Story 5Jan2021: Going Slow

The day started out without me being able to sleep in the morning. I was up at 5AM and started my day early (Today, I slept late!). I wrote the blog and did all the morning things.

Breakfast is low-fat cottage cheese and canned peaches. This is a perfect match to all my restrictions, and I like it too.

We received a package at our door from DHL that was an address a mile away. Once in a while, we get packages that we have to redeliver on the street. So I thought it was that at first, I drove to the other side of Clarion Street and discovered the address did not exist. So I read the whole address and put it in Air Volvo navigation, drove the mile to the location, and delivered the package.

There was nobody home, and the doorbell was the type that records video. I hope that the recipient does not turn me in for stealing a package as the video shows me, a stranger, handling a package!

I drove out from there to Susie in Forest Grove. The drive to Forest Grove Rehab and Care Center was without events. After that little event, I was even more tired and was a few minutes late at 10ish. Susie was in a dark room, warm and very much asleep.

I was tired already, and my incisions were sore from the drive. Susie can barely speak and falls asleep but is happy to see me. I do a short FaceTime call with Leta and Sarah, one of the nurses, get a bit of FaceTime with Leta. Leta had spoken to Sarah a few times, and they were both happy to see each other.

I am there for 90 minutes. Then, finally, I am getting fatigued and have to leave before I am too tired to drive. So I kiss Susie goodbye. Physical Therapy shows up and is apparently still working with Susie as I go. So that is good news, but I still leave as I do not want to take a nap in the car and then drive home!

Lunch is reheated spaghetti and meat sauce from the previous delivery. It is again better reheated the next day. I am tired, not quite stumbling tired, but I am careful. More Pirate Movies this afternoon. My fav is number 3, and I am halfway through it. I watch it and fall asleep after it.

As usual, I watch some YouTube while eating. Today, I watched part 7 of building a wooden ship model, the USS Albatross. I have subscribed to a perfectly executed channel where he just works and records each build step with a narration of why he does something. This is one of my secrets to painting figures and building models; I look up how others did the work and pick and choose what I will do. It is also why I do not buy more models–I see the amount of time to finish a model and will not pre-invest now.

Aside: The famous (and sunken) U.S. WW2 Lexington CV-2 is one of the pre-investments. It is impossible to find a plastic model in a 1/350 scale (that makes it over two feet long!). The story was told to me, a person with hoarding passed away, and the local hobby store bought the unopened models from the family. Thus, a copy of the long out of print model was there to buy in the Hillsboro hobby store at a reasonable price. I watched a video of the build of the model, it is a flawed kit, and I have not been ready to start it. Someday!

Note: One of my investment book purchases is the story of the USS Lexington CV-2 told by a reporter on the ship for its very short life in WW2. It is a signed copy from 1946. One of the best WW2 naval stories I have read: Queen of the Flattops. The author spent the war selling the book and bonds for the war after surviving the sinking of the Lexington. In secret, Stanley Johnston, the author, was tried for printing that the Imperial Japanese codes were broken in his war dispatches in the Chicago Tribune. Apparently, the Imperial Japanese Navy did not read the Chicago Tribune and never learned that their codes were broken during the war. The Chicago Tribune was shuttered (it was an anti-FDR paper) for part of the war. Mr. Johnston was found not guilty on a technicality. The book has no mention of code-breaking.

Charlette Jackson, from church, calls, and she delivers a beautiful chicken tortilla soup for my dinner. I have two bowls!

I watch some of the news on PBS until the rehash of 6Jan2021 starts. I remember the events, and having lived in Washington, D.C. area; I was very sad as I loved the U.S. Capital and the kind police force. I turned off the T.V.

I went and read the rest of Death on the Nile. Barb, Susie’s sister, reminded me that it is coming out in a new movie soon. I think it is a dark story and one of Agatha Christie’s best. She writes all you know to solve it, but it is in her detective’s words, “impossible.” All with tourists in the 1930s on the Nile. Excellent!

I talk to Subha from Nike, she calls between her meetings. I give her my sympathy; she lost her father when all my chaos started for me. So it was good to talk to her; I am so glad she called.

I talk to folks on the phone but stay in bed reading and napping. I finally take my last pills and fall asleep near 11ish.