sounds familiar

Especially in the very early morning as the sun is coming up and I’m quiet and everything is quiet. It feels so safe. Safe and secure. Not like a vault or bunker; not harsh and single-purposed like that, like a defense from outside thing. Safe like the room where you grew up, secure like zipping up a sleeping bag on a backpacking overnighter.

We had the floors redone last year. We also had the floors redone when we moved in, so maybe we had the floors reredone last year. The initial redoing was not redone well, and all the cheap laminate was buckled and coming apart at the seams. We redid it in tile. Cold and hard but much stronger feeling than the falling-apart-too-soon laminate. The sturdiness of then tile adds to the feeling of security. A layer of ceramic atop a slab of concrete, upon which more concrete blocks are stacked as outside walls. Our 1600sqft fortress.

Sometimes I have to remind myself to take my enjoyment of the place. With two “free” days each week, it’s tempting to forever fill them with trips and outings. I have to remember to take a Saturday or Sunday here and there to enjoy this place – to swim in our pool and cook food in our kitchen and to wrap myself in a blanket and read a book on our couch as the sun comes up.

I know that I’ve written about this before, and I’ll probably write about it again as it’s a feeling that I experience often.

It takes me well over a month to read most books. A typical reading session for me is 15-30min, maybe every other day. I’ve never really thought of this as “slow” before; it’s just the pace at which I read for pleasure/leisure. But I was talking to a good friend who was floored by this – saying they typically finish a book in under a week, and wondering how I kept the entire narrative in my head over such an extended period. There are times when I have read more voraciously, but it’s not the norm.

I love reading, but I’m not only slow I’m sporadic. Historically, I’ll read for months straight, put my book down after finishing, and go months without reading at all. Unlike the pace of my reading, a thing I’m fully at peace with, I would like to improve this consistency. I’ve put a little extra energy into that this year, and it’s (so far) working. Mainly I’m keen to increase the regularity with which I read because it’s something other than mindlessly consuming content on my phone. It feels like such a better use of time, and my dislike of my phone (both as a “content source” and just overall) seems to only be increasing as time goes on.

The spirit of this year, moving beyond the narrow subject of books/reading for a moment, fits with an increased consistency in reading, though. This year we are choosing to focus local, to do good in our community, to be the change we’d like to see, to opt-out of the consumer-driven side of economy as much as possible – radically reducing our spending and where what we do spend is routed, and finally to do the same with our attentions, paying particular attention to where we spend them as well (as they are the far more valuable asset).

Somehow, all of that stemmed from thinking about how I read.

Hugs.

I’m really frustrated with how I feel lately.

I’ve always enjoyed good health, and have enjoyed general comfort in my body, despite my lacking diet and resultant obesity. Not so these past two weeks.

On the day of Keaton’s highschool graduation open house, with forty or so of our friends packed in and around the house, I began feeling “off.” I even voiced it, “I don’t feel right,” I said to at least a couple folks. I felt a little dizzy and disconnected, and my legs felt leaden and clumsy. My hearing dampened in my right ear and there was a ringing there, too. This persisted, and I began to worry. Was I having a stroke? Heart attack? Panic attack?

I decided, I don’t really know why, to take my blood pressure. We only had one of those wrist cuff devices, which I’ve always deemed fairly unreliable, but I used it because it’s what we had. My blood pressure was really, really high. And even though I didn’t fully trust the specific numbers from the device, I did at least believe I was higher than I should be – because I could feel it.

Luckily, a family friend was here who has a sister who’s a cardiologist. She called and talked to me right then and there, and told me to relax, test again later, and make an appointment to follow-up with my doctor the next day.

Over the next hours, my blood pressure did indeed come down, but never really to where it should be. I did see my doctor the next day, and she prescribed blood pressure meds to take for two weeks and a re-test then to gauge effect. My hearing, however, did not, and has still not recovered. My right ear is about 80% dead, and I have a persistent ringing at all times.

I went to see the ENT and they guessed maybe a virus had somehow impacted the nerves in my ear, and prescribed a high dosage of steroids for two weeks. The same two weeks I would be on blood pressure medicine to lower my sudden high blood pressure, I’d be on a high dosage of steroids (which increase blood pressure).

