Weather, Or Not

Whoa, falling asleep at the computer again. It was a figuratively long day, or must have been, as I've already forgotten most of it. It got into the eighties, and I do remember the afternoon heat hitting my face when I went out to check the mailbox. There was nothing. I need to sign up for postal service notifications, so I won't waste energy by going out to the mailbox when I get nothing.

I've planned on doing that for a couple of years now, but the executive dysfunction has gotten strong in this decrepit brain. Maybe I'll do it today, after I've slept, but probably not, as today will be grocery shopping day, and that will keep me (and the computer) busy for a long time. I wonder if I'll even remember when tomorrow comes?

Sneezing and nose running. Damned pollen. I should start drinking a bit of tea in the evening, with a bit of local honey in it. That used to help a bit. Damn, another thing to be remembered.

Tonight I'm not eating dinner. I didn't eat dinner last night either, but I did open a can of soup. Tonight I'm not even doing that. I made a malted earlier and that will have to provide sufficient nourishment. I have neither energy for cooking nor appetite for eating. My neck, my sinuses, and my right ear are all doing weird shit, putting me quite out of sorts and forcing me to remind myself that at least I'm not in the fecking middle east.

So things are relatively great in the un-bombed mini-metropolis, for now anyway. The Van Allen Probe, a 1,300 pound space craft, is supposed to enter the atmosphere about now and burn up, though parts of it might crash into earth. The odds of anyone getting hit are small, but wouldn't that be a spectacular way to go? Way better than the lingering misery I'm expecting to endure. Odds are slight, as I said, but I can dream.

Joe McDonald, of the band Country Joe and the Fish, died a couple of days ago. This was one of the first full-on psychedelic bands of the sixties, and I suffered a bout of nostalgia, remembering this doper classic of 1967. RIP, Joe.

Daylight time snuck up on me, but fortunately the computer and phone clocks adjust themselves. One less thing for my aged brain to keep track of. But Saturday night I got distracted and let my dinner burn, and it filled the place with smoke. Not enough to trigger the smoke alarm, but enough to be annoying and force me to turn on the fan, and make the place chilly. I ended up needing to use a bit of gas to reheat the place, which would not have been necessary had I not been a decrepit twit. Still, it could have been worse. It had been a mild day, and the night didn't get too cold, so it was probably only a few cents worth of gas.

The mildness is continuing for several days, and then it's going to get, well, fecking hot. By mid March we will be getting highs in the high eighties, which is like June weather. Needless to say I get worried when shit like this happens. Summer has become the very worst time of year for me. The heat exhausts me, and the expense of air conditioning threatens to leave me broke. It's gotten to the point that I don't even like remembering the childhood summers I so much enjoyed at the time. An additional worry is that we could get fires. Wildfire smoke is no longer just an annoyance to me. It's downright debilitating. If summer is hellish, which I expect it will be, we'd better get some damned good watermelons as compensation.


( Sunday Verse )

It seems to be this time of day a lot anymore. I wake up near midnight and have to try to get my sleep-addled brain to work well enough to get my ass up, take a leak, pour a cup of orange juice, and get the computer working so I can post a brief journal entry before tomorrow comes crashing down on my head. Minimal wakefulness prevents all but the shallowest and most trivial thoughts.

But then that makes the best excuse, since my thoughts are rarely anything but shallow and trivial anymore. Maybe my subconscious knows what it's doing. Too bad that can't balance out the imbecility of my consciousness, but at least it's a disguise of sorts. I'm bearding for myself. Now that I think about it, that's pretty clever. Too bad clever is just TEMU smart.

Crap, what am I going to do for midnight breakfast?

It looks like I'm waking up close to midnight these days (or nights.) I'm also having a hard time finding the chair with my ass when I sit down, especially when I've just woken up. So far I haven't butt-planted myself on the floor, but I've come close. It's probably just a matter of time, and time and I don't get along, so I'm sure it's out to get me, and soon will.

My untogether act is missing dinner right now, but my mouth wants breakfast, meaning a donut, but there are none to spare. I'm not sure what dinner will be because I haven't remembered what I was thinking before I took my long, unintended nap. There might be some pasta and indigestion. At the moment I have an odd craving for pancakes, but I don't have the energy to make them. I can remember when I thought pancakes an easy, quick meal, but those days are gone.

Right now I'm going to go pop an aspirin for a persistent ache in my hips that I've had since waking up. Old guys falling apart don't have many pleasant thoughts to write about, but in my case I'm at least still able to work the keyboard. I wonder how long that will last? Time, you know, totally out to get me.

