After watching T.V. with my younger brother last evening until the advent of the midnight hour, I decided to dress up and go outside to perhaps shovel snow that a snowplow had earlier in the evening likely piled up at the mouth of the driveway.
At least a couple of times over that evening, my brother had gone to the living room window to peer outside and marvel at the fact that it had stopped snowing ─ weather reports had contained a snow warning, and claimed that it would be snowing throughout the night and into tomorrow.
Yet the snow had stopped quite early in the evening, and no sign of its redevelopment ever displayed.
When I went outside, I discovered the truth ─ it was raining, and also quite mild. Apparently temperatures had warmed up so much that the daytime's falling snow was no longer possible.
My brother went on up to his bedroom with that news of encouragement, and I gathered up a shovel and was soon using it to tote shovelfuls of sopping wet and heavy snow to discard on the ground at the two corners of the driveway.
Toward the finish of that task, my wife came driving home after her long day working at her friend's Thai restaurant; and as she pulled into the driveway, she counselled that I should leave the chore for her youngest son who was not yet home following his afternoon / evening shift at work.
Well, I was more than half-finished by then, so I continued till the job was done. I may be 69 years old, but I don't exactly consider myself invalid yet.
I was to get to bed before my wife, who had gotten involved in doing some manner of cooking. But I left the bedroom light on for her, since I wear earplugs and a blindfold.
Nevertheless, I think knowing that the light was on somewhat discomfitted me; and I also suspect that my small workout had elevated my metabolism. Short story: sleep was not easily arrived at.
I was still awake when my wife came to bed, although I imagine that she did not realize it to be so. And overnight, I was to have a most fractured sleep, never getting more than the shortest of periods. Fortunately, I felt sufficiently at ease in bed despite this ─ it can be a bugger when one feels overcome with restlessness.
But it was around 4:45 a.m. when I gave up the pursuit of sleep and decided to get to work on the day's content assignment at the post I am building at one of my six hosted websites.
My eldest stepson was to rise shortly after 6:00 a.m. to begin readying for work.
Anon, it became apparent that I was deteriorating from inadequate sleep; and because I did not wish to still be sitting up when my younger brother rose as he often does around 8:30 a.m., I called a halt at the website work and bedded down on the floor here in front of my computer no later than 7:40 a.m.
I do this when I am concerned of disturbing my wife's essential sleep ─ she still works for a living, after all.
I set my cellphone's alarm for 9:59 a.m. in order to ensure that she did not sleep in, for she normally likes to be up by 10:00 a.m. in order to prepare herself and then take the rather long drive to the restaurant for her 11:00 a.m. start.
Some dreams testify that I must have occasionally lapsed into sleep despite the discomfort; and then at one point when I felt especially conscious, I was certain I could hear someone moving about. I had my earplugs, but with my head almost adjacent to the floor, the floor betrays movement even in my brother's bedroom and my own bedroom.
So I reached for my cellphone to check the time, and saw it to be 9:02 a.m.
Evidently I was not as cognizant as I imagined I was, for I thought that it was two minutes past the hour at which I wanted to rise. How come I never heard my cellphone's alarm, I wondered?
I hustled myself awkwardly to my feet and thrust away the makings of my bed, and then exited this room. I immediately saw that my brother's bedroom door was still closed...and then it dawned upon me that I was up an hour earlier than I had intended.
At that moment my brother emerged from his bedroom, so I preceded him down the stairs so I could make my day's first hot caffeinated beverage. What little rest I had gotten had somewhat revitalized me, to my surprise.
My wife eventually got up on her own shortly before 10:00 a.m.
And when she was ready to leave for work, she had me come out to the car with her so that she could give me her T4 (Statement of Remuneration Paid) that her employer had given her identifying her 2018 earnings at the restaurant. I will be preparing both her and my own tax returns when I get around to it.
I sat with my brother watching episodes of our followed T.V. shows that I summoned up with our T9 Android 8.1 T.V. box until he felt ready to return to his bedroom midway through the noon-hour to seek a rest.
