I believe that I was into bed last evening by around 10:00 p.m., for my younger brother had not yet come home from wherever he was drinking.
I rarely manage to get to sleep swiftly; and within an hour, my wife was in the bedroom fussing around and making lots of noise ─ she had just recently come home from her long workday at her friend's Thai restaurant.
I wore a blindfold, so the light was not much of a problem.
I was still awake nearly an hour later when she finally came to bed. By then, I needed to micturate. However, she was just lying in bed staring at her cellphone screen with the bedside lamp on.
I bore the strain for awhile, and then just had to get up.
My wife queried, "Up?"
In other words, she was asking if I was getting up for a few hours like I often do. I replied simply, "No. Bathroom!"
My younger brother was still up and the T.V. in the living room on, so I definitely would not have risen to work on the new day's content assignment for whatever post I have in development at one of my six hosted websites.
I performed my bathroom duty and returned to bed. And not much thereafter, my wife turned off the lamp and put away her cellphone.
My brother did not sit up too much later ─ I heard him go into his bedroom and close his bedroom door. It was not too deep into the midnight hour.
Finally, I dropped off into some sleep. And when I checked the time upon becoming awake enough to wonder on it, the clock-radio read 2:59 a.m.
That was unexpectedly late into my night ─ I had intended to get up well before then to get to work on that website content assignment, for it can take anywhere from three to 4½ hours.
It is not often I can finish in just three hours. And since my eldest stepson tends to rise around 6:00 a.m. to begin readying for his workday, I would want to be back in bed ahead of then. Otherwise, I would be forced to sit up until he eventually left on his drive to work ─ and he might take as long as 45 minutes before doing that.
If he realizes that I am up in the early morning, he will not bother to lock the front door. Thus, it is practically imperative that I be back in bed before he rises for the day, or else I will be obliged to remain up until after he has left.
I had no desire to add that much extra time to my night out of bed, so I recognized that I was probably not going to be able to complete that content assignment until later in the day.
I was correct. I found that I had to postpone completion and return to bed at 5:50 a.m.'s approach.
While I was up, though, I performed my daily plank.
I always count off to 300 instead of constantly checking the timer in my cellphone. If I count off at approximately a second per number, then around five minutes (300 seconds) will have passed. And since I am presently doing 6½-minute planks, I try to count even slower so that when at last I do check the timer, I won't have as painfully long to have to hold out.
Ideally, if my 300-count takes me to around the six-minute mark, then it make lasting another 30 seconds easier to take.
This morning, I counted exceptionally slowly ─ when I checked the timer, it had just passed six minutes and 50 seconds!
And so I held out until three seconds past the seven-minute mark.
Several years ago when I was doing lots of "core" exercising, I have in mind that on a lark, I did a plank of seven minutes as a one-time challenge just to see what the fuss about them was.
I had lately come to be suspicious that this plank memory of mine may have been apocryphal. It was not that I found holding out for seven minutes back then to be anything like a snap, but it had seemed that I could have conceivably lasted even longer.
I just chose not to.
Was that memory of a half dozen or so years ago true? Maybe it was even longer ago than that.
Well, if the memory was true or not, it no longer matters; I now know beyond any doubt that I have indeed performed a plank for that long.
Nevertheless, I do not intend to suddenly be making seven minutes my daily plank target ─ 6½ minutes are plenty brutal enough for the present.
Anyway, after getting back to bed a little ahead of 6:00 a.m., I finally managed some further sleep. And then when I was again awake enough to be wondering on the time, it was something like 9:01 a.m.
I waited a few minutes, and then quietly rose for the morning.
My brother was already downstairs watching T.V., but I came here to my computer where I keep it in a small room next to my bedroom. I do not tend to join him for T.V. until around 10:00 a.m.
I was to be surprised anon when ─ barely before 9:30 a.m. ─ my wife rose, evidently intending to do some cooking before she finally left on her drive to go to the restaurant for her 11:00 a.m. start.
She prepared us all a big pot of a well-spiced chicken soup ─ there are quite a number of whole red chili peppers at the surface. I never sampled any soup when I had my day's first meal, but I will be definitely digging in for my second and final meal today.
My wife is Thai, so her dishes can be hotter ─ i.e., spicier ─ than most Westerners can tolerate.
Right now it is 5:17 p.m., and I have yet to tackle the day's scheduled exercising out in the backyard toolshed this rather sunny afternoon.
I am going to take a break from this post and try and dredge up the enthusiasm. I still feel full from that earlier meal, even though it did not seem excessive at the time four or so hours ago.
oooooooooooooo
Okay, that's finally out of the way as I type these words at 5:54 p.m.
Incidentally, courtesy of our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box that only I can operate, my brother and I this morning watched an episode each of The Expanse and The Path after first watching a 13-minute CBC video report from March titled The debate over whether glyphosate causes cancer.
That link is to a CBC-hosted video that no one outside of Canada will probably be able to access, but the video is to be found on YouTube (as here ─ unless the video is also blocked at YouTube to any non-Canadian residents who might try to watch it).
I am disgusted with Health Canada for approving that poison. I do not for an instant believe that they were honestly duped ─ I think the fix was in.
I want to refer you to a link to one further item ─ an article for air passengers who suffer when they undertake long flights:
LifeSpa.com
I don't know if I will ever be able to afford to fly internationally again. I'd love to visit the U.K. before I am too old to want to any longer, or even the Netherlands or maybe Australia.
But it is most unlikely.
I am going to finish now with three photos that I took at 5:22 p.m. this afternoon.
On a couple of occasions several years ago, my wife tried growing some small rose bushes in a strip of garden just outside our front door.
The bushes always died.
However, one of them keeps struggling each year to present itself as a few small twigs that produce some leaves, and sometimes even a small red rose.
This year, it managed to yield two blooms:
The wee thing is certainly a welcome survivor that manages to reappear and delight us each year!
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