The steroids make me feel awful. Like, terrible. I feel wired and stressed and tight and angry and irritable. I feel short tempered and hurried and harried and like I set a bad example as an adult when I become frustrated or annoyed over stupid things that really aren’t worth feeling either over. This week I begin three weeks of weekly steroid injections into my ear drums to see if that can return my ear to normal.

Not fun, not enjoyable. I don’t like feeling not myself. I don’t like not being able to hear. I used to joke that, if God really wanted to punish me, he’d take away my hearing. Music isn’t as good, conversations aren’t as easy or enjoyable. I have roid rage and I’m half deaf; it’s no fun.

I want to feel like me again and I want to hear again and I want to not be worried that something more systemic is wrong or going wrong with me.

Normally, bright sunlight directly on my face isn’t something I enjoy. Is why we wear sunglasses and hats and seek out shade. But, part of my morning tradition, my ritual, is to sit and wait for that exact thing to happen, and, for whatever reason, in those circumstances I love it.

There are three places I may sit in the morning while awaiting the sun to rise over the lake out back: the living room couch, the sitting room couch, or outside on the back porch. All three have relatively the same sight-line and face the same direction, more or less. So when the sun comes up in the east there’s a moment, right around 745am-8am this time of year, where it’s 100% shining on you from those positions.

The direct sunrise light only lasts twenty minutes or so as it continues around and is eventually blocked by the roofline, but I love that moment when those first rays finally top the treeline and hit my face on a new morning. I imagine those twenty minutes are recharging me after a night’s sleep, powering me up for another day.

I’ve never really thought that two days of working on your own needs and passions for every five spent working for someone else is a very great deal. As I get older, I seem to feel this more strongly. Maybe it’s because we made better use of our weeknights when we were younger, maybe it’s this phase of life… because I feel like the amount of responsibilities are likely near peak now, and should begin declining as the kids start to peel away.

Whatever it is, I’ve got a garden that needs to be ripped-up and re-planted; I need to change the oil in the RV, as well as remove and disassemble its furnace to clean out some mud dauber nests; I’ve got a gutter out back that’s not level and needs to be fixed; all manner of touch-up painting needing attention; the grass in Florida grows so fast you can hear it so that’s calling every Saturday; on and on it goes.

I guess this is the balance everyone does, I know. But two-of-five days, 30% of my week, for me, to get my shit done, feels too little. Even with my coastFIRE phase-two career change I feel this way. And yeah, blah-blah-blah I know I’m/we’re supremely rich and free and spoiled on a global scale, and yeah that makes me hear this whole thing as pointless complaining from an already fat and happy king.

Ruined it. Started out OK. Peace.

In the least perverted way possible, I am here to talk briefly about how much I love when you can see the cut of a woman’s underwear through her clothes.

Like, dang.

Actually, any hinted-at or partially-exposed undergarment. The top edge or strap of a bra; the v-shaped outline of underwear where a dress hangs on hips.

Yes, I know. Unfair and unwanted and undeserved sexualization.

But what I was called to write today. Sorry.

I keep a spare belt at work.

I wear shorts exclusively; every day of the year unless some stupid event dictates otherwise. I only have four pairs of shorts. I was them after 3-4 wearings, or if they’re visibly dirty. I remove the belts when I do laundry and sometimes when I throw a freshly-cleaned & put-away pair of shorts into the bike bag in the morning I neglect to also add a belt. See, the belts typically stay on the pants. It’s an easy oversight to make.

So I have a spare belt at work. We’re only talking thin military style webbed belts with plastic clasps – not a full-on dead cow thing. It fits in a tiny compartment in one of my desk drawers, takes up almost no space. Today I had to use it, and gave thanks to the foresight of past Dave for putting it there for just this occasion. It’s wrapped compact in a rubber band, and I leave the rubber band in front of my keyboard so I’ll see it at the end of the day and know to return the spare belt to its place for my next mental failure day.

I also have a spare undershirt. And a spare handkerchief. And a spare buff/do-rag to sop sweat on the rare occasion when the workday involves something more manual. I also have a spare pair of eyeglasses, maybe a prescription behind my main pair. Oh a spare Kindle in case I want to pick up where I left off at home while relaxing on my lunch break. I have a pair of socks, too, and a blanket and fleece – for the even rarer occasion when Florida is cold and my die-hard commitment to shortpants on the daily has consequences. Oh and finger nail clippers in case I need to get at it and a toothbrush and travel size toothpaste.

This all seems normal and logical and like good planning to me.

That’s all, love ya.