My cellphone alarm was set for 3 a.m. last night, but I was keen on rising earlier if I could do so naturally at some wakeful stretch. I only sleep in blocks that might be a half hour, or possibly an hour or so if I am truly weary. I tend to need to partially lie on my side and stomach to fall asleep; and then when I waken after a block of sleep in that position, I heave over to the opposite side and assume a similar position until I slip into another block of sleep.
And that is how I spend my night ─ block after block like that, waking and then switching over to the opposite partial side and stomach combination.
Anyway, after doing this four or five times last night, I decided to check the time, for I was ever aware that I absolutely had to get a $400 cash deposit accomplished at my financial institution's nearest ATM about a mile away, for the fortnightly mortgage payment was scheduled to happen today and I was just about that short on what was needed.
The earlier I did this, the better, for I had no idea when the debit might happen. Also, I had to get back home and transfer online the deposit to a different account, for the mortgage is debited from an account my ATM card cannot access.
When I was a younger man in my 20s and 30s, I would have jogged to the ATM and then back. But now my knees are both impaired. My right leg is so dire that I cannot run at all anymore, and I am in peril when jaywalking ─ I dare not attempt it if I can even see a distant car's headlights advancing and not stopped at a traffic light.
So the point in my night arrived when I peeked at the time and saw it to be something like 1:29 a.m. ─ good enough! I rose, but was dismayed to realize that my idiot younger brother was still watching T.V. downstairs. I had no desire to be sharing with him what my financial plights are, revealing what a crucial fix I was in.
I do not drive ─ I have never owned a car nor a driver's licence. And I have not had a functioning bicycle since before my 'good' knee incurred the complete avulsion (tearing off) of my left leg's quadriceps tendon from my knee cap back on November 1, 2010.
And now I am a 76-year-old cripple who is too poor to even begin to contemplate something like a taxi. And because I am too proud to be seen hobbling slowly about in the pubic, I only risk outings in the wee a.m. ─ except for occasional shopping on a Sunday at the store a half mile off that opens at 8 a.m.
Sundays that early tend to be less populated out there than other days of the week.
As for my brother, once I was dressed here in my bedroom, I waited him out, banking that he was watching something that would conclude no later than 2 a.m.
I surmised correctly.
He went to his bedroom, and I was free to make my departure unheeded.
All proceeded uneventfully, with no encounter with anyone except for a young, gayly talkative, couple I bypassed once I was on the main highway near to my destination.
On my return journey, I did contemplate stopping in at the elementary school playground, but I deemed it crucial that I get home and make the necessary online money transfer. I am clueless on whether the mortgage debit is always performed by a human, or if it is automated and is just performed mechanically at some appointed time on the scheduled day.
Happily, there seemed no account activity yet, so I succeeded.
I was later to receive a warning email at 7:15 a.m. that the mortgage account had dipped below the threshold of $100 ─ this is at which point such warnings are sent out.
This is my brother's birthday. Fortunately a couple or so weeks ago when I still had the money and even some hope, I bought him two 750-ml bottles of Scotch, each a different brand name. Before I returned to bed, I left these on his foot rest where he seats himself in his favourite chair to watch T.V. in the living room.
I am unsure just when I returned to bed after my outing, but I will guess maybe around 4 a.m.? I set my cellphone alarm for 6:30 a.m., at any rate. I wanted to ensure that I could have the half dozen sets of pull-ups and chin-ups out in the backyard tool shed.
When 6:30 a.m. sounded, I definitely required the usual mug of instant coffee with which to wash down an aspirin, but I needed to await the water's boiling.
It was likely at least 7:45 a.m. before I tackled the 10 slow full-range push-ups in the kitchen area before I ventured out into the backyard and soon visited the tool shed. I was going to dispense with the squat work ─ the earlier walk was sufficient 'therapy'.
As for my performance in the tool shed using the sides of the child's metal playground ladder that I have stretched across some roof rafters and is all I have to do these exercises with, I think that I opened with three pull-ups in the first set. If I am remembering this correctly and it was not just two pull-ups, then my totals were thus: two sets of pull-ups (3,1), two sets of chin-ups (2,1), and two sets of pull-ups between the two bars (2,1). I held the dead hang of that final pull-up for a 45-count.
