January 8, 2025
The school buses have resumed
their daily mission after the holidays, and each seven o’clock in the morning continues
to be darker than the day before—and will, for the next two weeks after which
it will gradually become lighter. The temperatures fluctuate between really cold
and holy icicles, Batman! And locations in the northern hemisphere that aren’t
used to getting a whole lot of snow or icy conditions have been, or are on the
verge of, experiencing record downfalls.
Note to anyone reading this:
when you’re driving in a car and the roads are snow or ice covered, please, for
the love of God, slow the hell down! Seriously! Most accidents happen in
winter due to the combination of imperfect conditions and excessive speed.
Thank you.
Winter has a solid grip of us
and it’s not fixing to let go anytime soon.
While I have attested that I
did not have any New Year’s resolutions, I have begun to try to take some steps
with a view to getting myself better organized.
On the one hand, it can be argued
that being 70, I should be able to do whatever the hell I want. There’s truth
in that. People who are in their golden years ought not to have to do that
which to them seems onerous. Rest
assured, no one has been making me do anything, and I am certain that no one ever
will. The problem is me. If I’m not happy with how things are, then it’s up to
me to change them.
I’ve gotten into a bad habit
over the last half a year or so, and the only one who can change that is me. Therefore,
I have decided that this staying up into the wee hours and then not rolling out
of bed until mid morning had to end.
I got tired of blowing off so
much of my day. I decided I didn’t have to feel that way, and am in the midst
of fashioning a new program for myself. My new schedule sees me in bed before
eleven at night, and up at 6. (Yes, I was doing the “in bed before eleven”
previously but that didn’t last). The goal is to be at my keyboard, and working,
by 7:30.
On this, day three of my new
routine, I can report that the getting to bed and getting up in the morning
part seems to be doing ok. It’s the 6 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. part that I can see already
needs work. I seem to have developed difficulty in accurately judging just how
long certain parts of my routine actually take me to accomplish.
The sad truth is that the
older I get, the slower I get. In every area of my life. The happier truth is
that I merely need to hone my new schedule—not overhaul it again.
Part of this refinement is the
addition to my new routine of something I haven’t been doing for quite some
time—taking a nap. A nap, in this house, is defined as that point when one
returns to one’s bed for a short sleep. It does not mean nodding off in the
chair in front of the television.
I used to nap occasionally as
the need presented. But ever since David retired and has begun napping every
day, I simply stopped doing so myself.
In the years when I was
working outside the home, on weekends which were our free time, David and I
would nap in shifts. I got up earlier in the morning than he did, so I would
hit the bed sometime between eleven and one, for no more than an hour. Then he’d
go to nap around three, usually for an hour and a half or longer.
Lately, I have been going to
my recliner just after noon, specifically to get my legs up. This has been a
very helpful habit in the past, a way to ease the discomfort in my legs caused
by arthritis. And I will admit that I’ve been known to doze off here or there,
and not thought anything of it.
But lately, the arthritis in
my right knee has been in a flare up and it no longer particularly likes my
legs being up for more than a few minutes at a time in that wonderful chair.
I don’t have the same trouble
at bedtime, though. Of course, at bedtime I have taken my pain meds, whereas at
noon, mostly, I have not.
And so the idea of taking an
actual nap took hold, and I decided that I would do that little thing and see
how it goes. If I can manage a short sleep in the middle of the day, I might
not fall asleep so quickly on the couch after supper. That would be a bonus. I
might even be able to watch the entire news cast!
I’ll have to let you know,
later, how this works out. Yesterday was my first attempt, and was a failure.
But while I did not sleep, I did stay in the bed, resting and horizontal and
legs up, for the full hour.
I’m told that progress often
comes in baby steps. Fingers crossed.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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