Why Bother?

I may have been into bed last evening as early as 9:15 p.m.

If my younger brother has not shown up before 9:00 p.m. from wherever it is that he has been drinking, then I deem him to likely be far too drunkenly odious to bear the company of.

Besides, by mid-evening I have lost interest in sitting up into the midnight hour operating our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to fetch episodes of T.V. series that we follow. I need to be involved earlier in the evening in doing that.

I had come upstairs here to my computer around 9:00 p.m., and a few minutes later I heard my brother enter the house ─ he makes a noisy production of doffing his coat and removing his footwear just inside the front door after he soundly closes it with a bit of a slam.

Heck, due to his drinking, his ridiculously enormous theatrical sighs can be heard throughout the house, along with occasional breathed profanities.

I want nothing to do with anyone in that condition. And so I hastily performed a restart of my computer and then hied myself to the sanctity of my bedroom.

Sleep was a long time in arriving. And as usual, I had no idea when it would be that my working wife would arrive home after her long day working at her friend's Thai restaurant.

I probably lapsed into brief naps a few times as the evening died away. And then a point arrived when I heard what I initially thought might be the closing of the door to the bathroom that is immediately adjacent to my bedroom ─ for certain, someone had pulled shut a door with some emphasis.

I looked at the time and saw it to be 12:08 a.m., and it dawned upon me that it was likely my brother closing the door to his bedroom for the night ─ his bedroom's door is directly across the brief upstairs 'hallway' from my own bedroom.

I took that as my cue to rise.

One or more lights on downstairs were evidence that my youngest stepson was still up ─ his older brother would have long since gone to bed if the older lad was going to go to work this morning. 

And soon enough, I was here at my computer tackling the day's content assignment for the new post I have in the works at one of my six hosted websites.

My wife? She finally showed up with less than 10 minutes to go ere the hour of 3:00 a.m.

She had some communication with her youngest son, who was still up. And then the annoying 21-year-old hustled upstairs to taken a shower ─ something he could have done hours earlier.

As my wife came past the small room here upstairs where I keep my computer ─ a small room just before our bedroom ─ she commented on how chilly it was outside. I concurred, for it had become necessary for me to put on a jacket when I first started work on the website ─ yet the window in this room is only open by about an inch.

At that, she went into our bedroom, and closed the door. She would have another 11:00 a.m. start at the restaurant today, but would have to rise well before to ready herself and then undertake the fairly long drive.

My youngest stepson had gone to bed by the time my work was done; and I think that it was closing in on 4:00 a.m. when I returned to bed, trying to be as quiet and undisturbing as possible for the sake of my wife.

Nevertheless, as she always seems to do, she stirred as if she was yet awake.

I had an awful time of it getting back to sleep ─ it may well have taken me more than an hour. I don't know what the hell is wrong that I have so much difficulty sleeping.

And my sleep was intermittent or fractured.

I checked the time shortly after 8:00 a.m., but did not want to be rising as early as that. Thus, I remained where I was, and finally got myself up as carefully as I could right after 9:30 a.m. to come here to my computer and spend some time.

Around 9:50 a.m. I then went downstairs to fix up my day's first hot caffeinated beverage; and then at 10:00 a.m. I joined my younger brother in the living room to take over the T.V. and use the Android TV Box that he cannot operate ─ I had a movie in mind for us to watch: Manchester by the Sea.

My wife usually rises by 10:00 a.m. to start her day. When she had not yet emerged from the bedroom, I decided that I would leave her until 10:30 a.m.

That became unnecessary ─ she was up by maybe 10:10 a.m. to have her shower. And by 10:40 a.m. had left us on her drive to get to work ─ another long day ahead of her.

As for the movie, it was long ─ well over two hours. And although it was very interesting and had characters that the viewer could care about, the feature ended inconclusively.

Basically, it had no finish ─ nothing had truly been resolved as far as I could tell. A story like this should never have been made into a movie. Rather, it should have been developed as a T.V. series.

Anyway, it ran long enough into the noon-hour that my brother was prepared to head on back to his bedroom to rest up before taking off for the afternoon as he always does.