Since I had cut short my work on that website post, I returned to that task and completed the day's content assignment, and was into my own bed by 1:20 p.m. in search of some proper sleep. It sounded as if my brother was already getting himself up.
I did get some sleep, but better than an hour later I was out of bed. I certainly did not expect to be opening my bedroom door and seeing that my brother's bedroom door was still shut. Yet he had been up ─ he had left the day's mail on the coffee table in the living room.
He must have risen for a short time, and then concluded that it was too early to be taking off for the afternoon to end up drinking somewhere. Often he will leave early and get in a park walk somewhere, but the soggy several inches of snow make that too unattractive a prospect. Also, I don't think it has ever quite quit raining ─ a light rain, but it is certainly effective. If this keeps up, maybe most of the snow will be gone by the end of the weekend.
As I was at work on this post and enjoying my day's second hot caffeinated beverage, he did re-emerge from his bedroom, and around mid-afternoon took his leave.
Eventually I tackled some exercise centred around my 43½-pound dumbbell, and that finally freed me up to have my first meal of the day. Incidentally, after that exercising session, I scaled in at approximately 185 pounds stripped down to my undershorts. I'm not quite five feet and 11 inches in height ─ or at least that was the case in my young adulthood.
A day or two ago I wrote here that I wish I had the property allowing me to grow much of my own vegetables and fruit, for I was specifically wondering on the health potential of raising blackcurrants.
Another interesting crop I want to mention is one strongly linked to colon cancer prevention ─ purple corn (or maize). Check out this article:
HSIonline.com
I've never had a colonoscopy, and can't imagine submitting to one. I would rather rely upon preventive measures.
There are no shortage of studies about purple corn and how its anthocyanins seem adept at overcoming or at least controlling cancer cells ─ this 2008 article at MAGIC.hana.bi gives a good indication for just how often this variety of corn has been mentioned in research literature: Q: What about the purple corn and colon cancer?
A 2007 article at ReliaWire.com also discusses anthocyanins, purple corn, and colon cancer: Anthocyanins in Purple, Blue and Red Foods Fight Colon Cancer.
I deliberately avoided linking to any actual studies, but this one at OnlineLibrary.Wiley.com is not impossibly technical: Health Benefits of Purple Corn (Zea mays L.) Phenolic Compounds.
Out of interest, I did a search at Amazon at the top of this post to see what was available by way of purple corn for gardening purposes.
That first website I linked to also had an interesting article on a mushroom with the power to counteract cancer cells ─ especially breast cancer cells:
HSIonline.com
Initially I was discouraged that the mushroom would be rather rare and quite expensive, but then the article assuaged those concerns by indicating that it is quite easily grown commercially.
Here are some other articles ─ some cautions are expressed in a couple of them, so pay heed:
- FoodRevolution.org: How Lingzhi Mushrooms Combat Aging, Disease, and Cancer
- MSKCC.org: Reishi Mushroom
- WebMD.com: REISHI MUSHROOM
- OncoLink.org: Reishi Mushrooms (Ganoderma lucidum, Ling Zhi)
I will finish this section with a link to an article that I found to be curious because it suggests that we may actually need sour foods in our diet. I had read something about this previously, so when I read this article, I kept this in mind and while shopping, I purchased a small mesh bag of organic lemons. I had twice previously bought similar bags of organic grapefruits.
The grapefruits are easy to eat, but trying to 'devour' an entire organic lemon at a meal ─ I eat the peel and all ─ is considerably more of a challenge. I only eat the peels of lemons ─ a larger grapefruit's peel is more than I care to ingest.
Anyway, here's the article:
LifeSpa.com
As usual, I must make haste, for my evening is already underway and I have yet to create a post at my private blog.
Since I saw no reason to take any photographs of the sloppy mess outside today, I will close with a few more that were taken a little over a year ago when my wife and her two sons arranged a small reunion in Bali with five of their Thailand family members.
All of these photos were taken on January 30, 2018. The first depicts my eldest stepson, who was 23 years old at the time.
The young lady in the other three photos is Kæ̂m or Gâaem (she actually styles herself as Milada Gamz) ─ she is the wife of my wife's nephew Mark (or MonoMark).
Now on to my other blog....
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