Plans ...

Dissolution is once more taking hold, although I am making some small effort to not allow it full control.

And so it was that last evening when I should have been to bed, I had shut myself into my bedroom when I heard what I believed was my younger brother coming into the house. But I was to instead hear my wife's voice talking to one of her sons ─ she was home following working the latter part of the day at the Thai restaurant where she is employed part-time.

I am sure that my brother was also to show up before I had yet managed to get to bed barely before 11 p.m., if I am remembering correctly. Yet I set my cellphone alarm for 2 a.m. to get me up and ready for a five-mile+ walk.

Even though I was to sleep ill ─ I even sweated quite heavily ─ I was awake when my alarm chimed. I could hear the T.V. still playing downstairs, so I realized that my brother had still not gone to bed.

Fortunately, he was not to be too much longer in retiring to his bedroom, and the house was then in darkness.

Fully clothed for my walk, I weighed at most 187 pounds. And it was 2:56 a.m. once I was outside and in the driveway, set to begin my walk. The sky seemed cloudless, and the night just cool ─ not chilly.

At the elementary school playground three or four blocks distant, my totals on the six sets of pull-ups and chin-ups I essayed were 5-2-3-2-3-2. The final two sets were pull-ups between two of the jungle gym monkey bars; and I held the very last of those for a 20-count.

All of the equipment was dry, but vandals had rendered the gymnastics-style rings inaccessible by wrapping their chains over the very high bar that they are suspended from.

Then it was on to the nearby cement ramp leading to a school side door for a dozen slow full-range push-ups in a declined position.

I recall nothing worth mentioning about the walk, apart from having to pass by a figure huddled against a post as I came forth from some forest I was short-cutting through. He seemed rather small. He had a couple of bundles of belongings with him, and was obviously huddled as he was to try and both sleep and keep some of his warmth.

He did slowly look up when I was approaching him to pass by, but that was the extent of our interaction.

I am assuming it was a male figure and not a female ─ a well drawn hood made it impossible to gain that determination. I almost felt inclined to offer some money. Yet not a block further on, I passed near another figure ─ this one appeared to be on his feet, but bent over unnaturally at the hip in the typical pose 'crack addicts' assume. It was almost as if he was hugging his own shins.

Seeing him did much to banish the tiny bit of guilt I had felt over not offering the first figure some money ─ how do I know how any given money will be spent? For all I know, the first figure could have been someone with similar propensities to the second dude, but just happened to be 'between fixes'. I have no desire to make anyone's next fix possible.

It was 4:55 a.m. once I was back and approaching the locked front door. I had no sooner gotten into the house than I saw a light turn on in my stepsons' den area ─ the eldest was rising to begin readying for his long drive to begin a 6 a.m. 12-hour day shift.

I just came upstairs and shut myself into my bedroom, leaving him (and me) peace.

However, mine was self-abused, and I was not to return to bed until far too near 7 a.m.

After some poor sleep, I believed myself to be rising around 9:45 a.m., but it was actually an hour later. Without realizing this, I discovered that my wife had risen long before and left for her full day of work at the restaurant.

My brother had just passed by my open bedroom doorway and bade me a good morning as he went to his own bedroom ─ to use his en suite facilities, I thought. But soon enough I realized that he had shut his bedroom door ─ which he does when he returns to his bedroom for some bed rest ere leaving for the day.

It was only when I ventured downstairs that I realized that by that point that it was almost 11 a.m.

Unable to have a delicious mug of coffee to banish my hunger and listlessness due to this being my Sabbath fast, I turned on the T.V. and out Android TV Box, and tuned in an hour-long (59:52) video published yesterday at Tessa Fights Robots' Substack: Four Died Trying: A Conversation with Filmmakers Libby Handros and John Kirby.

Four tried, imperfectly perhaps, to bring together Americans from different backgrounds. The new documentary series looks into what went down.

My brother had joined me for the tail end, which brought us to something like 12:10 p.m.

I was wanting to get in this Spring's first truly serious sunning session, but I did not wish to start while my brother was still home. So sticking with Substack, I then tuned in a 15-minute (15:31) video posted just today: NEW PODCAST! "15 minutes with Dr.Makis" - Episode 009: Influenza H5N1 and cats - they're coming for our pets!

Why the obsession with H5N1 infected cats?

There may be a more sinister agenda in play.

The Climate Change fraud demands "Net Zero".

But "Net Zero" means NO PETS.

When this was done, my brother still showed no inclination to be going anywhere, so I just let the SmartTube app randomly play recent YouTube videos. My sunning time seemed to be diminishing ─ it was nothing like it had seemed.

He then dropped a bombshell ─ he was going to bring his girlfriend Bev here a little later in the afternoon so that I could help her apply for a further two weeks of Employment Insurance by filling out another bi-weekly report online.

Well, there was no way now that I was going to be risking any sunning of my pallid body if he was going to be bringing her here and catching me out in the backyard.

Then shortly past 1 p.m. he announced that he was going to seek a little further bed rest.

My Sabbath fasts find me hungry, listless, and sleepy; I decided at 1:20 p.m. to also crash out in my own bed. This was not the day I had envisioned, and I cursed not being able to afford to live somewhere on my own where I could schedule every minute of my day just for me, and not have to adjust to or accommodate around others.

I did manage some sleep, and found myself rising again well past 3 p.m., finding my brother gone.

Then around 3:30 p.m., he and Bev were here.

Happily, she and I got the job done in possibly as little as two minutes. I do not begrudge this assistance to her in the least ─ it's just that its scheduling effectively ruined the Saturday I had intended.

I did get my chance for some sunning regardless. Once I was alone again, I readied and at possible 3:43 p.m. I began an hour and 10 minutes lying in the backyard lawn on a pad.

As I type these words at 7:14 p.m., I have nary a blush to show for the time. I needed to have been sunning during the crucial hours from noon to no later than 4 p.m. ─ not all four of those hours, but the sunning time needed to have fallen entirely within that range.

I am again very listless, weak, and sleepy, so I am going to pause completion of this post and 'stretch out' for a while. I cannot break my fast until probably as late as 9:30 p.m., for sunset is supposedly at 8:43 p.m. and it remains light for long after that. It is not helping that my eldest stepson ─ home from work ─ has been cooking a mouth-watering, aromatic, meat-based supper.

Note that I just a few minutes back weighed myself while fully nude: 175 pounds at very most. That is light for me. Yet exactly 41 years ago on this date when I was a 33-year-old, I exulted in discovering that my nude body weight had revealed itself to be an even 170 pounds.

I have no memory of consistently weighing in the 170s in my younger adult life ─ I have always believed that I weighed in the first half of the 180s for most of adulthood.

Memory is so fallible.

oooooooooooooo

And my evening never went as planned. It is approaching 12:20 a.m., so more in my next post.