thirty bucks. Yes, check. Don't tech shame me!

Speaking of tech shame, I've been using a YouTube video of a Jr. Walker song to counteract all the misery of crepitude and brainlessness I've been suffering lately. It's one of those cheerful, short, airplay-friendly songs from late 1969, meaning it got its greatest exposure in early 1970. I have a vague memory that it was one of my favorite songs that summer, and it was on the jukebox at my favorite coffee shop of the time, so I dropped a lot of coins for it. Now I can just stay home and click a link.

Lately I've been doing bad stuff to my neck in my sleep again, and the soreness is now lasting all day. I need to be very careful with every movement, lest I make it much worse. So it plays havoc with every aspect of my life, and I get next to nothing done. This would be bad enough for a normal person, but for an old, stupid guy it's an ongoing catastrophe. I end up sleeping a lot, and then get my neck farther out of whack each time. A vicious circle. And that's why this entry is so late. It's a wonder I'm doing this at all. Anything at all, really. And now it's going to be Monday and I'll have to go outside and check the mailbox again. Unless the fire weather does its worst and the entire state burns down. For me, it might be worth it.


( Read more... )

Monday I woke up to dampness. There were times when I heard the rain, and other times when it was quiet. It was chilly outside, but the furnace never fired up. My sink had come down with a clog Sunday evening, and the the manager came by to deal with it, as it turns out not entirely successfully. The clog appeared to have gone away, but later I tried washing dishes and discovered that it had merely moved farther down the pipe and it just took longer for the sink to back up. They were supposed to be back Tuesday, but didn't make it. The job remains unfinished for now, and the time of correction a mystery.

My neck has been very sore, and I'm getting almost desperate enough to actually go out and see a chiropractor, but not quite. Also irritating, the detergent allergy that is messing up my fingertips is not improving, and I'm getting splits in the skin that can be quite painful when anything gets into them, The keyboard is unpleasant to use as well, and it's getting harder to pick up anything fiddly, or do things like open jar lids. I had this condition once before, some twenty or more years ago, but I don't remember how I got over it.

The few cool days were nice, but heat is returning, though next Saturday could cool off again and might even bring more rain. The end of the month looks sultry as hell though, bringing day after day with highs in the nineties. The nights will continue in the sixties, so there will be some nocturnal cooling for the apartment, maybe enough to avoid turning on the air conditioner before June. We're only about five weeks from the summer solstice, so our luck will surely run out soon.

I need to get groceries this week, and the Safeway sale ad is one of the worst I've ever seen. We'll have to see if I'm sufficiently disappointed to go back the the other store. I haven't bought from them in more than six months, and I'm still pissed off at them, but the third store has an unusable online ordering system, and those are the only real options. I'll have to check the web sites in the morning and see which is the lesser evil this week I guess.

It was a napless day, and I've gotten very tired. At the moment I'm munching some almond powder to try to get rid of some indigestion, and as soon as I can I'll be hitting the sheets. I hope they don't hit back.

If I'm not mistaken, I just blew through Thursday and Friday as though they were pedestrians on a Florida highway. I've had some foods that didn't make me too sick, and I've had some sleeps with dreams that weren't excessively weird. The days have been quite hot, and I've been able to stay indoors napping in the cool air I've brought in by night. There's no telling how long those cool nights will continue, but one odd thing is that Monday is supposed to have a high in the sixties, and very likely some rain. One odd day, very out of place. I can identify strongly with that day. I'll bet it gets murdered before it gets here.

It looks like I'm back to a semi-nocturnal sleep schedule. If I get to sleep before dawn I can usually stay asleep for several hours, but for the last few days they have been working on the building and whatever they are doing involves a noisy compressor and big feet tromping about on the roof. It's distressing, and I'll be glad when it's over. Today being Saturday perhaps they'll skip it. That would be nice. I'm sure they'll skip Sunday, and if it rains then probably Monday too. Maybe I'll be undisturbed until Tuesday. I'll take it.

A tiresome, tiring Sunday. My Idernet connection failed again Saturday evening, and I had to fiddle with the phone battery again to get it back. The battery took two hours to go from a 40% charge to a 51% charge, and then most of the night to get up to 100%. It is clearly on its last legs. I only hope it isn't the phone that's acting up. The battery is four years old, and has lasted twice as long as the one that came with the phone, so it most likely is the battery, though the phone itself is six years old. The scroll wheel on my computer mouse is also failing. All my technology is failing, just like me, but I have apparently not failed fast enough to avoid replacing some or all of my gadgets. Too bad.

While tech does its best to screw me, the weather is plotting to join in its depredations. All but one day in the upcoming week will have a high in the nineties, with Wednesday at 97 nudging uncomfortably close to 100. Needless to say, this is not what May is supposed to be doing. There has also been more wind than usual for the time of year. The combination of hot, dry, and windy is something that does not make a Californian comfortable. The approach of summer fills me with trepidation.

Look, I used "depredations" and "trepidation" in one paragraph. I wonder what that means? Oh, right. Nothing. It means nothing.


( Sunday Verse )

Now that we're rid of April the forecast is threatening us with highs in the nineties. Seriously. In the very first week of May! We're in a whole world of WTF now. I've decided to shop at Safeway this week after all, mostly so I can stick upon some more microwaveable stuff. No way I want to use the real oven now, and even the stovetop seems an extravagance. Anyway, I have to order online in the morning so I need to get some sleep, if I can. I'm very tired, but sometimes that's when it's hardest to sleep.

Saturday night I went to bed rather early in the evening, though I don't recall exactly when. Both Friday and Saturday had felt exhausting to me, though again I can no longer recall exactly why. Rain had started falling Friday afternoon, and I got wet rushing out to the mailbox, and then I didn't feel like cooking dinner so just heated a can of chili beans and warmed ac couple of tortillas in the skillet. Somehow being fed and hearing the sound of the rain falling outside made me sleepy and I crawled under my covers expecting to be awake again before midnight, but actually didn't wake up until half past one in the morning.

I intended to get up then, but the rain had started falling faster again and I so enjoyed listening to it that I just kept lying there, and nodded off again and didn't wake up for two more hours. The apartment had grown quite chilly by then, even though the furnace was running again, and that discouraged me from getting up. I decided to just lie there and daydream for a couple of hours, but around half past five, after getting up to take a leak, I though I'd just stay in bed until the morning light started leaking around the blinds, and while lying there I nodded off again.

Next time I woke the sun had clearly risen, though the overcast made the light in the room dim, and I figured it was probably seven o'clock or so, but when I checked the clock it was half past twelve. I had slept another seven hours! I think that's the longest unbroken sleep I've had in a very long time. Probably a few years. I'm going to assume that it's a sign that I am dying. Since I'll probably be dead tomorrow, I at the artichoke I'd forgotten I had, and had some rye toast with it, and a bottle of the expensive Black Butte porter from Oregon. I mean I can't take it with me, right?

I've been trying to think of a poem suited to impending death for Sunday Verse, but have failed, so I just chose something at random. It turned out to be something by the Canadian poet Anne Michaels, which is probably suitable since our relationship with Canada is surely dead. No more of the really good maple syrup, so it's a good time to die. Au revoir. If you ever escape across the border, think of me when you eat poutine, eh?


( Sunday Verse )