My younger brother managed to arrive home last evening a mere minute or two ahead of the unspoken 8:30 p.m. deadline that I have for him.
If he does not get home by 8:30 p.m. from wherever he has been drinking, I will not sit up with him to operate our Android TV Box to locate sources for episodes of the T.V. series that we follow (he is unable to operate the device on his own).
Since he did make that curfew deadline, I grudgingly resigned myself to sitting up with him.
We watched an episode of The Orville (we're mostly through the second season); and then I tuned in an episode of Channel Zero (well into the first season). In short order, I saw that my brother was yawning prodigiously.
To cut this short, after monitoring him for quite some time as he would sit with his eyes closed, and sometimes have his head start to droop, he kept resisting falling unconscious. At one point he did start to snore when his chin dropped to his chest, but as soon as I began lowering the T.V. volume as a prelude to backing out of the episode and switching the T.V. over to its basic cable package, he came alert again.
Finally, about three-quarters of the way through the episode, he was snoring again. This time, I quickly got out of the episode and shut down the Android TV Box, and had the T.V. switched over to the news channel we generally have playing. But that revived him. However, I was done ─ there was no getting out of it for him.
It disgusts me that his brain is so enfeebled by heavy drinking.
And now I will have to place this series onto a list of those that I will be tuning in for us to watch during weekdays from approximately 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. when he is entirely sober, for I refuse to have to rewatch most of this episode in the evening and run the risk that he will only pass out yet again, thereby forcing me to have to rewatch it even a further time ─ as has happened to me more than once in the past with an occasional show.
I do not watch T.V. with him during the latter morning on weekends ─ weekends are my time. He can settle for the weekend editions of two newspapers that I subscribe to, and then top off his morning with whatever T.V. he finds for himself.
His normal daily routine by deep into the noon hour ─ or the earliest afternoon following it ─ is to seek some further bed rest, and then he will head away for the afternoon to eventually resume his daily drinking somewhere.
This is apparently what he worked all his life to achieve. I just wish that as a young man, he had been able to see what a lifetime of working and sacrificing were going to earn him ─ what he was ultimately going to do with his hard-won earnings that he would be diverting as contributions into his personal retirement savings plan (he has no employment pension plan, so he had to build a retirement pension for himself).
He sacrificed just so he could end up becoming a daily drunkard who will as likely as not pass out on any given evening. He normally starts his daily drinking sometime in the latter afternoon, and continues steadily with it right up until he retires in the midnight hour.
I must drop this dissection ─ it both riles and hurts me.
It was perhaps 10:15 p.m. when I was into my bed last evening. The early a.m. plan was to ─ as always ─ put some work into whatever post I am developing at one of my six hosted websites; but then I also wanted to get away to do some grocery shopping as soon after the 7 a.m. opening of the store that would be my specific choice by then (I had not yet made that destination decision).
Unfortunately, I was to find myself awake well ahead of 2 a.m., but I waited until that point in time had arrived before rising.
The problem with this was evident to me ─ that is, there was no remote likelihood that if I remained up until the time had arrived in which I could hike to my destination store, that I would still feel capable of going.
And complicating this outcome was the fact that I had no pressing shopping need. I was mostly going because the weekend had arrived, and I am unable to go shopping during the week ─ this is primarily so because of having to sit with my brother at 10:00 a.m. to start watching T.V., thus depriving me of an opportunity for a post-shopping morning nap.
I do not drive, so I have to walk to do my shopping.
And I either do it extremely early on weekend mornings, or not at all.
Knowing this, around 4:30 a.m. I dutifully returned to bed. I had made the decision that I would do my shopping in Whalley at the nearest Save-On-Foods outlet (Google map) that is nigh 1½ miles from here.
Well, I managed a nap; and as 6 a.m. approached as I lay in bed, I mentally wrestled with myself about the bother that was ahead. I finally won out over the prevaricator because I would at very least be profiting from the exercise involved with the walk, and it was best that I get in such activity on both days of the weekend because I get no walking accomplished on weekdays.
It was to be 6:45 a.m. before I actually left home.
The last time I shopped at Save-on-Foods a few weeks back, I had the most unpleasant discovery ─ the two tote bags I had brought with me were verboten. I was not allowed to bring them with me into the store itself ─ I had to leave them at a station (just inside the store) being manned by an employee enforcing that restriction.
The end result was that I of course had to accept plastic bagging at checkout. The bags were probably free, though ─ I would have just preferred not having to bring any home with me.
Because of that experience, this morning I folded up one canvas bag so that it was small enough to insert into my back right pants' pocket and not have it be apparent. I was going to at least have one reasonably comfortable carrying bag ─ the handles of store plastic shopping bags, when the bags are borne for any distance when containing a heavy load, roll themselves into what comes to be a very narrow band that is extremely painful to the palm of the hand, and which even cuts off circulation to the fingers.
