sounds familiar

I have a pillbox. The kind old folks have; the kind I have.

It’s not one of those stereotypical ones, though; not the long translucent rectangular one with the days of the week printed atop each of the seven square compartments. It’s a much less conspicuous version, but it serves the same purpose – holding seven days of pills that I take on the regular. I guess I could go on a tangent here and talk about how much I dislike the fact that I take pills on the regular… how that makes me feel old and distinctly like the typical over-prescribed American… but that’s not what this entry is about.

This entry is about how I use my pillbox, and how that makes me feel.

I load that thing up; put two weeks of pills in there (they fit because I don’t take all that much, and half of what I take is by choice like vitamins or allergy pills during Spring). With two dosages in each day’s compartment, it’s a super dense load, and, if I’m being honest, not that convenient because it’s really cumbersome to pull out the right stuff from the big jumble of each day. But, it works for me.

The thing is, I sort of measure the passage of time by this pillbox. Every time I get to the last dose in the last little compartment I find myself wondering, “Man, two weeks already? Feels like I just filled this thing.” Every time.

So I bring it into the bathroom and refill it from the various Rx bottles I keep in the drawer or under the sink. I then take it back to my bedside table, where it will live for another two weeks until I once again wonder “didn’t I just do this?”

Two weeks at a time, dosing myself to the grave.

A place where you are comfortable naked is a special place.

It’s not everywhere one feels comfortable being naked. Naked is a personal thing, a vulnerable thing. A place has to offer something, it can’t just be anyplace.

Work? Probably not super comfortable.

A stall in the airport bathroom? Not very good.

The doctor’s office? A hotel? I mean, honestly, kind of OK?

Your own home? Fantastic; lordly.

Your bedroom with the door closed? Absolutely perfect.

My backyard is, surprisingly, a pretty comfortable spot for me to be naked. I take the position that, should a neighbor happen to see me skinny-dipping or showering in the outdoor shower or maybe just passing-by sans vestments, it’s on them. Likewise, the choice to either look away or continue to gaze upon my hairy lumpy form – also on them. Maybe there’s a law or something that conflicts with that “stance?”

it’s 1030 but it’s not raining.

The they said it was going to rain. An all night rain. That was about six hours ago. I mean, six hours ago when they said it. That it was going to rain.

To be so near a train that you can hear its metal wheels on metal tracks, feel its improbable approach in the very earth which supports you against gravity. To be that near and then call it a cat.

Just so very incorrect.

Watching baseball the other night, I told Sharaun how I tend to view the “third out” as the inning already being over, and how pleasantly surprised I always am when a team is able to produce in the situation. I mean, it makes perfect sense, the third out, in almost all ways, is no different than the first. But, to my chronic-planner/readiness-fanatic mind, by the third out it’s pretty much too late to do anything anymore, other than a totally-up-to-chance hail-Mary.

And, friends, that’s when I decided that’s a shit point of view; a shit way to live a life.

I always want to be ready; ahead of the game; able to spend my third out swinging wildly anything I damn feel like because my lead is secured and that third out doesn’t matter. That third out is my well-earned rest from my over-investment in the first two, of course. An unhealthy fixation with being able to walk the last lap in life, looking around and taking everything in and enjoying it as opposed to running while watching the clock.

On the one hand this approach to life may sound good and fine, and I suppose it has indeed served me/us well at times. But on the other hand it seems a terrible waste of my total available time. Why not work hard over the duration, all the while striking a balance between “work” and that slow purposeful presence and attentiveness? This is my realization from my third-out musing. Not a new realization for me.

Off to rally. Love y’all.

Especially in the very early morning as the sun is coming up and I’m quiet and everything is quiet. It feels so safe. Safe and secure. Not like a vault or bunker; not harsh and single-purposed like that, like a defense from outside thing. Safe like the room where you grew up, secure like zipping up a sleeping bag on a backpacking overnighter.

We had the floors redone last year. We also had the floors redone when we moved in, so maybe we had the floors reredone last year. The initial redoing was not redone well, and all the cheap laminate was buckled and coming apart at the seams. We redid it in tile. Cold and hard but much stronger feeling than the falling-apart-too-soon laminate. The sturdiness of then tile adds to the feeling of security. A layer of ceramic atop a slab of concrete, upon which more concrete blocks are stacked as outside walls. Our 1600sqft fortress.

