Time for Me

That Christmas movie I watched yesterday in the latter afternoon ─ I also had a shot of Captain Morgan Dark Rum (40% alcohol) after drinking the three cans of Cariboo Malt (7.9% alcohol) during it.

I am now unsure whether I was to bed before 11 p.m. or not. I did set my cellphone alarm, but I would be guessing if I claimed that I set it for 4:30 a.m., 5 a.m., or even 5:30 a.m. All are possible.

As usual, I slept in blocks of sleep. I never heard my wife come home, but it was definitely very late because I rose into the earliest a.m. for use of the bathroom and she was not yet here.

When I finally did rise to my alarm, I decided that I would not be stressing the case of plantar fasciitis or whatever is amiss with my left foot. In other words, I would not be walking the three or so blocks to the elementary school playground to exercise there ─ I would settle on the backyard tool shed once it was light enough to see out there.

When that time came, my performance was pretty much usual. An opening pair of sets of pull-ups (6-2), then two sets of chin-ups (3-3), and I finished with two sets of pull-ups (2-2) between sides of the child's sled ladder that I have stretched across shed rafters and have to use for these exercises. The very final pull-up saw me hold a hang at its conclusion for at least a 40-count.

Then back in the house I managed 15 slow full-range push-ups on the kitchen linoleum floor.

But every bit of uplift I may have felt was dashed when I logged into my chequing account online. I had foolishly failed to do so yesterday, even though I knew that the government always makes an earlier than usual direct deposit of better than half of my monthly pension income.

It had happened yesterday ─ $1,506.73. However, my wife discovered it last night before she came home, and withdrew $650 of it. Over the course of the past month or so, I had submitted to her importunes for $1,050 of my dwindling last pension income, and now she has gone and done this? That's $1,700!

I was crushed, exasperated, and absolutely furious almost to the point of tears. What the Hell can I do about this?!

She could only have been partying ─ maybe even been haunting a casino near to where she works part-time.

I do without, a virtual prisoner of this deeply mortgaged property, while she parties on and has a vibrant social life with scant restrictions because the weak sap that I am always buckles under guilt and my sense of responsibility for her welfare, and keeps allowing her 'loans' of my pension money that she is never able to repay.

I was still up when my younger brother emerged from his bedroom and went downstairs, possibly around 8:30 a.m. I knew that he would spend time going through the Saturday morning edition of the Vancouver Sun newspaper that I subscribe to, so I returned to bed for a half hour or so ─ maybe a bit more.

Then when I was certain that I could hear the T.V. playing, I gradually convinced myself to get up.

Just as I had done so ─ I had left my bedroom door ajar to better hear when the T.V. came on ─ my wife was suddenly presenting herself, looking dreadfully weary.

I was perfectly calm by this time, and was expecting that she was going to make her confession.

Well, she did ─ but she was not confessing to having fleeced me. Yes, she did withdraw the money ─ or transferred it out from my account to her own, actually. But she fully intended to replace it right afterward because she was to make a $750 cash deposit.

And she did make the deposit at an ATM ... but she evidently punched in the figure $7.50 instead of $750. She showed me the receipt to prove it.

Thus, she would have made restitution and I would never have met with the shock that I did earlier when I logged into the account. But now we will have to wait for a correction. She phoned around 2:30 p.m. this afternoon to the financial institution's helpline and eventually got hold of an agent. Her call was supposedly being recorded, so it should now be registered that the unmarked envelope with $750 cash in it is hers, and the claimed $7.50 deposit transaction is an error.

The agent apparently told her that correction might take two "business days". The agent also said that this sort of thing is not uncommon.

Obviously this was a relief for us both; now we can but wait.

I despise harbouring the ill I was feeling towards my wife this morning, but I just could not see any possible resolution to what she had done. I never dreamed that it could all be a mistake.

Upon joining my brother for some T.V. and getting his invitation to put our Android TV Box into operation, we were to watch a two-hour (2:04:04) video uploaded two days ago to YouTube's NADINE channel: Dr. William Makis Exposes Healthcare Failures, Government Accountability & Alberta’s Future.

🔥 In this must-watch interview, Dr. William Makis joins Nadine Wellwood for a no-holds-barred discussion on Alberta’s healthcare challenges, government accountability, and the future of Alberta’s political and economic landscape.

My brother and I had not before heard of Nadine Wellwood, but I found myself liking this woman so very much. I wish that I knew her.

There is much more to the video description, so please refer to it to find out more.

