HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KAT!!
Today is Kat’s 39th birthday so that’s by far the most important thing you need to know about today. Of course, we celebrated with her on Sunday. Yesterday, Brandon took her to the rifle range and she shot her AR15 for the first time. The Marine training kicked in and she put in some impressively tight groupings. She wants to fine-tune the front sight a bit, but other than that it’s ready for might justify its use. She also tried out her dad’s Sig p250 compact, which she may carry with her in certain situations. Bottom line: think twice before messing with her, but by all means wish her a happy birthday!
How was my day yesterday? What do you think? It rained. And rained. And it’s still raining. There was no comfort, no rest, and no breaks in the action. I’m not sure there are enough pain meds on the planet to deal with where we’re at currently. On a scale of ten, we’re at 50. There’s nothing we can do, though, but deal with it and that’s what we’re doing, trying to minimize movement and avoid wrestling with the dogs.
Of course, on days like this, nothing goes quite as planned. I have been out of ice tea mix for a while and finally found it in stock leading me to order it and a few other things. Not a huge order, just enough to fill some gaps. When they finally showed up more than two hours later, the shopper had trouble finding the order in his very full car. He hands me three bags and takes off. I take the bags and guess what’s not there: NO ICE TEA MIX! Four other things were missing as well. I contacted support and a few minutes later I got a text from the driver that he was bringing the missing items back, “right now.” Not knowing how long “right now” might take, I grab an umbrella and go stand under the tree, in the rain, waiting another thirty minutes before he showed up. I was happy to at least have the tea but my bones refused to cooperate at all the rest of the morning.
Next up: a 2:00 PM phone interview with FSSA regarding getting back on Medicaid. I was told to be ready at 2, but to expect that the call might be delayed as much as 30 minutes. So, I had all my information gathered in advance and at 1:50 thought that I should go ahead and use the bathroom now so that I don’t have to during the call. Care to guess who called early, while I was in the bathroom? Yeah, it was the interview. I was happy that no one else was home at the time! Fortunately, the call only took a few minutes since all my social security info was already in the system. I was able to get back to the bathroom before things got messy.
I tried napping afterward, but there was no relaxing no matter how tired I felt. I got up, worked on a new video I’ll post later, gave Pinball some required snuggles, fixed dinner, and waited in vain for my body to relax enough to go to bed. When I finally decided to try, though, I looked over and there were seven cats and both dogs filling my bed. There’s no moving the dogs when they’re asleep; they’re dead weight and immovable. Yeah, I can move the cats, but when you move a sleeping cat you have to act fast. If you haven’t filled that space in two seconds, they take it back. You can’t succeed with seven cats. Plus, Queen Bit was one of the cats. Attempting to move her puts your skin at risk of scratches that leave scars. I finally decided to go sleep in the recliner. Pinball joined me and we snuggled down for a nap that was only occasionally interrupted.
G and I were both up at 5, which is an hour earlier than most days. I fed everyone, made coffee, and then chatted with G while he told me about his dreams and what he wants to do with the rest of his life. He’s dreaming big and I’m excited for him. Tipper was up by 6, complaining that her brother was too loud. There was plenty of time to play with animals, all of whom were happy for the attention, and both were looking forward to having good days when they left.
And now, I have to figure out some way of dealing with this pain for the second day in a row. There aren’t many options. The dogs are both back to sleep. The cats are wandering around, deciding where they want to nap. I need to post that video in a bit.
This is the life we’re living. It is what it is.
![The Travesty of Morning [2010]](https://i0.wp.com/www.charlesiletbetter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/AprilMorning_02-scaled.jpg?resize=1707%2C2560&ssl=1)
Morning Update: 05/04/24
Try sleeping late on a Saturday morning when all the animals in the house are accustomed to the 6:00 AM weekday schedule. The dogs aren’t really that much of a problem. I took them outside late enough that they were comfortable waiting on me to move first. The cats, on the other hand, are less patient. They began invading the Recovery Room when I hadn’t fed them by 7:30. They climbed on top of me, nudged me, licked me, and mewed in my face to let me know that they were going to starve to death if I didn’t get up right now. Fortunately, Kat was already awake so the impact was minimal. Still, there are days when the cats’ alarms need to turn off.
The first message I saw this morning was from a college friend, one of the smoothest tenor voices I’ve ever heard, letting me know that he, too, has now been diagnosed with cancer. I guess we’re all at that age where our bodies turn against us. Whether it is a familial inclination that plagued the generations before us or the aggregate compound effect of life’s choices, we see more of our friends fighting health battles that keep them from engaging in the things they love. We work all our lives, practice, study, and perhaps even experiment with our craft, trying to become the best we are capable of being, wanting to be one of the wise elders who is respected as we pass information down to subsequent generations. Yet, when we’re at that point in life when we should be enjoying the fruits of our labor, we get hit with some disease that strips away all that glory and leaves us with a shell that struggles to survive. We may still live but not at the timbre we did before.
I made the mistake of watching Anne Hathaway’s new movie, “The Idea of You” last night. It was a mistake not because of the quality of the movie; as rom-coms go, it was rather decent. But it highlights the challenges of not only finding love as we get older (in this case, “older” being a whopping 40 years old) but also what happens when you find it in someone significantly younger. For the movie’s characters, the solution was simply to wait five years when the social effects were less severe. Whether it’s inadvertent or not, the movie also demonstrates the degree to which finances play a role in finding these exceptional forms of love. Had the younger male character not been swimming in cash, had the female not been independently financially stable, the romance would never have happened in the first place. Money put them where they were.
There are always people in our lives who will say, “I love you.” How they mean that changes over the years. Much of the time, the definition is along the lines of, “I appreciate your place in my life and value your presence.” That’s nice, and it keeps us from being able to complain that no one loves us. What we lose, though, are those people who would define their love as a soul-level experience, a desire to be an intimate and constant part of who we are, what we’re doing, and wanting to join their lives to ours for everyone’s pleasure. That love? Yeah, you can kiss that goodbye as you get older. Companions become tolerated because, if not them, who? Even then, for how long? The deep connections we have with people erode with time. We’re no longer exciting to be with. There’s nothing new in our relationships as we become set in our ways and, we like being set in our ways.
At the end of the movie, she’s 45 with a daughter happily in college. He’s 30 with a new solo album. As the movie ends, the producers would have you believe that their relationship picks right back up with the same level of passion as before. You and I both know that’s not the way it works, though. Things happened over those five years. Everyone changes. Five years, especially when you’re twenty-five, is a long time and our emotions change dramatically. We might remember former loves tenderly, even longingly, but the day-to-day is going to have less passion, less heat, and more illness and doctor’s visits and disparities between our desires. Maybe he wants a family. She already has one. He wants to keep that jet-set life. She’s anchored to the business she owns. As the movie fades to black, the relationship inevitably falls apart.
Maybe what’s disturbing is that ending: all our lives slowly fade to black. We still want that high, the fiery love that we knew when we were young and healthy but it’s no longer something we can maintain. Not only is the other person letting go, but we let go of ourselves because who we are now is not the person we thought we’d be.
Or maybe I’m just an old man babbling in a pool of loneliness. I really shouldn’t watch rom-coms.
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