When I am old and full of sleep and dreaming by the monitor... I can't think of a thing to say. A Saturday afternoon nap turned into seven hours of sleep, which led to a midnight dinner which, I'm sure, was far less elegant than one of Hyacinth Bucket's candlelight suppers would have been. In fact, in my ever-growing detachment from reality, I managed to slop some Alfredo sauce on my shirt and trousers, a faux pas that would have been quite embarrassing in polite company. Fortunately, I have no company, polite or otherwise, so I was the only one present who was rude enough to scold me. I should probably consider no longer inviting myself around, but the poor old bastard has enough to contend with without the likes of me adding to his misery.

Oops. Hush. I think I might be eavesdropping on myself. How mortifying. I wish I could just crawl inside my brain where the vast emptiness would swallow me.


( Sunday Verse )

Another day slipped away and I have no idea what became of it. I think it rained more than expected, but I also slept more than expected, though all my uncles are dead and none were named Bob. Still, sitting here this morning as day grows brighter but I don't is no surprise and pretty much what I ought to have expected. I'm supposed to put together a shopping list today, to be ordered tomorrow, but I think I'd just as soon be nuked, if not for the fact that such an event would be detrimental to the local cat population. Once again my tendency toward nihilism is stymied by the memory of cute little furballs purring.

This being so close to shopping day I am almost out of tasty unhealthy foods for breakfast, but I rummaged blindly in part of the refrigerator I can't see and found a can of cinnamon rolls, which I baked forthwith and have partly devoured, accompanied by a cup of cold coffee with a big shot of fresh cream. The coffee probably precludes any chance of a nap anytime soon, but it was tasty enough to have made that sacrifice worthwhile. In fact I'm contemplating having a second cup, the anti-Morphean damage having already been done.

The local weather forecast is quite peculiar. The latest update is predicting a high of 72 today, when yesterday's forecast was predicting that today's high would be only 68. Even more alarmingly, it is predicting a high of 76 for tomorrow. I don't recall signing up for this. In fact I'm quite sure I didn't. I have clearly been drafted, without advance warning. This is what happens when you allow climate scientists to run amok and send all the snow to the east! I intend to write a very sharply worded letter to Oprah, insisting that she do something about it. Spring in February! The very idea!

There was no mail when I went out to check today, which was not surprising. There is no mail most days. What was actually surprising is that I made it back to the apartment, and that I mostly recovered from the task within ten minutes. Most days I now expect to collapse on my way back, and if not then I expect to pass out for an hour or so after I get back in. I'm getting closer, but clearly I'm not there yet. I won't make a bet with myself about when it will finally happen, because a win will be a loss.

Rain is supposed to start falling this evening and continue through much of Tuesday. Earlier forecasts had it continuing into Wednesday, and still earlier into Thursday. We are being deprived of more of our winter again. In fact the only rain in the long term forecast after tomorrow is a possibility of showers on Sunday, the first of March. And then on March 3 begins a six day run of days with highs in the seventies. WTF, March? If you come in like a panting dog, how do you plan to go out?

But that will be then and this is now. I think I just heard some raindrops falling on the vent pipe above the stove. Time to enjoy what could be the last real rain of the season. And time to fix an actual dinner for the first time this week. There's stuff in the freezer I need to get rid of, to make more room for the ice cream I'll apparently need to stock up on for the premature summer that could soon be breathing down my neck.

It's getting light too early. I shouldn't even be awake at this hour. Friday night I forgot to recharge my phone, and thus lost Idernet, then while waiting for the phone to recharge I stretched out on the bed to get a kink out of my back and ended up sleeping for about three hours. When I woke up I had a sharp pain in my hip and could barely walk. Now I can't even remember which hip hurt, but now my legs hurt when I stand up. The shit that happens when you get really old is so weird.

At the moment I'm planning on going back to bed soon. I already had my orange juice and ate my breakfast donut, but they failed to make it feel like I'd slept and started my day. My body is telling me it's bed time, so bedtime it is, glare through the window blinds notwithstanding. It's awfully chilly in here, and I want to get under those warm covers again.

It was mostly dry all day here, if you don't count the accumulated damp that had already soaked into the soil. No new rain fell, at least during the hours I was awake, though there were plenty of clouds. The interesting weather was all south or east of here. The mountains got several feet of new snow, and the farther south you went the more rain there was. Los Angeles got soaked. It's entirely possible that San Diego was washed out to sea and we simply aren't being told about it.

Today (Thursday) is expected to grow quite blustery, with rain and wind starting before dawn and continuing several hours past sunset. This won't be February's last rain, either. More should arrive next Sunday, and could continue as late as midweek. Odds are good I won't have to put up with much sunshine until early next month. I can put up with a bit of cold and a higher utility bill for those pleasant gray skies.