Bad Halloween

Originally Posted Saturday, November 1, 2014

Hayzoos Marimba, what an f--ing Halloween.  In the morning, I left the house to the wrecking crew (aka cleaning engineers) and went to the gym.  When I came home, the ac was broken.  As I am always so accurate to predict, October 31 is the first cold spell here in my own hometown.  I called the repair guys, but they said they couldn't come until Monday.  If there was a weekend to be without air or heat, this would be the one, but it is maddening to me.  There are things other than temperature to contend with.  There are the sounds of the neighborhood, the humidity that never dies, and the idea that there is a large bill coming my way as I take off from work on Monday.  I feel compromised this morning sitting with my cup of coffee.  Oh. . . when I woke up, I found I had no coffee to brew.  I have been buying two pounds at a time so that this won't happen.  I'm supposed to be smart enough to stop at Starbucks after the first pound is gone.  This morning I had to put on my sweater and drive for beans.  I don't know. . . reading this makes it all sound trivial and small.  I have become that person for whom small things loom large. 

And everything does at night.  I wake in terror.  I do not know if I suffer from apnea or from fear.  I made a mistake and watched the movie "Venus" again last night.  It was better the second time than the first, but perhaps I'm getting too old to watch such things. 

Not a trick or treater around last night.  When I got up at three, the cat went out.  I put on music and went back to bed.  Then I felt cold and went to the car to get the space heater I brought home from the studio.  After forty-five minutes or so, I thought the room too warm and got up to turn it off.  Some water.  I turned the music off and lay back down.  It was time to try to control my thinking.  It takes effort, but I once had gotten very good at meditation.  It didn't take long for me to calm myself and go back to sleep. 

Today, I face some decisions.  I've let my life get away from me.  I feel it.  I've changed my rhythms and patterns.  I need to get my life in synch again.  The way to do that is always to simplify.  After I have done that, I will decide what direction to take.  But sometime soon, this blog will go dark.  I will have a knee operation at the end of the week and then some bed rest.  I am nervous about it in a way I don't understand other than I hate to put my fate in other people's hands.  It is that, but it is more than that, too.  I desperately need some time off, but an operation and recovery in bed is not the bromide for that, really.  As soon as I am mobile and strong again, I must get away.  I have become something I barely recognize. 

There is the Halloween report.  I hope yours was much, much better. 

For the record, back when the CEO of PayPal announced SpaceX, I derided the decision to outsource the space program just as I have denounced Halliburton.  Surely you have already read about the second crash of an outsourced spacecraft funded by Branson.  Outsourced in the U.S.A.