Sometimes I have to remind myself to take my enjoyment of the place. With two “free” days each week, it’s tempting to forever fill them with trips and outings. I have to remember to take a Saturday or Sunday here and there to enjoy this place – to swim in our pool and cook food in our kitchen and to wrap myself in a blanket and read a book on our couch as the sun comes up.

I know that I’ve written about this before, and I’ll probably write about it again as it’s a feeling that I experience often.

It takes me well over a month to read most books. A typical reading session for me is 15-30min, maybe every other day. I’ve never really thought of this as “slow” before; it’s just the pace at which I read for pleasure/leisure. But I was talking to a good friend who was floored by this – saying they typically finish a book in under a week, and wondering how I kept the entire narrative in my head over such an extended period. There are times when I have read more voraciously, but it’s not the norm.

I love reading, but I’m not only slow I’m sporadic. Historically, I’ll read for months straight, put my book down after finishing, and go months without reading at all. Unlike the pace of my reading, a thing I’m fully at peace with, I would like to improve this consistency. I’ve put a little extra energy into that this year, and it’s (so far) working. Mainly I’m keen to increase the regularity with which I read because it’s something other than mindlessly consuming content on my phone. It feels like such a better use of time, and my dislike of my phone (both as a “content source” and just overall) seems to only be increasing as time goes on.

The spirit of this year, moving beyond the narrow subject of books/reading for a moment, fits with an increased consistency in reading, though. This year we are choosing to focus local, to do good in our community, to be the change we’d like to see, to opt-out of the consumer-driven side of economy as much as possible – radically reducing our spending and where what we do spend is routed, and finally to do the same with our attentions, paying particular attention to where we spend them as well (as they are the far more valuable asset).

Somehow, all of that stemmed from thinking about how I read.

Hugs.

I’m really frustrated with how I feel lately.

I’ve always enjoyed good health, and have enjoyed general comfort in my body, despite my lacking diet and resultant obesity. Not so these past two weeks.

On the day of Keaton’s highschool graduation open house, with forty or so of our friends packed in and around the house, I began feeling “off.” I even voiced it, “I don’t feel right,” I said to at least a couple folks. I felt a little dizzy and disconnected, and my legs felt leaden and clumsy. My hearing dampened in my right ear and there was a ringing there, too. This persisted, and I began to worry. Was I having a stroke? Heart attack? Panic attack?

I decided, I don’t really know why, to take my blood pressure. We only had one of those wrist cuff devices, which I’ve always deemed fairly unreliable, but I used it because it’s what we had. My blood pressure was really, really high. And even though I didn’t fully trust the specific numbers from the device, I did at least believe I was higher than I should be – because I could feel it.

Luckily, a family friend was here who has a sister who’s a cardiologist. She called and talked to me right then and there, and told me to relax, test again later, and make an appointment to follow-up with my doctor the next day.

Over the next hours, my blood pressure did indeed come down, but never really to where it should be. I did see my doctor the next day, and she prescribed blood pressure meds to take for two weeks and a re-test then to gauge effect. My hearing, however, did not, and has still not recovered. My right ear is about 80% dead, and I have a persistent ringing at all times.

I went to see the ENT and they guessed maybe a virus had somehow impacted the nerves in my ear, and prescribed a high dosage of steroids for two weeks. The same two weeks I would be on blood pressure medicine to lower my sudden high blood pressure, I’d be on a high dosage of steroids (which increase blood pressure).

The steroids make me feel awful. Like, terrible. I feel wired and stressed and tight and angry and irritable. I feel short tempered and hurried and harried and like I set a bad example as an adult when I become frustrated or annoyed over stupid things that really aren’t worth feeling either over. This week I begin three weeks of weekly steroid injections into my ear drums to see if that can return my ear to normal.

Not fun, not enjoyable. I don’t like feeling not myself. I don’t like not being able to hear. I used to joke that, if God really wanted to punish me, he’d take away my hearing. Music isn’t as good, conversations aren’t as easy or enjoyable. I have roid rage and I’m half deaf; it’s no fun.

I want to feel like me again and I want to hear again and I want to not be worried that something more systemic is wrong or going wrong with me.