The day was mostly overcast, but at times the Sun has shone brilliantly for long periods of time.

I had some exercising scheduled for today out in the backyard toolshed, so I headed on out there in the latter noon-hour after first weighing myself dressed exactly as I would be for those exercises ─ I sometimes like to know how much weight I'll be hauling up and down during the full range pull-ups section of those exercises.

I registered at approximately 193 pounds (at the age of 69).

And when the exercise session had been completed, I decided to see if it was worth trying to get any sunshine.

However, upon taking the toolshed key back into the house, I found that my brother had already gone. He could not possibly have gotten even the briefest of naps, for he must have left by around 1:00 p.m.

I came back outside and slouched down into a lawn-chair or deckchair at 1:08 p.m. while fully clothed ─ except for bared feet on the ground.

The target was going to be 40 minutes, but I gave up in less than 15 minutes. An enormous cover of cloud had obscured the Sun. The mass was so extensive that ─ ere it would have drifted on by ─ I expected that it would likely consume all of the remaining time that I had wanted to be out there. 

I returned into the house and put together my day's first meal; and then when that was eaten, I was too overburdened to do aught else but seek my bed and lie down for a recovery nap.

Upon rising, I got to work on this post.

While I was at work at that website post early this a.m., I took a break about halfway through the chore in order to reinvigorate myself.

And I did that by performing a 2½-minute plank; and then 51 partial, flat-footed squats.

That definitely did the trick!

From now on, I am going to make planks mandatory halfway through my website work.

I don't feel up to blogging any further today ─ I am feeling oppressed by financial matters, and my wife seems to be back into her casino habit after she has finished her restaurant duties in the latter evening.

More and more, I am coming to accept that my life is going to end sometime during the year following my next (70th) birthday in October. There is no hope of me ever being free of the crushing debt that becoming involved with my wife has put me under.

All may as well end for me. Why go on if this is all there is to be for me?

As for God...well, I am coming to see Him as being an uncaring and often malevolent monster who only sees us as His entertainment.

Remember, everything that we know of is of His doing.

And that being so, why didn't He create an ecosystem that did not require carnivores that mercilessly tear other living creatures apart and devour them alive?

He should easily have been able to create a world where animal life bred sparingly, and did not need to be ravaging in order to live. A world where all creatures lived in harmony, unafraid.

Instead, before the Age of Man, we had monstrous dinosaurs ─ why? Why create such brutal things, and then just sit back and watch what unfolds for millennia?

It had nothing to do with lessons for us ─ humans did not yet exist.

Only narrow minds will say that carnivores are essential, or else the world would be overrun with animals. And that's true...but it's only true because that is how God created things.

As I said, He could easily have created some other type of ecosystem where none of that would have been necessary ─ an ecosystem where it was not required that animals breed prodigiously just so some will survive the carnivores that prey upon them.

After all, God made the rules and laws of Nature ─ it was not Nature that dictated how His creations had to behave and conform.

The same for disease and parasites and everything else that makes physical life so miserable so very often. These things are there simply to serve as a means of the depopulation of all types of animal and insect life because of how prodigiously creatures breed.

But it didn't have to be that way ─ God chose to make insects and animals proliferate to that degree, and for what we see as cruelty and violence in the animal world as the only means of controlling those populations.

He could have chosen some other natural order ─ after all, is He not the One in charge and making all of the laws and rules?

But I don't want to delve into that right now.

Early in June of last year, my wife just had to plunge us deeper into debt and fly off to Italy to visit one of her two sisters who basically lives there.

The metadata of the following photos indicates June 5, 2018; but the camera did not have its date setting adjusted for that trip. In fact, it may not even have been adjusted for the time change that happened earlier in the year when time jumped ahead by an hour here in the Pacific Time Zone.

So June 5, 2018 can only be an approximation of when the photos were taken. Regardless, I suspect that this set comprises the very first photos that my wife took after she had been collected by her sister at whatever airport it was that my wife arrived at, following her flight to Italy from Vancouver International Airport (YVR):

That's it for today.