What Day is It?

16 May 2020

Another Saturday morning has come.  It is another of the seemingly endless stream of days in the Plague Year.  

Late yesterday my wife had informed today was supposed to be a rainy day.  The Weather Channel app on my smartphone just before I fell asleep last night told me this day would be grey and overcast. On the apps weird little hourly schedule, it showed Saturday May 16 only achieving the status of partly cloudy late in the day.  Despite these prognostications of the weather at 7 a.m. I was awakened by bright, bold sunshine and by lunatic cat lunging at the window because there was a chipmunk somewhere in the county. 

The kafuffle of the cat’s fur, feet and meowing together with the brightness of the morning light and the highest trilling of some damn songbird ensured that I was totally and completely awake.  My wife looked so blissful asleep that I quietly got up, gathered up my clothing and headed out of the room and down the hallway to dress.  

Hey it was orange juice, bacon, coffee, rye toast, and two eggs for me today.  Six days of Wheat Chex have passed.  I am living large this morning.  Listened to three podcasts. Don’t know why I listened to the one about the possible return of major league baseball. It was there, I guess. 

Sipping a coffee, I am plotting out the day.  Most likely, given the lack of rain and the relative warmth promised (70 degrees) I will focus on yardwork.  Do have to leave the house to pick up one prescription.  The excitement just never ends. 

Planning and time itself have changed for me a new retiree.  I knew I was going to be shifting my schedule when I retired, but this is truly radical.  I don’t go to bed until my eyes droop, usually about midnight.  I get up when the sun or the cat or some combination thereof wake me.  I plan, but the day’s outline is always tentative and vague. And except for picking up fresh greens every two weeks and going out to get prescriptions when they come up for refill nothing is time sensitive.

I don’t even have bill days anymore.  I put gas and electric on annualized payment plans and all my bills save maybe three are paid automatically online. This was done in anticipation of living overseas for an extended period and not wanting to use a mail forwarding service. Life is so much simpler this way. Life is blurring. 

[Author’s note:  As I was writing this, I had doubts over my spelling of the word lunging.  I mean it looks like it should be an archaic or alternate term for breathing as opposed to meaning an exaggerated unidirectional leap. I asked my copywriter/editor/marketing consultant wife about this and she assured me that the e gets dropped when you move from the infinitive to the active in this case.  

I have two books on my shelf that I have ignored for years, Grammar Sucks and Eats Shoots and Leaves. Now with the time the pandemic has handed me I guess I can read these volumes and perhaps make this blog more readable.  Only problem is that the copy of Eats Shoots and Leaves is the British version.  There are differences between A Mur e Can and British usage.  Oh well, I will read it anyway.]

And for today's musical selection, The Rolling Stones.  I have seen them live four times starting in 1978.  They are what they are, sui genesis.  Enjoy.