It’s 12:17. I had a good day on balance yesterday. I’m sitting up because I can’t sleep. Pain mostly keeps me awake. It’s just there.  I will eventually fall asleep, bolstered by pillows on my side, taking the pressure off my back.

It’s just my life right now, pain coupled with loneliness. My wife is with me every day in a marriage without intimacy. Friendship, yes, love in its own way, yes. Intimacy, no. Sometimes that emotional pain overrides the physical pain.

I have an idea for a prose poem I plan to write and publish later.

I have no idea what’s going to come out of my fingers this afternoon/evening. Yesterday I started walking again. I did 4 miles. The weather was more like April than January. Today, it is winter again, cold and windy. Today I walked 2 miles, more to let my body ease into a routine than anything else. I like watching the neighborhood dogs and the neighborhood children. We have Corgis, huskies, whippets. They all have their own dog personalities.  The children like to play; basketball, bicycling, riding their scooters.  They are children and they have fun. What more can one ask?  The mothers take their babies out in their strollers.  Life goes on.

I want to walk and swim on the same days.  I think my body will thank me for it.  I’ve swum a couple of times this year. The bronchitis really got me on the exercise.  Doing both swimming and walking will have beneficial aerobic benefits and also strengthen arms and shoulders, legs and lower back.  And burn calories. I need to burn calories.

It has been awhile since I last posted.  There have been holidays. More importantly I have had bronchitis. Bad enough to go to the doctor bronchitis. Bad enough to get antibiotics, steroids, and cough medicine with codeine bronchitis. Christmas was a blur. It was OK. We slept a lot.

The family was getting together on New Year’s Eve because my sister, a Church musician, had to play at four Masses between 5:30 PM Christmas Eve and 11:00 AM Christmas morning.  The family get together was nice. My great-niece, my totally adorable little 14-month old great niece, was there.  My brother showed us some slides of my grandparents he saved from my late aunt’s house.  They have been gone forty-plus years.  Coincidentally, today, January 16, is my grandmother’s birthday. She was born  in 1894, 123 years ago.  It’s awesome to think about that span of years and that my grandparents and my great niece are all part of my life’s experiences.  Time is funny. Distant events can become immediate.  My father remembered talking with Civil War veterans when he was a boy in the 1920’s.

I am sitting here at the computer because I need to apply for my Social Security retirement benefits. Only the Social Security.gov site is acting up. Oh well. There was all kinds of creative stuff I wanted to write, but I just don’t feel like it right now.  I’ve been enjoying reading people’s blogs and downloading recipes.

I’m done.  For now

Winter always comes in her own good time, oblivious to solstice, confining  you to kitchen.

You let the stove do its work, warming the whole downstairs, the scent  of clove and allspice, become  odors of love.

And the bed? What of it? Do we aspire to a tableau vivant of carnality or cuddle and caress in a down paradise?

And as my naked self presses into your naked self, are we ready for this August baby?

This is a short post. I fell asleep in the big bed, my wife by my side, around 9:30 PM. I woke up around Midnight and could not fall back asleep. I made a pot of gunpowder green tea, read some, felt sleepy, but no sooner did I climb back in bed around 2:00 AM, was I awake again. So I went to the other bedroom to try sleeping there. No luck. I then decided to begin straightening this room, which is an unholy mess. I picked up some trash on the floor. I’m sleepy again. Wish me luck.

Not much to talk about today. My younger son brought Arrow over for me to dog sit. He is a very energetic and incredibly sweet dog. 

He is enough to make me readily abandon all talk of politics.

See what I mean.