My morning
It used to be - - I like the capital (upper case) "I" with serif, not sans (in part because it's then distinguished from the numeral for one = "l" or lower case "L" = "l") which is my sole reason for sometimes using Verdana instead of Helvetica. If you know such a (free) font/typeface that's not obliged to MS or Apple, speak up - - that I regarded it my social obligation to get busy early every morning and write a daily blog post.
That daily writing came out of my 2010 cardiac event, which actually had started with the heart murmur I was apparently born with, that was first detected during my physical exam for summer camp the spring of 1950 when I was fourteen. Summer 1954 a heart specialist in Birmingham cleared me. The Navy cleared me through it for commissioning the end of 1957, and I never knew it as a limiting factor until the chest pain started noticeably during a walk while visiting StAugustine,FL in 2006 and increased steadily as Time went on. By summer 2010 I knew it was the angina my grandmother had experienced in her late sixties, and, not wanting to worry Linda, I'd begun stopping in the middle of the road pretending to "admire the clouds or look up at the trees" while the searing pain subsided!
And wondering at what point I should make an appointment to see the cardiologist that my VA doctor had for several years been urging me to see. When she would tell me "That murmur worries me, and it's getting more noticeable, you need to see a cardiologist" I would say "Ah, it's nothing, I was born with it, even the Navy classified it as 'NCD' (not cause for disqualification)". But as Time went on it got my attention and, diagnosing myself on the internet, I realized it had become unstable angina and that my water was getting deeper! Finally in October 2010, Father Nature took charge and I ended up in the ER and then a hospital room waiting for my water accumulation to be reduced (by 17 pounds it turned out) over a couple days with furosemide. CHF precluded an angiogram and being discharged with a prognosis of "two to five months" I started a journal to track my physical, mental and emotional feelings in dying, converted it to CaringBridge until I left ClevelandClinic in February 2011, then to +Time, and've faithfully, duty-driven, written and posted something daily (missing only a day now and then) ever since.
By now, however, heading toward nine daily years later, the sense of obligation is dimming, has dimmed. Stirred, I think, by dire personal and community events of 2018, nothing seems important but life and love, not daily writing, and surely not the material things that I once clung to but have successfully done without the almost seven months since HMichael; and the, in two weeks, twelve-month year since the wee hours of the stormy May 2018 morning we followed the screaming ambulance carrying our comatose daughter to Sacred Heart Hospital, Pensacola, where the neurosurgeon was assembling her team and waiting.
It is that just nothing seems important to me any longer except love, the physical and mental recovery that, very slow if at all, seems to be escaping her; and somewhat but not pressing, moving back into 7H in due course even though the company and west-facing (well, 240°) room with bath here is perfectly satisfactory; so, in due course, or, whenever.
As I say, it used to be - - but it is no longer. Some days, if I want to skip, or if I simply don't want to write, or if I have something else to do or nothing else to do, I'll skip +Time. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about me. Don't worry me. Don't call me. Don't text or email me. Don't call 911 and don't send the EMT squad out here. I'll be staring out the window. Or walking round the park across the street. Or sitting here with the Hebrew alef-bet on the screen in front of me, moving my lips. Or looking out the back gate to see if the alligator's showing himself and, if so, how fast he/she is growing bigger. Or contemplating sushi for lunch or a dozen half-shell. Or taking my almost fourteen-year-old SRX V8 to the shop, though it's still almost perfect and less than 67k miles. Or googling The Text This Week. Or lunch with Linda, and M if she will get up, shower, get dressed and go with. Or just counting days. Whatever, whenever.
Life is Good. Instead of writing a +Time blogpost, this morning I read about the change of monarch in Japan - - when we lived in Japan the emperor-emeritus was crown prince, he's my age. His father Hirohito, something of a botanist, was emperor. The 59-year-old man who became emperor yesterday was a cute and nationally doted-on little boy. I read about the upcoming in 2029 near flyby of a sizable meteorite, 19,000 miles out, a dozen times closer than the moon. I read about yet another presidential candidate climbing out of the little clown car. I read a fascinating autobio article in the NewYorker online, and copy and pasted it so I can read it again, part of it speaks personally to me.* I had two cups of black coffee, then for breakfast, black coffee and seafood gumbo and remembered that I had meant to have another snapper sandwich (I'll have that for lunch and finish it off). I went with Linda for a walk in the park across the street, they need to take control of the sprinkler system over there, it's quite wasteful. I noticed that several houses are under construction in the neighborhood. I appreciated life out of doors in May's springtime. I took mental note that hurricane season is less than a month away and saw that life is good anyway, nevertheless and notwithstanding.
T
Bay County, FL map pinched online. I have no idea why the red pin is at Cedar Grove.
* https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/06/my-childhood-in-a-cult?utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_050119&utm_medium=email&bxid=5bd67e4c24c17c104802fc71&user_id=48673470&esrc=&utm_term=TNY_Daily