It was another midnight-hour bedtime last night ─ I seem to recall that it may have been 12:44 a.m. once I was into bed.
As usual, my younger brother had kept me up operating our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box that he hasn't the acumen to understand and operate.
And since he was essentially plastered, I can't imagine what benefit he got out of any of the episodes we watched of the T.V. shows we follow.
That afternoon, I had completed my eldest stepson's income tax return, and he had dated it for today when he signed it.
Providing I completed it correctly, he ought to get a refund of around $148.
Many years ago, I used to work at the same taxation centre in Whalley where I would be dropping off this very tax return. It isn't too far from where we live ─ perhaps a 1½-mile round trip hike.
I don't drive, so it would be the hike. He does have his own car, but I felt more confident about delivering the envelope myself than entrusting him to do it.
However, I wanted to do the trip this morning as early as possible in order to avoid the workday bustle that would rule the day even before daylight.
My sleep overnight was somewhat fitful. Also, I was beset with some "bad wind" (as my Thai wife used to call it) that I attribute to the black garlic I had been ingesting the past three days.
She had given me a pouch of the black garlic; and on the first day I ate six of the smallish bulbs with a meal, and then five on each of the next two days.
As of today, I have decided to cut back to just two of the bulbs.
Anyway, guilt over the foul vapours I had generated a few times overnight interfered somewhat with my ability to be at ease and sleep. My poor wife has to work, after all ─ she needs her sleep.
My best hope was that she was so soundly asleep that she never noticed aught.
During one final wakeful episode I recollected the errand I wanted to discharge, so I checked the time ─ it was something like 4:48 a.m.
I eased myself from bed and gathered up my clothes, exiting the bedroom; and by 5:04 a.m. I was off on that hike to deliver the tax return.
It was definitely below freezing out there, despite how relatively mild it seems to get during the daytime in the current streak of sunny weather.
I got the errand done, and was back here by 5:31 a.m. ─ I had seen a raccoon treading across frozen snow on the Canada Revenue Agency (Google map) grounds.
As a result of this deviation from my norm, I only felt I had time to achieve half of a normal day's content assignment at the post I am putting together at one of my six hosted websites.
And then by about 7:15 a.m., I had bedded down here on the floor in front of my computer to get some further sleep ─ a tactic of consideration that I use to avoid disturbing my wife's sleep if I was to return to our bed.
Up to that point, I had never heard anything of my eldest stepson ─ he usually rises around 6:00 a.m. to ready himself if he plans to go to work on a workday. So I figured that he was blowing off the day as he often does.
Yet when my 9:59 a.m. cellphone alarm roused me from my rather uncomfortable bed on the floor, I was eventually to find that he was gone.
My wife was already up and into the bathroom when I emerged from the small room where I keep my computer ─ the room is immediately next to my bedroom.
And my brother was downstairs watching T.V., so I went downstairs and fixed myself an instant coffee, and then joined him.
My wife had a chore to request of me before she left on her drive to work (her restaurant start time is 11:00 a.m.) ─ she wanted me to text her the details that her sister Penn would need over in Italy in order to send a wire transfer to us here.
It seems that Penn is going to wire my wife the money to make a flight possible for my wife to go over to Italy to visit Penn ─ maybe in the next two weeks at most.
Well, I knew that it would be no simple matter ─ far more than just a SWIFT code.
I eventually did get all of the information necessary, provided that the bank branch destination for the funds is the correct branch ─ my wife will have to confirm that.
However, the information is far more complex than I am willing to simply text to my wife ─ she is going to have to be given it in person here at home.
All of this research had to await the departure of my younger brother for the afternoon ─ he headed away shortly after 1:00 p.m. following some bedrest.
We had met with some conflict earlier when I was operating the Android TV Box.
I had summoned up an episode of a certain T.V. series that he never bothers to spend time becoming involved with. Then he huffily declared, "I don't want to watch this. Get something else."
This infuriated me ─ am I his bloody servant or slave to sit fetching up shows that only he is willing to watch? I could be working on my website instead of babysitting the insensitive lout.
