It may have been 8:10 p.m. or so last evening when I noticed my younger brother arriving home from wherever he had been drinking. Put into a rush, I shut down the T.V. show I was watching via out Android TV Box, shut down the TV Box itself, reverted the T.V. to its basic cable option, turned off the T.V., turned on the living room stereo, and hustled on upstairs to avoid having to be involved with my brother and his invitation to sit up for the evening in the operation of our Android TV Box that he does not understand how to operate.
Not five minutes after lying atop my bed fully clothed and covered over with a blanket to bide the evening until my brother finally retired for the night ─ the hope was that I would manage some napping to fortify me to be able to sit up for a few hours in the wee a.m. in order to get some work done here at my computer ─ my wife phoned me on my cellphone.
She was home and parked outside, requesting I come out to help her bring in bags of groceries and whatever else she had.
So up I got and trundled on downstairs to a few comments from my clearly highly inebriated brother who had noticed the car outside, but did not know who had arrived home ─ only he and I were home, so not only could it have been my wife, but it could have been either of her two sons aged 23 and 26.
Incidentally, the living room smelled of exhaled and sweated beer.
I helped my wife bring in her bags, and then left her to the kitchen and came back upstairs to return to the bed after letting her know that I had no idea what either of her sons were up to ─ apparently she had phoned the youngest and gotten no answer, so that was likely why she phoned me.
I now had to try and nap with the bedroom light on ─ actually, it's a lamp at my wife's bedside. My bandana blindfold helped block out the glare.
I was to achieve some napping, but I found myself sufficiently awake that I checked the time on my cellphone barely after 11 p.m.
I made a bid for a few minutes to try and fall back into a nap, and then gave up the effort. It was 11:18 p.m. when I got up, thinking to come here to the computer that I keep in a small room immediately next to my bedroom. By this time, my wife would be well involved with one or both of her sons.
Well, to my surprise, my brother had already long retired, for even his bedroom light was off.
Earlier while I had been in bed, it had dawned upon me that today would be the day that our monthly mortgage could well be debited from my chequing account. However, it was more than $600 deficient.
Even if I transferred over all $400 that remained of $500 that I had recently received from the province in a one-time COVID-19 relief payment, it would be an inadequate gesture on my part. My wife's two sons were supposed to have made a mortgage contribution to me, but they had not. I should not have to use up my $500 in this fashion when we had all gotten that same sum.
But I did not want to beg. Nevertheless, instead of working here at my computer, I went downstairs and feigned some interest in watching a little T.V. My wife was at the dining table fussing with her tablet, cellphone, and our laptop; and her two sons were in their den area similarly engaged on their own devices.
Time passed without anyone coming forth to me.
Well past 1 a.m., I finally came back upstairs on a hunch and began researching, for recently the mortgage has seemed to me to not being getting debited until the 21st. A check of the mortgage renewal paperwork from last May 1st indicated that the 21st was indeed the day. Yet in all this time, I have somehow been believing that the 18th was supposed to be mortgage day ─ I had just assumed that it was lethargic bookkeeping on the part of someone at the bank that had the debit occur a day or two late betimes.
So maybe all was not yet lost ─ at any rate, I grew comfortable with that conclusion.
But I found myself physically expended ─ my weak eyes were far too weary to do any computer work. I had intended to spend a couple or so hours adding content into a post at one of my two hosted websites, but my eyes felt such that I was courting sufficient strain to bring on a migraine aura. I dared not risk it.
Nevertheless, I sat here engaged in passing the time in other fashion, and eventually everyone else retired for the night. I finally followed suit no later than 4 a.m., and probably more like 3:30 a.m.
Could I sleep? Not there with my restless wife, who had gotten up several times earlier while I spent time here. But it wasn't that she was just shifting and rolling about ─ she was actually throwing herself down when she would change positions, effectively practically bouncing me about on the mattress.
And she would occasionally exhale with a loud vocalized sound of annoyance and futility.
She would often shift positions and then do so again in a mere handful of seconds ─ i.e., five or so.
I became so helplessly tired that I began taking her antics personally. But I was far, far too tired to be able to rise and put together the necessary arrangements that would have allowed me to bed down on the floor here in the room where I keep my computer.