Well, imagine my surprise when I got to the checkout and discovered a sign announcing that "bring your own bags" was again a welcome store policy ─ as long as the customer did not place the bag upon the checkout counter itself. It had to be placed upon the floor and filled up there.
However, I was still going to need one plastic bag ─ my canvas bag would have been too heavily burdened. But as I was to discover, that plastic bag was going to cost me a damned nickle ─ an outlay that was not my fault, for I had no idea that the stupid store had suspended its ban of personal tote bags!
I felt robbed.
I suspect that the store reversed its policy on the banning of personal shopping bags because they were losing customers who would instead take their personal tote bags and go and do their grocery shopping elsewhere. Some shoppers are profoundly dedicated to their own personal shopping bags. I know that I felt offended when I had to have mine confiscated at the door that time, several weeks back.
And now I was charged a nickle basically just for the wretched privilege of shopping in the store. Save-On-Foods, customers remember affronts like this! We don't all drive our asses to the damned store, either ─ some of us actually walk and deem our personal shopping bags a blessing to use for transporting our purchases compared to your infernal plastic ones!
And then there are those frailer souls who actually haul along a small wheeled carrier as an additional assist in getting their groceries home ─ even these would have been denied at the store with that ill-fated alternate policy that had recently been repealed.
Bloody neurotics ─ I am so fed up with this utter nonsensical panic over the imagined threat posed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Anyway, I was back home by about 8:15 a.m., but I did not return to bed until nearly 9:45 a.m. And even then, I was not down too very long beyond an hour.
By the way, on my return trip through Holland Park, I noticed this peculiar sight ─ there were quite a few other people wandering about who were as taken aback as I:
Can you see the guy in the distance wearing a pink top, and who is at the end of that walkway there at the right of the water?
I took this somewhat zoomed shot:
I would have taken one or two other photos, but I was self-conscious about it due to the other aforementioned people in the area. Also, I had the Sun shining at my back and I could not really see much in the view screen of my iPhone 5. I couldn't even tell if I was actually capturing the guy ─ I pretty much had to estimate that I was aligning my phone properly to get the pictures.
He's clearly strung right out on some sort of chemical substance. He had been in that posture for quite some while, for my approach had been from quite a distance and he was immobile the entire time.
So who knows how much longer he had been assuming that unnatural posture ere my arrival?
Okay, it is now 1:15 p.m. and I am going to take a break to get in some backyard sunning. I can hear my brother stirring around in his bedroom ─ he's already eager to get away to soon begin his beer-swilling somewhere. He hadn't even been in his bedroom an hour ─ I expect that he just can't rest due to the building excitement that he finds at the thought of once again being among his drinking kindred.
oooooooooooooo
Just over 40 minutes of back sunning as I lay stretched out on a pad on our backyard sundeck while I wore just a pair of gym-style shorts, was followed by a break in which I had my day's first small meal; and then I went back outside and lounged low in a deck- or lawn-chair in the backyard itself with my bared feet on the ground for just over 34 more minutes as I faced directly into the Sun.
The day's heat would have been truly oppressive if not for a rather steady breeze out there.
Nevertheless I had to resort to my bed after that last sunning session, or I would never have been able to blog further ─ I was feeling my lack of adequate overnight sleep by then.
By the way, this morning I was contending with some intestinal flatus ─ the last of a most unpleasant intestinal disruption that I wrote about in yesterday's post, but which I am not going to describe again here.
Also, in Thursday's post I told of how my wife mysteriously rose around 5 a.m. and ─ apparently in the company of both of her sons ─ took off for parts unknown before returning around midday.
I was snooping in her Facebook account during my break between afternoon sunning sessions today, and I saw a plethora of images she had posted that day of the three of them ─ she cited the location as being "Jug beach".
I cannot say that I have ever heard of it, but a Google search reveals that there is a Jug Island and a relatively well-known associated Jug Island Trail. She even posted a video taken at the inlet shore in which they are exploring barnacle-encrusted rocks in search of elusive small crabs ─ it isn't quite 1½ minutes in duration:
The three of them never indicated to me that they had any such plans beforehand, nor did they divulge where they had gone (and I didn't deign to ask) after they were back. Let them keep their secrets.
That's pretty much my housebound life. I go nowhere and do nothing, unable to drive nor to afford to travel.
I just wish that I could win free of this hopeless financial debt that I have allowed my wife to bury me under in the years following her immigration into Canada from Thailand ─ she came here in May 2006 to live with the fool who married her nearly a year earlier over in her country.
Apparently God is intent to let me die in debt rather than bail me out of it with any sort of financial miracle.
So be it. What other choice? I have grown too old and physically senescent to earn nor fight my way out of this entirely on my own.
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