Despite my wife being home last evening, I retired just after 10:00 p.m. My younger brother had displayed such an odious snit toward me earlier in the evening that I left him to enjoy the T.V. and his drinking all on his own.
Since I am the one who operates our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to fetch up the television programming that we so much enjoy, his only option would be the limited fare offered through the basic cable package that we subscribe to.
But I did not readily sleep. I now do not know when it was that my wife eventually came to bed, but I was still conscious beneath my bandanna blindfold. For all I know now, it may have been nearing midnight.
When sleep did come, that first block of it was short. And by 1:30 a.m. I had eased myself out of bed and come here to my computer to get at the day's content assignment for the new post I have under construction at one of my six hosted websites.
No one else in the house was up.
I held true to that website task, breaking only to perform a four-minute plank and do 51 flat-footed partial squats to help revive my ageing body. It was after 5:00 a.m. before I returned to bed.
Still sleep was poorly won. All I managed were a succession of a few bouts of slumber, and rose again shortly after 9:00 a.m. My brother was downstairs with the T.V. on, but he had only recently himself risen.
My wife was to rise around 9:30 a.m. and go downstairs to begin doing some cooking ─ I had yet to venture downstairs, and did not do so until 9:50 a.m. By then, my wife was in the bathroom freshening up for her new workweek ─ she normally has an 11:00 a.m. start at her friend's Thai restaurant, and a fair drive to get to it.
I fixed up my day's first hot caffeinated beverage and joined my brother, and in so doing I put our Android TV Box to use.
My wife left around 10:20 a.m., along with her youngest son whom she was probably either driving to work, or else taking to the SkyTrain if he was scheduled to work in Vancouver today. Often he works at a different location that is roughly a mile from where we live here in Surrey, so thus my uncertainty ─ I know not his destination today.
It was into the latter half of the noon-hour when my brother sought some rest in his bedroom to prepare him for his afternoon away. I took the opportunity to have some exercise out in the backyard toolshed. First, though, I weighed myself dressed exactly as I would be for the exercising ─ that is, while I was wearing cutoffs, runners, and a tank top: I weighed no less than 188 pounds.
I'm just four months away from having my 70th birthday smite me, so I tend to be curious just how much bodyweight I am hauling up and down when I do the full-range pull-ups portion of those toolshed exercises.
The afternoon was very sunny, and I often do some sunning after I exercise. But today I needed a nap more. First, however, I had today's first meal, during the preparation of which my brother reappeared and soon left.
It was already well after 2:00 p.m. when I sought that nap ─ maybe even after 2:30 p.m. Consequently, I was unable to take as much time as I would have liked.
It was 3:28 p.m. when I was back outside, slouched low into a deckchair or lawn-chair, and clad only in a pair of gym-style shorts while I faced directly toward the Sun.
I put in just over a half hour so posed, and thereafter spared exposing my back due to a lack of time ─ this blog post was still hanging over my head.
Now on to other matters.
When I was in my 20s and 30s, if I had been doing a fair bit of drinking, I thought nothing of popping some aspirin before going to bed as a considered measure to try and help reduce the hangover to come ─ along with the alcohol withdrawal that strikes overnight and impairs sound sleep.
I thought that taking an aspirin or two was harmless for anyone in good health. Many people still think that.
Actually, even many people who are not at all healthy believe that taking an aspirin daily may forfend an occurrence such as a stroke or heart attack ─ especially people who have already experienced one or the other.
Heck, you've perhaps even seen aspirin recommended on T.V. as being a sound preventative choice for anyone concerned about those two conditions.
Well, think again ─ aspirin is fool's option.
The following four articles tell of the latest research into why that is so:
HSIonline.com
JacksDailyDose.com
MedicalXpress.com
AARP.org
And did you notice that this threat was there from low-dose aspirin ─ a person can be victimized without even taking the usual 325-mg tablet. I think 'baby aspirin' is as low as 81 milligrams.
Just leave the stuff alone.
Another topic of particular concern to me involves bariatric surgery as a measure to help someone lose weight.
A dear old friend of mine had the procedure when he was around 30 years old back in 1977 or so. Up until then, Bill had been a hardworking man with the same employer for possibly as much as a decade.
Bill had the surgery. Then, when cleared to return to work at the cannery that employed him, it developed that he was spending up to half of his shifts in the toilet.
The company interceded and helped him to get recognized as qualifying for a disability pension through the Canada Pension Plan...and he never worked again.
He had a nice car that he had to give up ─ along with driving ─ because his limited disability pension didn't allow him that luxury.
He never married. His quality of life plummeted, and for years he shared accommodation with his mother as a means of cost reduction.
Bill still lives today at the age of 73. However, for a few years now he has essentially been bedridden in a full-time care facility and wears a catheter, and he has a myriad of health problems ─ this has been the course of his life ever since the surgery, in fact.
It is a mystery to all who knew him that he still lives. Bill's father died at the age of 54 due to coronary thrombosis, and had long suffered from diabetes mellitus.
It seems to me that Bill has mentioned diabetes since back when he was in his 30s as one of the near litany of ills he has been diagnosed with over his lifetime ─ these ills have just kept accumulating.
No one should voluntarily choose bariatric surgery without first wholeheartedly exploring other avenues of weight loss.
The latest research on bariatric surgery confirms what has already been understood in recent years to be a consequence of the procedure:
HSIonline.com
JacksDailyDose.com
And of a more technical level:
MedpageToday.com
Helio.com
Bill was always plagued with leg, ankle, and foot issues due to the weight he had to bear.
Toward the end of his semi-independent life when he was using one of those motorized carts to get himself around, the point arrived where he needed to be hospitalized for some reason.
It was then that the ultimatum was issued to him that he absolutely had to force himself to undertake regular attempts at walking, or he was going to be consigned to the full-time care facility.
What that would result in was the loss of his cat ─ a creature that hid from sight anytime someone visited Bill, and which apparently had serious dental decay.
Since no one wanted to take on such a problem feline, it would have to go to a shelter where it would most likely get destroyed.
Bill cried like a baby over his cat; but despite his love for it, he still could not gear himself up to withstand the punishment that trying to walk inflicted upon him.
Since being confined to the full-time care facility, he lost power of attorney to a cousin. Bill is too far away from me to visit, and I do not drive; but in one of our last phone conversations when he could still use a phone a couple or so years ago, he said that Parkinson's disease had been added to the list of his maladies.
I can but speculate that it is likely a consequence of the host of medications he takes. However, that will never be found out. Besides, even as as young man, Bill and his mother both readily gobbled up any and all medications that physicians might issue to them.
I expect that in the care facility, he is being administered quite a variety of them even today.
Gosh, I have to stop for the day ─ it is already approaching 7:00 p.m.
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