Back in the house I put together a light first meal of my day, and had that eaten here at my bedside computer before my brother emerged from his bedroom right around 8:30 a.m. for his T.V. news and some instant coffee.
I joined him at the T.V. a little past 9 a.m., but it was still around 9:15 a.m. before he issued his invitation for me to commence operation of our R69 Plus Android 14 TV Box.
I started us off with a 22-minute (22:47) video uploaded earlier today to YouTube's PortuguesePai channel: Trump’s Next Move Is Already Terrifying the Left.
I followed that with a 49-minute (49:09) video uploaded two days ago to YouTube's The Sovereign Sphere channel: Get Out of Canada Before It's Too Late with Mikkel Thorup.
Canada has a 54% top marginal tax rate, a managed decline, and a government that will euthanize you. Mikkel Thorup has spent 27 years building the exit plan.
He’s the founder of Expat Money and author of Expat Secrets: How to Pay Zero Taxes, Live Overseas, and Make Giant Piles of Money. He's been living internationally for nearly three decades — and he's helped thousands of families legally escape broken systems.
After that I screwed up and we watched The Graham Norton Show episode 15 of season or series 33 instead of episode 14, so I will have to make note of that and remedy it next time. But if interested, my source for episode 15 was this VK.com link.
This episode used up so much time that we never got around to watching the last 20 minutes of the movie we nearly got through yesterday.
My brother returned to his bedroom for further bed rest, and possibly early into the noon hour I was back to bed for my midday nap. I may have been abed 1½ hours, and napped so deeply that when I finally roused I was confused and believed it might be nighttime. I had also dreamed deeply.
The morning had been overcast, but after my nap it appeared that I might be doing some sunning. However by 3 p.m. I only saw grey sky again, so I aborted that notion. Things did perk up somewhat later, but by then I was not interested in wasting the time ─ it was too late.
I had the frequent half hour afternoon exercise session in my wife's vacant bedroom, and I have since had my day's second and final meal.
Right now it is 6:47 p.m., so I am going to have my blogging break and watch here on my bedside computer an episode of whatever T.V. show is next on my list, and enjoy the only can of Cariboo Malt (7.9% alcohol) I dare drink, for doing so will leave me with just four cans and no idea when I can afford to buy more.
🞅🞅🞅🞅🞅
My can of beer was drunk while enjoying a most intense episode of The Guardian ─ season two finale episode 23 ("All the Rage"). My reluctant choice of source was at M4uFree.cx where I had seven new and unwanted advertising browser tabs forced on me before I finally got the right episode playing in full-screen format.
So I certainly do not recommend that website.
But I loved the drama of that episode, even though it made me feel so uptight and stressed because I know that I could never live with that level of it in my own working life. And there are no solutions ─ not as presented in the storylines.
The episode was done by 8:08 p.m.
And then I started getting a lengthy series of text exchanges with my wife who must likely be doing some drinking wherever she is. It all involved our financial crises, and the real possibility of having to give up and just sell the house. She's further strained because of having to give me that $400 when she wants badly to visit Thailand late in September.
What she doesn't remotely know as yet is that I am pretty much tired of living. I often feel that I want to sell the house, become debt free, give her and her two sons a share each of whatever remains after my brother gets his lion's share, and then I will just give up and go away and die somewhere alone.
I am so despondent constantly worrying about debt and bills and how little I can spend, while meantime being a virtual housebound prisoner of my own home due to the environment hereabouts where I am smothered by miles and miles of mostly South Asians in every direction, and the street traffic to boot.
I so badly miss being a younger man when I could walk and run and cycle in the daytime ─ there was some taste of freedom. I don't have that nor any youthful optimism anymore.
It's already 9:20 p.m., and she keeps adding another text.
I'm calling it quits on the blogging for today. Bedtime well before 11 p.m., for sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment