Nothing messes my head up like an afternoon of TV. The commercials for everything from SUV’s to jewelry to beer get me wondering how I can be so happy when I have no desire to purchase any of this schlock.

Weird 

https://youtube/G7ZbAdP7v5Q

Hopefully this link will take you to Last Post. It is my tribute to the brave men of the Australian And New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), who fought in the ill-fated campaign on the Gallipoli Peninsula in The Great War (World War I).  

The dryer vent cleaning guy came today. He pulled some of the accumulated lint out of the exhaust port. Kind of cool. The exhaust port is on the roof.

And I went swimming. 

I don’t think I’m much of a sunbeam for Jesus today.

“Tomorrow is another day,”- Scarlett O’Hara.

I’m sitting at the computer naked. Quite frankly it’s a tad warm, 80 degrees F outside. I need to turn on the AC, I guess.  Or not.  I hit  a workout goal today: to exercise 50 times in 70 days for the sake of consistency.  Every negative thought I could think of ran through my brain.  “Nausea will make you want to stop swimming.  “You’ll get those calf cramps.”   “They will close the pool because of a thunderstorm.” .

But I persevered. I stopped after 100 meters, rested a bit, restarted the stopwatch, then swam another 2050 meters.  I took my shower, headed home.

OK the naked part. Here’s the simple answer.  It feels good.

I can only call yesterday The Day Of The Backache.  It never seemed to go away. It wasn’t all that painful, but it was persistent. And I was tired . I took a morning nap, an afternoon nap and was in bed fairly early. I woke up around 3, hurting, and finally took 2 Extra-Strength Tylenol. I got some sleep but a day of pain wore me out for today.

Today Mrs CorC? is driving to Fredericksburg  for lunch with her brother and sister-in-law. It would entail about five hours of riding and sitting and is just too much for me. It was her suggestion that I stay home. I offered no argument, because, as much as I like her family, I knew I wasn’t up for the experience, err, ordeal.

So I’m home, skipping Mass, unless I go at 4:30 or 5:00. I plan to swim in a short. I want to read posts from the bloggers I follow, and have a spot of lunch.  I will write more later.

It is Sunday. The warm weather has gone. It feels like Winter again. That is fine by me.

I was up and down last night, but most of the night I slept soundly. Mrs CorC? has some sort of cold/allergy issue going on, so she coughed a lot and slept fitfully. I will tell her to stay home, rest, and skip Mass.

I’ve resumed my usual fitness activities, with a walk or a swim most every day. The tightness in my legs has gone, so PT was a success.

I want to write more and will later. I just needed to check in.

 I will write more later.

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.