Last evening was the second consecutive evening in which I got to bed relatively early ─ I think that it was around 9:50 p.m. yesterday.
Maybe 10 minutes later, my wife was home after her long day working at her friend's Thai restaurant.
She soon enough came into the bedroom where I was lying in bed with much of my face covered by a makeshift blindfold comprised of a couple of folded bandannas, but I spoke to let her know that I was not asleep.
She said that she was going to wash her hair before she came to bed, so it would be awhile yet before her bedtime.
Meantime, I was to lapse in and out of sleep, and it was approximately 12:45 a.m. when finally she at last joined me. By then, I felt restored enough to be wanting to rise and get to work on the day's content assignment for the post I am working on at one of my six hosted websites.
Nevertheless, I held off out of concern that it might appear that I was annoyed with her. Instead, I gave her some time to sink towards sleep; and at 1:18 a.m. or soon after, I carefully rose from bed and was soon here at my computer in the small room next to my bedroom.
I was not to finish the work for today and be back in bed until just after 4:30 a.m.
Note that I had taken a break during that work to perform a plank and some partial flat-footed squats as a measure to help invigorate me. I managed a four-minute plank.
At the outset of the plank, however, I had inadvertently set the timer to sound after a minute, and so the infernal alarm went on and on for the remaining three minutes of the plank while I was helpless to do aught but suffer it ─ or else I would be forced to lose that first minute and start the plank all over.
Despite the aggravation, I think that it may have taken my mind off the physical suffering somewhat, for I had only hoped to achieve a plank of three minutes and 40 seconds. And I actually only stopped at four minutes because I was well beyond my intended target and I wanted the timer alarm killed.
A third reason that I believe was behind me stopping the plank at four minutes was because to exceed it would likely have self-imposed me to match that mark hereafter ─ and four minutes is quite sufficient for the present, thank you!
After my return to bed, I slept most fitfully, and I had to force myself to remain in bed until after 9:00 a.m.
My wife was to rise around 9:30 a.m. to do some cooking before she began readying herself for her new workday and her 11:00 a.m. start at her friend's Thai restaurant ─ and of course, the drive to get to it.
Rather unfortunately, she cooked up at least two rather large, whole crabs that are in a pot awaiting eating. I let my brother know about them before he headed off for the afternoon.
I do not care for crab. If left entirely to me, I would never taste crab for the remainder of my life. Alas, though, my Thai wife likes shellfish of all manner.
Her youngest son will not touch the fare. And this latter afternoon after her eldest son was home from work, I teased him to avail himself of lots of the abundance of crab; but he made a face and shook her head negatively, declaring that crab was too much work.
So it may devolve upon my brother and I...and I am unsure just how liberally he will involve himself in this specific diet.
Crab is damned expensive, so I hate to see it wasted. Yet my wife may well not be home again until at least Sunday afternoon ─ she tends to stay somewhere in Vancouver when she does not have to work out this way.
When I saw her off on her drive to work this latter morning, she wondered to me how we were going to manage to pay the big bills confronting us over the next month and three-quarters.
Our home insurance is due on the 14th; then the monthly mortgage on the 22nd. In July, the property taxes are due on the 2nd; and then the monthly mortgage again on the 22nd.
My monthly pension only arrives well into the final week of each month. I have May's pension, and it will get us through the property tax deadline...but that will deplete me where the mortgage is concerned just over two weeks later.
It's going to be up to her eldest son to try and step up ─ he has contributed nothing toward the last two mortgage payments. But the youngest lad is apparently now only working three days a week, and his mother is giving him a total pass on helping out.
The truth is that he hasn't helped us out since at least sometime in 2017 ─ he always professes to be somehow broke and on hard times, even though he lives here rent-free as does his older brother.
And since he has always been his mother's snivelling little boy despite having grown up and now being 21 years of age, she always lets him get away with this.
Our only hope in getting through all of this and making July's mortgage payment on the 22nd may well be the anticipated Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) that is intended to augment low-income Old Age Security pensioners.
I am 69 years old.
I applied for GIS in person back on April 8, and received a letter dated May 22 declaring that I had been approved. I then hoped that I might see the retroactive payment show up later in May along with whatever the current supplement would be to augment my Old Age Security payment when it was directly deposited that month; but there was nothing additional whatsoever when I got my usual payment.
Will the GIS retroactivity show up late this month, then?
If not, then I'm in trouble. The July 2nd annual property taxes are...wicked.
I tried sitting outside this afternoon to benefit from some sunshine and get some ease from my woes. The day had been predominantly cloudy ─ and it had even mysteriously rained in the late morning without my brother nor I noticing; but there seemed considerable afternoon sunshine.
It was exactly 3:31 p.m. when I was slouched into a lawn-chair or deckchair in the backyard and facing ─ fully clothed ─ into the Sun. I was barefooted, I should add.
Well, I might have gotten about five minutes of direct sunshine before an extensive dark cloud began covering over the Sun. I couldn't even see the far end of that cloud, it was so huge.
So into the house I came to begin work on this blog post.
I still try to exercise quite strenuously daily despite my age, so I have to hope that I have a healthy enough heart.
Can you imagine being someone with a battery-operated pacemaker implanted to keep your ailing heart pumping, and then unknowingly have that pacemaker battery burn out prematurely?
Apparently it is a very real threat:
JacksDailydose.com
TCTMD.com
Heart attacks seem to be a particularly frightening way to die. So went my father eight days after his 62nd birthday back in the mid-1980s.
Another article I am going to link to offers some advice on drugs and supplements to be wary of if you are interested in avoiding all too common liver failure ─ another awful way to die:
DrMicozzi.com
I can't really imagine voluntarily taking acetaminophen as a means of suicide. I don't want to destroy my liver as a method of dying!
To my thinking, it would be better to overdose on something like a sedative if it would just peacefully ease you into a permanent unconsciousness.
I have also wondered what it would be like to deliberately overdose for suicide purposes on some drug that people use to get 'high' ─ would the 'high' just quickly escalate into an ecstatic unconsciousness that would preface a fast, painless death?
Enquiring minds....
I want to close today's post with a few photos taken a year ago when my wife travelled to Italy to visit one of her sisters who essentially lives there.
The digital camera's date setting had not been adjusted for the trip, so even though the photos' metadata indicate the date to be June 8 (2018), we can only take that as a good estimate.
The setting is some nice restaurant where my wife's sister had taken her very early into her holiday ─ this is my wife:
And here is the sister:
Of course there would be shellfish!
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