So I rose to my feet and turned over the T.V. and Android TV Box remotes to him and stalked off, saying to him that he could watch whatever he wanted ─ I was going to seek a nap.
Alas, it was not yet 11:00 a.m. ─ I hadn't been up an hour since my time on the floor (over 2½ hours laying there).
Also, my instant coffee was rather stiff ─ and I had earlier already had another caffeinated beverage centred around a mixture of instant coffee and cocoa powder.
Despite returning to bed, I was so keyed up from the caffeine and my own roused ire that napping was impossible. I was also upset over the banking chore that my wife had dumped on me, for I had yet to resolve it ─ I didn't want to have to be making a bank phone call until after my brother was gone, since it was none of his business.
All I did was lay in bed trying to relax. And eventually, I just listened for him to quit the T.V. and seek his bedrest before he would be taking off for the afternoon to end up drinking again.
It was well into the noon-hour when he at last shut himself up into his bedroom.
I emerged from mine, and then set about having some exercise out in the backyard tool-shed. First, though, I weighed myself exactly as I would be dressed once I was out there and leading off the exercises with some pull-ups ─ this 69-year-old would be hauling up a fully-dressed bodyweight of 188 or 189 pounds.
Maybe because of the agitation I was still feeling, I did rather well ─ that is, I felt much better at the exercises than I usually do.
For several years, I have been plagued with nasal problems that most affect me when I am in bed, for I generally end up with just one functioning nasal passageway.
The blockage can start to manifest as soon as I lie down ─ especially if I do so on my side.
Matters are further exacerbated because my nasal passages dry right out, and I am left with ever-increasing encrustations throughout that impede easy nasal breathing.
This can make it impossible to try and strictly breathe through my nose when I am exercising.
My personal suspicion is that I am prey to the environmental allergies peculiar to the house I live in, for I may only get out of the house to hike off on some errand once or twice a week.
I don 't know if I exactly qualify as belonging to the subset of people being described in the following two articles, but it is interesting to me ─ the articles are reporting on recent research that has found that sufferers of chronic sinus trouble are far more prone to depression and / or anxiety than the general population:
JacksDailydose.com
DailyMail.co.uk
The first article concludes by offering some suggestions to bring relief ─ one of which is "nasal irrigation with a neti pot."
Well, there is more to it than just uttering those words as a full prescription.
As yet I have not acquired the ingredients for the full procedure, but this article at LifeSpa.com covers it if you are interested: Neti & Nasya - The Dynamic Duo.
It is vital to keep your neti pot scrupulously clean. I read quite recently that a woman died after a type of brain-eating amoeba infected her ─ the amoeba causing the infection was traced back as having originated in the woman's neti pot where the damp environment allowed it to flourish.
A second topic I want to bring forth concerns aneurysms.
My dear mother died after one burst ─ she lived all alone in Keremeos where she and her husband Alex had retired (he predeceased her by something over four years).
I had not yet retired when my mother died, but it had been my hope that I might get to do so and then go to live in Keremeos with her. Unfortunately, she was to die more than five years before I got to retire.
I recall that an autopsy revealed that she had two other aneurysms that also could have burst one day ─ one in her abdomen, and another in her chest.
This has made me uneasy about just what might also be lurking within me and awaiting an opportunity to one day burst with catastrophic consequences.
Any of us can have aneurysms we know nothing of. And maybe ours will never burst throughout our lifetimes...but who knows?
This article is something to keep in mind the next time you get an antibiotic prescription:
DrMicozzi.com
I want to close now with a few photos that were taken early last year when my wife and her two sons arranged a small reunion in Bali with five of their Thailand family members.
The photos here were taken on January 30, 2018.
Posing in the first two are my wife and both of her sons ─ the youngest lad in wearing black, and was 20 years old at the time; his brawny older brother was 23 years old:
The young chap in the final two photos is Mark (or MonoMark) ─ he is my wife's nephew. He happens to be the son of Lumpoon, one of my wife's two sisters (the other sister of course is the one living in Italy):
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