Wrapping up last year

I keep thinking I should write something about the last … gosh, I guess three months of last year. I keep not wanting to do it. Not that there's anything bad about it. I just can't summon the energy.

This is an omnibus post. The only common theme is that I'm too lazy to break it out into multiple different posts. Or maybe I should say that empirically I have already observed a strong tendency not to write it. So tonight I figured, "Better to get it all written than to worry about the details." I count 14 different tags or labels on this post right now. Maybe I'll add more later. That should be a sign that it really does tell multiple stories.

October

Actually I guess I've already talked about a lot of it. In October I traveled to visit Debbie for a week, and we went on a silent meditation retreat. (The retreat lasted just a weekend, so we also spent time visiting her family.) Then I flew on to another town where Marie was attending a conference. I appeared with her at the big dinner, as arm candy, and otherwise wandered around town while she attended multiple sessions. I think I talked about this trip in this post here. (See also this one, for a slice of life around Debbie's family.)

November

In November, Mother and I joined Brother and SIL in driving all day to visit family in another state over, for Thanksgiving. I talk about some parts of that trip in this post here. There were other parts of the visit as well, but I don't remember anything so important that I need to remember it or write about it. Stan was better behaved than he was five years ago, and easily distracted with Monty Python routines. This time it was his little sister who was the terror, but not as destructively.

Visiting Marie

I've just been visiting Marie for a week. Now I'm on the train headed home, and I'm thinking about the trip. What worked, and what didn't?

Marie lives in a dingy apartment. She has furniture she doesn't use, which is generally clogged with junk and whose surfaces are all scratched to ribbons by her many years of cats. (In the terminology of the current election cycle, Marie is definitely a Childless Cat Lady, with all the political predilections that term implies.) The furniture she does use is scarce and spare. There are two mismatched chairs (one an office chair, the other an overstuffed living room chair with gashes scratched in it) flanking one small glass-topped table. Her setup is clearly fine for one person (who can use the glass-topped table alternately as a dining table or a desk); when both of us are there, we can use the table together after a fashion, but there is no opportunity to serve an elaborate meal because there simply aren't enough square inches on the table.

The comparisons with my space are unsettling. I too have enough furniture for one, but it is awkward for more than one. I do have a usable desk that is different from my dining table; and I have extensions that I can put in the dining table if I'm going to seat more than three people. But I have no sofa; my chairs are all dining chairs, which makes them not very comfortable for long sitting; and my living room has stacks of junk that I keep meaning to deal with. (Compare, for example, this poem from eight years ago. Nothing has gotten any better since then.) On the other hand, I don't have cats. (You may remember that Wife got the cats we owned back when we separated. They have both died since then, and she's gotten another. I've never had any.) Briefly, Marie and I both live like graduate students (only without the classes, or scholarly productivity, or promise that it will all get better after we get our degrees and get jobs). 

Her apartment seems (from the times I've visited it) to be often dirty. