The Daily Grind, Part 1 - Reville and Staging

There's a comfortable continuity to Susan's and my daily routine. Boredom doesn't really figure into it; being able to spend every day together is a blessing I never really expected when I got laid off in 2002 at age 49... But that's a story for another time.

So. The daily routine. We start with the wake up call. I'm normally up well before the sun -- generally somewhere between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM, but it can be earlier. That means I'm generally our alarm clock. I wander into our bedroom from the office and over the the bathroom at 6:15 AM, where I turn on the bathroom light, then start over toward the bed. Most times from under the covers comes a hand with all digits extended: five more minutes. Early on, that translated by unspoken agreement into three times that amount; we were, after all, both retired now. I go back to the bathroom, get dressed for the day, shut off the light and exit stage left.

Somewhere around 6:30 I return, again to the restroom for light, and then to my side of the bed to turn off the fan we run at night. (More on the fan later.) Sometimes there are further negotiations, and on occasions I restore the fan and light and return to the office for another 15. Urgency is not a factor in our early mornings.

Finally by 6:45 AM, we sit on the side of the bed discussing the weather (temperature, humidity and wind speed from my phone) and Susan's always remarkable collection of dreams. From there we rise and hug, she disappear into the bathroom and I make the bed -- sometimes with our wee doggie Zoe's help, sometimes without. Then it's down the stairs and into the kitchen for the next stage.

First I tear off two sheets of paper towel and fold them into a handkerchief-like affair and stuff it in my pocket*. Next, I reclaim my glasses from their case under the phone. At this point, Kay Lee, our seven-year-old, 120 pound Mastador comes into the room and I scratch her butt and back for whatever time she finds appropriate. This done, she heads back into the living room and I follow.

Here I go to the front door and open it, checking to see how closely the app has called our weather. Then I turn off the porch light and turn on the inside doorway light, grab a clear plastic tub from atop a stand by the door and move that tub to the coffee table. In the bottom of the tub are a pile of shiny black cylinders: rolls of doggie poop bags. Some days there are one or two bags already unrolled and opened out, and from one of the cylinders I peel off enough bags to give us five open bags**. I open out and stuff three in my pockets and set aside two for Susan, who is usually coming down the stairs about this time.

While Susan dons her shoes, on warm mornings -- say from early march to late October -- I go fill a bottle of water for Kaylee and drop it in a pouch I carry from a strap over my shoulder. Then we don masks, make sure I have my hat, keys and the cell phone, and if the day is bright, my sunglasses. Finally Susan rigs up Zoe's harness and I do Kay Lee's, then out the door we go.

It makes me tired just thinking about it.

Probably you too. But thanks for listenin' anyway, Gentle Reader.

Next Time: The Daily Grind, Part 2 - The Walk

Saturday, July 11 2020

Today is the first day of the rest of my journal. Trying to write about the Screaming 20's is just a bit difficult without a memory. Therefore, I will be recording snippets of my pathetic existence here. You have been warned.

2:10 AM: The doorbell rang. Cursing and snarling, I leap out of bed, lurch around trying to decide what to do next, lurch into the bathroom to don my pajama bottoms and head for the stairs. Zan has beaten me to the door. The dogs are both standing behind him, barking frantically. From the doorway, I hear Zan say, "I don't know where Archdale is. Now go away. Don't knock again."And he closed the door.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs, processing this. Someone rang our doorbell at 2:10 AM to ask where Archdale is. This is vaguely familiar to me. From the top of the stairs, Susan says, "Archdale? It's two blocks down the road." Zan sidles past me, headed back up the stairs, saying something about the "long-haired old hippie" he had just talked to. Adrenaline is beginning to peak now. Thinking slowly re-engages. 2:10 AM. An elderly man has asked for help at our door. We turned him away.

Excuses offer themselves unbidden. COVID-19 figures in each.

Jesus would look like an old hippie. We turned him away.

The roar in my ears fades out into chill silence. He's still out there, somewhere. I could get dressed and tell him where Archdale. But I probably couldn't find him. And he might have COVID-19. And he rang the doorbell at 2:10 AM. Why would he do that?

He must've been confused by our sign...

* * *

COVID-19 Statistics for yesterday:

US

Total Cases: 3,291,786

Total Deaths: 136,671

New Cases: 71,787

New Deaths: 849

Texas

Total Cases: 251,076

Total Deaths: 3,150

New Cases: 10,063

New Deaths: 106

Happiness

(Originally posted on 07/06/2003)

We went to Dallas for the 4th. The trip is a couple hundred miles north from Austin, laced with a long, straight road and surrounded by a vastness of nothing. It's a good place to think, so as Susan and I settled into the amiable road trip silence, my brain picked a couple of things to toy with.

The first was, what the hell am I doing in a minuscule metal box, stuck to the side of this humongous ball of rock by nothing but frickin' gravity?

Luckily, that one passed quickly.

The other was the whole idea of happiness. My thinking (a big-stretch euphemism, I know) went something like this:

Is it impossible for homo sapiens to be truly happy. Is discontent woven inextricably into our genes? Let's face it,  we've got a rocky history. Lack of claws or blunt teeth or thin skin or general deliciousness don't show up anywhere on the evolutionary playground's top ten list. More likely our forebears topped the menu at the Darwinian Diner.

Being a food item is unsettling. It fosters skillsets made up of things like Hiding and Scurrying Away and Poking Desperately With Pointy Sticks. Protohumans who mastered these skills got to breed. The rest got invited over for lunch.

We pulled a pretty good trick with the whole brain thing. Who'da thunk we'd grow a computer made of meat? After that, the skillset exploded to encompass things like Shooting Pointy Sticks With Catgut Stretched Across An Unpointy Stick, and Dropping Rocks On The Bastards. Somewhere along the way we started working together and added Make Loud Noises To Stampede 'Em Over That Cliff Over There, and Shoot Oodles Of Pointy Sticks All At Once. Sure, some of us still got et, but they were mostly the slow or stupid ones. The paranoids and the natural born killers we called \\leaders\\.

If you accept this whole evolution thing -  and I'm afraid I will until God stops by for a beer - then the prospect for long-term happiness is looking rather bleak.

The world we find ourselves in - this society thingy - is another kind of evolutionary trick, albeit an artificial one, the product of the meat computer. Where stitched-into-the-DNA evolution says survive, society says submit. Survival is not about being submissive, it's about not being hors d'oeuvres. You don't build a Volkswagen Microbus with plastic flowers on to go attack your neighbors, you build a tank. We didn't grow a lava lamp behind our eyes; we grew a survival machine. Therein lies a many-horned dilemma.

Am I saying happiness a hopeless cause? Not at all. Just don't demand it all the time, for here there be dragons. You can't fight dragons, even metaphorical ones. The best you can do is add to your personal misery quotient. Denial is expensive.

One other thing this tells me: savor that bit of happiness when it does come. Dig in with gusto, use both hands, and suck the marrow from its bones.

Maybe some day our ponderous evolutionary machinery will lumber onto the path we've chosen for ourselves. Homo sapiens may fit better, be happy and fulfilled, living together in peace and harmony.

'Scuse me if I say so, but I'm glad I won't be around to see it.

On the way home Friday night, every little town between Dallas and Austin gave us a fireworks show. Rolling across the forever plains of Texas, my better three-quarters and I held hands, listened to The California Guitar Trio and watched the sky grow colored mushrooms.

I was happy.  All the moreso because I'm often not.