Her problem is that each evening, she is glued to a tablet or her smartphone, staring intently at the screen for literally hours. And then she can't sleep afterwards. Her brain by then believes that it has become the daytime, and all of the normal biological measures that are put into place to effect sleep are ended.
It was one of my worst nights in the past few years.
I think that I finally fell into some sleep because she at last rose and likely came here to spend enough time to allow that to happen for me.
Well, at least she did not have to work today.
I also met with some other (semi-)good news financially relating to my RRSP that I converted into a RRIF this past December 9. Canadian law mandates that when someone has reached the age of 71 (which I did this past October), his or her RRSP must be converted into a RRIF before the year has ended; and then from that point it will start getting paid out in payments that can be made monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or even annually.
I chose quarterly, and I was under the belief that it was to commence with my first payment happening on January 15.
When this failed to take place on that day nor the 16th, I began wondering if it was more logically going to occur in March ─ that is, during the month marking the end of the first quarter of the year.
I had no idea how much I would be getting, for my RRSP was not large ─ well under $50,000.
I am relieved to say that the payment took place at some point over the course of today, and I received exactly $468.87.
I would be able to cover this month's mortgage if I had to, but my eldest stepson approached me late in the afternoon to say that he would transfer me some money on behalf of himself and his brother tomorrow.
The usual process is that he stands here behind me as we look at my chequing account's balance, and we then do the math to determine the shortfall. Toward that end, since I cannot merely quote what is required, I have already transferred out the $468.87 and placed it into a related savings account where the final $250 or so of that one-time provincial COVID-19 relief payment is sitting (I left $150 of it in my chequing account ─ I am not entirely selfish).
The reason he is present when he makes the transfer to me is that he seems to deliberately never record what my account number is, and so he shrewdly gets to be present to look at the account and its identifying number, and also of course see the account's balance.
He's no total dummy!
I finally did get a nap today, by the way ─ from nearly 4:30 p.m. until maybe 5:30 p.m. I did so on my brother's bed.
He and I had watched some morning T.V. from around 10 a.m. until just about 1 p.m. through the means of our Android TV Box that I operated.
I led things off with the most recent unseen Liberty Talk Canada video from lovely Odessa Orlewicz. I linked to her BitChute account, but I had to tune in the video (in our case, the one titled Dec- 13th Cyber Attacks On Vaggzz? Arrests, Real Journalists, And UK TV Head) on her YouTube account because I could not get the video to play in the browser 'app' I was using in our Android TV Box.
YouTube has already closed down her first account, so this one is always in jeopardy ─ I don't like relying on it. Even so, Odessa already has two even more recent videos published there that have yet to be uploaded to BitChute, so I may have to use the YouTube 'app' once again when I tune in the next video in line for my brother and I tomorrow morning.
When the video this morning was finished, I then tuned in ─ this time via BitChute ─ a video by Andrew W. Saul titled Orthomolecular Medicine and Coronavirus Disease: Historical Basis for Nutritional Treatment.
The final show we were to watch was the first season finale of Taboo. The series was broadcast in 2017, yet Wikipedia says that there are "plans for two more series" (each season is considered a series). More than three years have now passed since that first season, so I do have my skepticism about a sequel or two being in the works. Nevertheless, I will not cross the series off my list, and one day I will see if further episodes have indeed been released.
And with that said, I am going to bring this post to a close, expressing some relief that my lousy night has not resulted in an equally miserable day. My only complaint concerning today ─ a sunny one, incidentally, and we had frost overnight ─ is that I got no exercise whatsoever. Until I had acquired that latter afternoon nap, I was just too downtrodden physically.
Then once I had normalized following the nap, I had this post to complete. I now do not have the time to exercise, for I would have to do so in my brother's bedroom, and he could well arrive home at any point now.
There is no bloody way that I am going to have a repeat of last night. My wife seems in good spirits this evening; but if after I have my evening nap once I avoid my brother's homecoming, I will not be wasting myself watching any T.V. like I did last night. Instead, I will be getting to work on that website post. And if by the time I am ready to properly return to bed in the predawn ─ whether 4 a.m. or later ─ I will have a sense of whether it will be worthwhile risking the same bed as my wife.
She may have to work tomorrow, but I do not know if it will be a full day or not. She may only have to start in the latter afternoon. But that's tomorrow.
Enough for today.
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