Dr T is fairly certain I’m suffering from long covid. As he put it, it shouldn’t be that surprising, considering I had two infections. He’s encouraging me to keep walking, keep trying to up my strength and endurance. Gods, it isn’t easy. My body feels twice as heavy. Everything hurts.
But I’m doing it. Got out today for another hour. And I’m a little bit less pained today than I was five days ago, so I’m hoping that’s a good sign. Still get really, really breathless when walking. I huff and puff and can barely stop gasping, and I’m not even walking all that fast. Every once in a while I get dizzy, too. It’s fast, and I haven’t fallen from it. But it’s a bit of a pain. Hoping that will go away as I gain back my health.
So my keyboard is in for repairs. It may be three weeks before I see it again. He’s just that busy. That means I get to use the replacement keyboard at our rehearsal space. Cool. It works and usually I can find at least one sound to use quickly.
Got the battery for my phone replaced. Hurrah! It barely held for 24 hours with nothing used at all. I’d charge it up one day and the next, when I checked it, it was dead. I really hate mobile phones. I think they’re awful. Awful sound quality. Even on a regular call, the voices cut in and out. And if I want to surf the ‘net, I’ll do it on my computer with a larger screen and keyboard. Nothing I hate more than seeing everyone with their noses in their phones. There is NOTHING so important that I have to be in contact with the world 24/7. Absolutely nothing. *sigh* Anyway. Now I can put my CV out there and feel confident my phone won’t die willy-nilly on me every single time I need it.
Got over my guilt about my uncle and not going back to the states for his funeral. It took a couple weeks of beating myself up, but I finally got there.
Still have loads of people I need to write to. Haven’t done that yet. But I’ve just been too bone tired to do it.
You’d think the temps outside were much higher than they are. People are dumb. As soon as there’s a sunny day that isn’t freezing, everyone pushes it like spring is really here. And maybe it is, but we still woke up with 2C this morning and a wind chill of 3 below. I passed by people wearing shorts out there. Granted: quite often it’s shorts of a runner, but shorts nonetheless. Feeling like it’s 3 below is too damned cold for that. Put something on your legs. And your heads! Geez!
And because people are dumb, everyone is sick. T’s two students called off this week because of illness. The amount of coughing, snorting and sneezing on the metro is frightening. Everybody sounds like they got something wrong with them.
Here in NL, Wilders is still trying to coordinate a working government. He just can’t get enough supporters to do anything. I’m thrilled by that. If only the US did things the way we do here! Trump could win yet not rule at all because he just can’t get a large enough percentile of supporters to make up a working cabinet. Everyone on this side of the pond is mentally prepping for the worst come November. Can’t say I blame them. Even when Trump isn’t in office he’s causing problems, like stalling out the border solution Biden worked on. Makes me think that the only thing Americans want is a bit of chaos. Enough to entertain them, at least. And…well, there’s no one like Trump to ‘entertain’, is there? Even I skim through articles online that talk about his outrageous behaviour. Biden is more apt to make me sleepy. But that’s a really lousy reason for voting someone into office. If anything, you want your politics boring. It’s called consistency. Your people and your allies can count on you acting a certain way. Let’s face it: if Trump gets in again, he’s pulling out of NATO. I think that’s a for sure move. Not good for the rest of us. I honestly don’t think Putin will march on the EU, but I could be wrong. And it isn’t like Putin is the only one we gotta worry about. We have quite a few hard right wingers right now. They could turn at any moment and invade their neighbours if they felt justified.
And then there’s climate change. You know, I really don’t get it. Most thinking people agree now that climate change is a thing and we’re experiencing it. Not everyone agrees that people have anything to do with it, and that’s okay. There are some things we CAN agree on. For instance, I think many people realise we have a big garbage problem. Everything is full up. The ocean is a huge garbage dump. The western world just ships everything off and likes to forget about it. But the garbage is still there. Yet here we are, in an age where having coffee the way coffee has been made for forever is now unpopular. Instead, we are encouraged to buy these little damned cups filled with what I can only assume is a chemical laden heavy espresso that your new machine (because a regular old coffee pot isn’t good enough anymore) makes. Yuck. If you want coffee, make coffee, not some chemical crap. Now, let me ask you this: how many of those stupid little cups (made of foil) are now in our litter? I’m guessing quite a bit over here. Seems like everyone has those idiot ‘coffee’ machines. If we already have a garbage problem, shouldn’t we look only at new products that don’t contribute to that problem? But no one talks about that! Oh, no. Just how good the chemicals taste in a coffee cup or how convenient it is. I used one of those once. It made so much noise it was awful. Like if someone else was sleeping in your flat you couldn’t use it or it would wake them up loud. In other words, really loud. So you want me to trade a really loud machine for my quiet coffeemaker. You want me to give up wonderful, natural coffee made with an unbleached filter so it’s 100% recyclable for this waste generated chemical laden cup of crap. Um…no thanks. Why is this even allowed on the market? Why would anyone buy it? You’re perfectly able to make one cup of coffee in a regular old coffeemaker if that’s all you want.
I know, I know. The answer? I already said it: people are stupid. Honestly, I’m sad to live in this age. Sad to see how few people really care about the planet. Sad to discover, over and over, how few people have a brain in their heads. How do you do it? How do you live, or keep a job? I don’t understand. And that makes ME feel stupid, and I KNOW I’m not, but everything gets muddled until I just throw my hands up and light up another bowl because I’ll never get it. I give up on trying to understand other people, or figure out why they can’t grasp the most obvious things.
Now I feel bad. Again. I don’t want to live through what’s happening to the planet. I already dreamt it: the fires, the screaming, the violence. No. I do not want to have to do that IRL. The dream was bad enough.
I’ll just put my blinders on and do my best to ignore all the stuff that makes me feel bad. …No, that isn’t true. I’ll do my best to not dwell on it, but it isn’t like I can get away from it. Best thing to do is make my world small again. Me, me, me. Walking, working. Small steps forward. Progress. Always aim for progress. Ignore bigger stuff because it isn’t like there’s much you can do about it, Beeps. Keep it small.