We finished up with the last quarter or so of a video we departed from yesterday morning. At 48 minutes (48:22), it had been uploaded November 13, 2020, to YouTube's Free Documentary - History channel: The Castle Builders: Siege & Storm - How Castles Were Attacked & Defended | Free Documentary.

This is the story of how the medieval castle fared under the attacks which it was designed to withstand. With thrilling dramatic reconstructions and state-of-the-art computer graphics, we see the castle in the heat of battle and show how it withstood the siege engines and mass assaults that this age of endless conflict threw at it.

The finessing of castle defences was a process that took hundreds of years. From the stone keeps of the Normans, to the concentric walls of the later Middle Ages, and the “active defence” and architectural sophistication of citadels like Carcassonne in south-western France, the Castle Builders were always battling to keep the castle strong.

As they faced siege and storm, they devised structures which confronted the enemy with layer after layer of defence and exposed them to deadly peril at every turn.

We feature the Siege of Rochester in 1215, one of the bloodiest in English history, and one which revealed a crucial design fault in the great square stone keeps. A powerful citadel could underpin the authority of its lord, or establish the rule of a king over a new territory. But when a castle built by an invading king fell into the hands of a conquered people, it became a weapon turned against its own makers, a highly potent symbol of revolt.  As we’ll see, that’s what happened in Wales in 1404.

After centuries of dominance, the castle becomes vulnerable to artillery. The big guns of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army ended Royalist resistance in the English Civil War, and brought the end of an era for the castle.

My brother thereafter sought some bed rest, and I was reasonably soon to seek my needed nap, since this was my Sabbath fast and I would be refraining from calories or even caffeine until well past 5 p.m. ─ or better than 24 hours since it began.

I rose from my nap just as my brother was readying to leave for the day to commence his daily social drinking. My wife was quite newly up (she had returned to bed after her morning confession ─ she had only risen then to explain herself), and upon sharing with my brother her error and that the deposit envelope had nothing distinguishing it as being hers ─ no account number written on it, nor her name ─ she was inspired to make the helpline call I described earlier.

She had to work in the latter afternoon, so she left around 3:10 p.m. on her fairly long drive to the Thai restaurant where her part-time employment is.

I worked on blogging until it was dark before breaking my fast. I had a naked weigh-in just prior to 5 p.m. and was tolerably 176-7 pounds.

I wanted to immerse myself into the emotion of a Christmas movie, so maybe as late as 6:20 p.m. I resorted to T.V. downstairs and used our Android TV Box to tune in 2018's Time for Me to Come Home for Christmas.

I may have recognized two elderly male supporting actors, but no one else ─ certainly not any names ─ was familiar to me.

Even so, I have evidently enjoyed lead actress Megan Park before ─ I just do not know where. Most likely an earlier Christmas movie.

Her male love interest was played by Josh Henderson, whom I quickly found to be a very likely character as portrayed by him. I loved the overt closeness that his character and the character (as played by actress Susan Hogan) of his mother displayed ─ it was definitely evocative, and made me keenly miss my own mother.

I did not expect that Susan Hogan was maybe a year my senior.

I very much enjoyed the movie ─ more than the past several I have watched. This one was different in that Christianity clearly figured into it ─ unlike most Hallmark movies where Christianity and religion are ignored.

Note that I had to resort to this link at OK.ru because the couple or so streaming apps I tried only offered foreign-language dubbed versions, to my huge annoyance. Initially the video seemed 'diluted' or far from sharp at OK.ru., but it seemed to improve in quality as it rolled along.

Yes, I shed some tears. I never openly blubbered, but as I said, it affected me emotionally more than the past several movies seemed to manage to do. I am growing concerned, though. Am I becoming immune? I have not broken right down into emotional helplessness for quite some while.

Due to a fairly watery supper, I first had myself a shot of Captain Morgan Dark Rum to get my emotions opened a little, and then I followed up with three cans of Cariboo Malt.

I shall be getting to bed soon. My early plans are simply the 1½-mile round trip hike to the nearest Save-On-Foods for some grocery shopping, although I have not entirely surrendered the notion of undertaking the 5.625-mile round trip hike to Real Canadian Superstore. 

It is only that my lame left foot concerns me. How long must I forego walks of any note? I am losing my capacity.

Whatever, it is now 10;05 p.m., so I am going to publish this and be done with blogging for today. Bedtime may not be far off, for without caffeine today, I am rather groggy.