Siam Longings Unfulfilled: Pondering That 'Last Roundup'

My old friend William Alan Gill ─ whom I have not seen in possibly two decades or more ─ had his 73rd birthday quite early this month.

He is resident in a full-care facility in the Victoria area on Vancouver Island. I get occasional updates on him from his long-time lady friend Sandra Wilson who will sometimes make the long transit haul from her apartment in Vancouver to go over and visit him.

How she is able to do these ventures as a day trip impresses me more than I can tell.

I had not spoken with her in a few months, so I phoned her early last evening.

I was pleased to learn that on his birthday, Bill had a few of his cousins also make an appearance ─ they live on the Island, so it's easier for them than it is for poor Sandy who has to rely upon public transportation to get there and back.

Bill has never been a truly healthy man ever since he underwent gastric bypass surgery in the latter 1970s. He was to lose the only job he ever had, and ended up on a disability Canada Pension for life.

His standard of living plummeted. He was no longer able to afford to drive, and he never did again, once he gave up his car.

He had the surgery around the age of 30, and has only ever had health issues since. How it is that he has lived as long as he has is utterly inexplicable to me.

For the past few years he has been unable to walk, and generally lies in bed ─ he wears a catheter full time.

Anyway, I talked with Sandy for an hour or so.

My younger brother arrived home during that telephone call and soon had on the T.V. I heard him talking with one of my two stepsons at one point.

When I finished the call, I went downstairs to fetch something to eat, and would have joined my brother at the T.V. to put our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box into play, for he doesn't know how to use it and thus only ever watches the few T.V. channels we can access via the T.V.'s basic cable package that we subscribe to.

But I saw him to be passed out.

I have not been able to enjoy late-evening T.V. and a can of beer since Wednesday of last week because he keeps passing out each evening since, and I will not sit in the presence of a passed-out drunkard.

At least I haven't had to make the four-mile round trip hike to restock on beer in quite some time ─ that is one benefit for me.

Of course I could always have a beer here upstairs all by myself, but I really only enjoy drinking when I am watching my shows on T.V. And so I do without on both counts ─ no T.V. or beer.

I think that I was into my bed before 10:30 p.m., but sleep never arrives very easily when I retire early.

And even after it arrives, I only sleep in segments.

I rose once long before 3:00 a.m. just to turn on and log back into my computer so that it would be all set for later use.

I returned to bed, but never got back to sleep. And so at 3:00 a.m. I rose to soon get to work on the day's content assignment at the post I have in progress at one of my six hosted websites.

I stuck with that task until the assignment for today was done; and then I returned to bed around 7:00 a.m. or soon thereafter.

My computer is kept in a small room next to my bedroom, and I have the window here open about two inches at most. Well, there was such a miserably chilly breeze blowing through that I actually had to finally close the window ─ and I have had it open all Winter.

I even had to close my bedroom window when I returned to bed.

It's as if an Arctic front has arrived. And it has been breezy all day ─ a mostly sunny day in the main, but everyone outdoors is fairly covered up.

But moving on to another matter, today is the third day in which I have been self-administering a nasya treatment with my own homemade version of nasya oil ─ a blend of sesame oil, and three essential oils (eucalyptus, lavender, and tea tree).

The oil is definitely keeping my nasal passageways from drying out ─ a chronic problem I have; but the mucous production is still in overdrive, and I still experience nasal blockages overnight. or when I am lying down.

Do I need to escalate the amount of essential oils I am using?

I was hoping that a partially blocked left ear would clear up if the oils could positively affect the Eustachian tube, but that hasn't happened. I once even tried inserting oil into the ear canal, but that only made the situation worse ─ the oil just seemed to clog everything up and exacerbate matters.

Thus far, none of the claims I have read concerning the benefits of nasya treatments have proven true for me.

The ear clog has been a problem since a bout of flu that I am certain I had, plagued me back in February.

All of the essential oil labels say to only use them externally, and to call a poison centre if they are somehow ingested. Supposedly they are not even to be applied directly to the skin, but are to be diluted into a carrier or base oil.

So just how much is safe to use for nasya purposes? I bloody wish I knew what the ceiling for them was. After all, I am consuming the oil-drenched so-called post-nasal drippage as an ongoing matter both the night and the day through.

Life just seems to hold less and less for me as it ─ i.e., life ─ goes on. I am almost convinced that my next birthday in October will be my last. It is my 70th, and for months now I have been contemplating not living through to the following birthday.

Whyever be 71 if this is all I am to know?

There is no joy nor happiness ─ only corruption, worry, and depression. I don't even have the comfort of an intimate marital partner to sustain me, for my wife and I have not been intimate in over six years.

I will take the blame for that.

If what I have now ─ and what I have had these years since my retirement a little more than eight years ago ─ will be all there is for me for whatever time is naturally ahead for me, then I do not wish to live it.

It is not worth the living. All I ever seem to experience anymore is disappointment.

Hmm...it would seem that I should not have blogged today.

I am not feeling well physically today, either. I don't get migraines, but I do approach that precursor state that can result in the offsetting symptom of a migraine halo or aura.

This is somewhat of how I am feeling today.

I did force myself to have some exercise out in the backyard tool-shed early this afternoon, and then I had my day's first meal. Thereafter, I had to seek a nap to try and escape how I have been feeling, for it was only growing worse for me.

The nap helped.

And just after 4:00 p.m. I went out into the backyard to try and sit in the sunshine for a targeted 40 minutes, but not 10 minutes into that chilly session it occurred to me that I had utterly forgotten what the time was when that session in the Sun began.

How can I spend 40 minutes out there when I can no longer recall what time the session started?

The frustration brought it all to a halt and I came back into the house.

Accursed obstacles and impediments dog my every step all the days through, it doth ever seem.

It just isn't worth it anymore.

No, I definitely shouldn't be blogging today.

Nevertheless, I would like to mention one of two or three things I hope to buy through Amazon while my income tax refund is still holding up.

It is something I had never before considered until reading up on it.

You may or may not be aware that copper objects tend to be germ-free ─ copper 'kills germs dead.' Thus, copper door handles, for example, are far more sanitary than would be those of most other materials.

It is often recommended that hospitals should use as much copper as possible for surfaces and even medical tools or equipment.

Of course, silver is also pretty darned good, but naturally more costly.

Anyway, I had never really given something like a copper tongue scraper any thought before until reading the following article:

LifeSpa.com

Eliminate Bad Breath with Ayurvedic Copper Tongue Scrapers

I made an Amazon search at the top of this post using the term "copper tongue scraper" ─ you can see the results for yourself. Nothing showed up!

I have no idea why ─ there are loads of products that appear when I make the search as a customer. Just click on copper tongue scraper to see what I mean.

I would have to order anything I wanted to buy from Amazon Canada, however ─ I can't deal with the infernal currency exchange rate on everything that is bought directly from the U.S., even if prices do tend to be considerably less expensive when given that first glance.

Oh, well.

I am going to finish this post with two sets of photos.

At present, my wife is over in Thailand to ostensibly visit her mother. She uploaded the following photos to her Facebook account on April 6, and I recognize that the selfies she took were taken on her family home's front porch area.

Apart from my wife, the only other person I can identify is her old friend Daisha, who is wearing the blue denim jacket and just in front of one of the motorbikes. I have no idea who the Farang is: