Maybe around 9:45 p.m. last evening a wind seemed to come from nowhere, and blew for a quarter hour or more. I retired just after 11 p.m. (I think), and by then it had been raining for a short while.
My cellphone alarm was set for 4 a.m., so I dutifully rose then. I didn't feel too poorly, which was something of a change.
My youngest stepson was still up, but he probably retired well within an hour. My wife hadn't come home following her full day working at the Thai restaurant where she is employed part-time.
The light rain seemed to come and then go.
As is so often the case, I never left on my grocery shopping hike until at least 6:10 a.m. ─ I always hope to get away ahead of 6 a.m., but it is rare that I do.
My destination was the Fleetwood Save-On-Foods. However, I left in one of those periods when the light rain was persisting, and ultimately my denim jacket got distinctly damp. However, I never felt the need to button it up.
Over halfway to the store I began having second thoughts about shopping there, but only because I began questioning whether I needed to buy the half dozen cans of cider I intended. The Save-On-Foods about ¾ of a mile from home does not sell alcohol, so shopping there for the three other items I was to purchase would necessitate a much shorter walk home with my load.
However, I also wanted to deposit $200 my wife had given me a week or more ago, and a branch of Coast Capital Savings is located immediately beside Fleetwood's Save-On-Foods. There is a Coast Capital Savings also about ¾ of a mile from home, but the ATM there is outside the building and the location often has homeless or street people hanging about ─ the Fleetwood location has two ATM's in an enclosed area just outside its main doors. The doors to that ATM foyer or whatever it might be termed do not automatically unlock until 6 a.m. (they lock at 11 p.m.), but that was already not an issue by the time I left home.
So on I continued.
My early Sunday morning visits to that branch of Save-On-Foods tend to be rather enjoyable due to the ladies working there. The older French Canadian woman serving as my cashier this morning was one I have experienced at least once before, and she is very friendly, but with a phony serious demeanour that is quite humorous.
This morning she was inclined to talk, so I cooperated and let her go at it, supporting her with some enthusiasm by way of encouragement.
At one point she approved of my early shopping, correctly enumerating the benefits of being there so early. She even proclaimed that sometimes when she is finished working, she won't even do any of her own shopping because she refuses to stand in a queue waiting for her turn to cash out.
I agreed that was why I was there so early; and then I mentioned that I have to walk about three miles to get to this specific store. And walk back home, of course!
She wondered about that, asking if I did it for the exercise? I confirmed; but I also backed it up by confessing that I was 74 years old.
This practically flummoxed her, for she claimed that she never imagined I was anywhere near that old.
She then got onto the subject of age and birthdays and claimed that no one she works with knows her age nor her birth date. She offered that it was nobody's business anyway.
I then wondered if the store didn't celebrate employee birthdays in some fashion ─ a bonus, maybe? And just then, a younger attractive co-worker of hers was passing by as she responded with a passion about the nonsense of what I had suggested, so she called to the younger woman for backup that the store didn't care a thing about employees' birthdays ─ they didn't even get the day off!
Then my French Canadian cashier challenged her younger counterpart to guess my age ─ which of course put the younger lady on the spot, but it also alerted her that there had to be something unusual about my age.
She studied me for a bit, and then ventured 64; but she confessed that she would never have guessed that high if she had no suspicion that my age and appearance were anything unexpected.
Anyway, my walk home was much drier; and although I was still taxed with the stress of toting my two tote bags, the strain was not as dreadful as it is on those abominably hot and sunny Summer Sunday mornings of recent vintage.
No one was up yet when I got home, but after I was in my bedroom and dressing down, I could hear my brother moving about in his bedroom, so I closed my bedroom door and was soon in bed to try and better recover from the outing.
I was probably in bed an hour, if not more.
It was just past 10 a.m. when I went downstairs for my day's second mug of instant coffee, and then to join my brother for some T.V. At his invitation, I tuned in Odessa Orlewicz's 1⅓-hour (1:19:28) video from Friday: Weapons Of Mass Migration & The Redistribution Of Wealth. "Islam Will Take Over By 2060??" Speak Out? Off To Jail. And- What CBC Won't Show You: Pro-Palestine Groups Blocking Gay Pride Across Canada.
I show you what mainstream news won't about the chaos happening in the EU/UK (as well as a couple from Canada.) Video clips and articles throughout this episode. Please consider watching this 2 minute video first... it was too late for me to add to this episode: https://x.com/OdessaOrlewicz/status/1824188749590434172
We watched three other very short videos, but nothing I consider to be worth mentioning.
Afterwards, while my brother was resting in his bedroom in the noon hour, my wife finally showed up. She was scheduled to work in the latter afternoon.
We hardly talked, but just before she retired to her bedroom for a nap, she complained to me that the site of some gum surgery in the back of her mouth earlier this year has been causing her some pain for the past week or more.
I needed my own nap, so after she shut herself up in her bedroom, I did the same in mine and got back to bed. It may have been as late as 2:30 p.m. when I rose. My brother was gone for the day, but my wife was still in her bedroom. She was soon to emerge, however.
As far as I know ─ for she often does not speak loudly enough nor even speak to me in the same room ─ she left for work without a word to me around 3:10 p.m. Not much later, her youngest (25 years old) son called to her from downstairs, so I alerted him that I believed she was no longer here.
That surprised him, so maybe I am not the only person she keeps uninformed of her goings.
Note that the rain ended late into the morning, and the day became a blend of sunshine and cloud. I was looking forward to cloud-induced early darkness for my walk later today.
I have just recently finished a bath, but now I find myself beginning to decline somewhat as I type these words at 6:12 p.m., so I am going to take a break and lie down in darkness for a while.
♦♦♦
After a little restoration, I decided upon some drink. I tuned in Batwoman ─ episode four ("Antifreeze") of finale season three ─ and was able to manage myself to just a can of Cariboo Malt (8% alcohol).
I watched the episode on T.V. via our Android TV Box ─ the show was quite good. This final season has had some gruesome killings. Actually, the series has not exactly adhered to the pablum-styled nonsense of some of the other series in the so-called Arrowverse whereby even the vilest villains must never be allowed to die.
No, better they be allowed to live to be recycled over and over ad nauseum! I get so damned sick of the endless same plots and villain characters.
It was likely after 9:20 p.m. by the time I was able to get myself on my way on the planned walk. I had settled upon the 5.625-mile round trip hike to Real Canadian Superstore, although even early into the walk I was never wholly committed to that destination. It is good that I did not have a second can of brew, else my wits would have been too flurried.
My wife has left me little money remaining from my pension income last month, so I am having to drastically limit my spending. I now have well under $100 to last me until well into the final week of this month when my next deposit of pension income is delivered.
I got back home to find that she had not returned from work.
My brother was conscious and watching T.V., so after I had changed clothes and joined him shortly after 11:30 p.m., he turned the T.V. over to me so that I could put our Android TV Box to work.
I had already earlier lined up what I had wanted for us ─ A Touch of Frost. In this instance, it was the premiere episode "Mistaken Identity (Part One)" of the two-episode season or series nine.
I fully expected that the episode would last long enough for me to drink two further cans of beer plus one of Bumper Crop cider (7% alcohol), but the closing credits appeared before I had cracked open the can of cider.
And so it was preserved ─ my brother wanted to watch nothing else.
I am of course finishing this post well enough into the a.m. of August 19, but I shall predate its publication.
My wife is still not here as I conclude ay 2:38 a.m.
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