Today 25Aug2023

I was feeling tired and a bit unhappy last night, so I just went to bed and slept for hours and hours. I am feeling better but very stiff this Saturday morning.

Returning to yesterday…

It was Friday, which means “there are only two more working days left of the week,” as we used to say in another project that never seemed to end. Fridays are also work-from-home days at Nike, but I worked from home for these two weeks anyway (the new building on Nike WHQ is not ready for us until 5 September). I still try to keep the days the same for Susie, and today means working from Susie’s room for the afternoon.

I wake and I am tired and running a bit late. I totally space the thirty minutes of exercise, start breakfast, and rush to the office to make the 8:05 weekly team meeting. We have a nice, calmer meeting as the boiling chaos that is the huge project we are working on has cooled, and we can reflect and share holiday photos. Excellent. The rest of the morning was a blur of status and process Zoom meetings. At 10ish, I showered and dressed. Next, I rested for a bit as I was feeling off. I read Cold Welcome by Elizabeth Moon, the second to last book of the Vatta series. Strongly recommended, but do them in order.

Rising to the challenge, I find my shoes, Air Force Ones, and fit them on. I reheated the leftover Broccoli Beef from Trader Joe’s I made the day before. Then I watched a few things on YouTube, including an amusing story about the miss sizing of the gun turret from The Battleship New Jersey Channel. Next, I board Air Volvo (not named after the shoes) and travel in heavy traffic across Beaverton. I finally arrived at Susie’s place at Allegiance Senior Care LLC, 9925 SW 82nd. Ave. Portland (Tigard), OR 97223; phone (503) 246-4116.

It is close to 2PM, and Susie is set up in her bed to watch M.A.S.H. while I visit and work from my laptops in the overstuffed chair beside her. Susie is happy to have company and stays awake for the various episodes about midway through the catalog. I read and approve some designs and follow along at work. I stopped M.A.S.H. for my call at 2PM. After that, I stayed until about 4PM.

While I worked, we managed to fit in an Ensure, and Susie watched M.A.S.H. I try to get Susie to drink one while I am visiting. Now, desserts or ice cream would be a good mix, but Susie chokes on them easily and never finishes them. The Ensure gets finished. It works, and I will stay with it for the moment.

Leta, Susie’s mother, and Barb, Susie’s sister, called us, and we had a great chat. Leta is safe. Lansing, Michigan, was hit by tornadoes and high-wind thunderstorms, which took off the roof of a retirement center; trees are down everywhere, and Leta has no power. Her neighbors have trees down on their houses and cars. Leta had cut down her trees as they were having issues. With no power, Leta would have no AC or power for her medical devices in her house, so she is staying in a hotel in East Lansing, which still has power and will be safe. Barb was with Leta, getting her mother set up in the hotel. We had a lovely brief chat.

Leta resides in the East Lansing Hampton Inn, Room 222. I heard, but I am unsure, that the ETA for power is Tuesday. Prayers, thoughts, and positive energy for our friends in Michigan facing outages and all the storm damage.

At the close of a M.A.S.H. episode, Jennifer was happy to pop Susie into her wheelchair, and we then visited the park. School is starting soon, and the park was full of younger kids trying to get that last swing in or to practice some more soccer shots. A little dog was playing with a large basketball; it pushed it with its nose and ran with it, soccer style. It runs as fast as it can while guiding the ball. Impressive.

After 4PM, I left Susie with a kiss and a promise to return on Saturday. Traffic back was worse, and the trip took over thirty minutes. On reaching the house, I turned off the AC. As a liberal, I am willing to sacrifice for the greater good (and get a small coupon) by lowering my electrical usage when requested by the power company. I got a text saying it was another critical high day for power consumption from Portland General Electric (PGE), and I cut some of my usage. I did make broiled tuna fish salad bagels for dinner, and that was more power as I have an electric stove. I also had to finish the laundry, so I was not wholly successful at not using electricity, but I lived without AC for four hours. Liberal means taking action.

Aside: Yes, you EV haters readers out there, you are right that charging your EV car after getting home makes this worse. EV cars should be charged after 10PM. So I agree that liberal-loved EVs are also causing the problem, but the EV chargers use the same power as a washing machine and only run for a few hours, so they are not the real problem. Electric stoves (yes, I know liberals are stopping gas stoves) and electric clothing dryers running with the AC at 4-7 at night are the issue. Yes–it is a problem. I try to help by cutting the peak usage at a request for PGE.

As suggested by the above text, I made dinner instead of going out on a busy Friday. I chopped celery and onion fine and mixed that with all the usual items to make tuna fish salad. I then defrosted a NYC bagel (thanks, Joyce), cut it, and toasted it. This was put on a solid cookie sheet covered with tin foil and broiled until almost burned. Excellent. I watched The Girl Who Played with Fire in Swedish while I ate. This is a favorite and does not match the Hollywood English versions. The acting and camera work is as good as anything from BBC or Hollywood, but it has the Swedish dark crime novel feel. The darkest crime novels I have read were translations of Nordic books, especially detective series.

I tried next, after finishing Cold Welcome and not starting the last novel of the series, to make a Teensy 4.1 microcontroller work. I had trouble that I attribute to having to learn something new (the Oregon-made Teensy is a complex Arduino-like technology); I was too tired to learn something new. I put it away for another day.

I read a good story, “Blackmail,” in the Strand magazine (Issue LXIX 2023). This is by the mostly forgotten Noir writer James M. Cain. The story “Blackmail” was so vivid and dated at the same time–how do you do that? I will be looking for more of Mr. Cain’s work now. Jacqueline Winspear, a mystery writer I read each year as she publishes another book in her long series about Ms. Dobbs, had an essay on finding that gold nugget for a writer. I finished half of it before sleep, pulled the magazine out of my hands, and had me sleep reading.

I was up at 1:30-ish taking my pills I forgot, and I did prove my hydration twice that night. Still, I managed to sleep and feel better.

I have noticed that the depression and exhaustion seem to follow a trip to Wildwood. Two beers and a bar mix should not be enough to self-medicate for depression, but it does fit the symptoms. I will reduce my trips and consumption of beer to see if the exhaustion and depression stay away. Also, not getting the exercise may be an issue. So discipline returns. So keeping to the exercise, more salads and fruit, and less alcohol seem to be a good plan. Scott and Matt should be smiling.

Additionally, Susie’s weight remains at 70 pounds. Terribly low, but she has stopped losing. Her health at the moment is stable. I also have enough money to cover the year, I think, and then I will sell some more retirement assets to cover next year; for tax efficiency, these transactions must be kept to the next tax year. After insurance, Susie and my medical expenses are over $8,000 a month. I find myself fortunate to have the resources to cover this. I am honored to work with so many good people at Allegiance and Cornerstone Tax to make this work for us.

My health is improving, but I cannot stop (or soften) the approach of the passing of middle-aged life to whatever is next. Vision and hearing show the usual loss for my age (f**k you, aging), and muscles and weight gain are starting to show the age change (I get hurt easier, and weight loss is hard–f**k aging). I am resisting. My colon has begun, these last few weeks, to run more usually–the cork followed by dumping has stopped (I call it the champaign moment). I have a new oncologist, and a body scan to see if I have produced more work for the oncologist will be scheduled soon. I have a good chance of being cured by my first encounter with chemotherapy.

Thank you for reading. It was a good day.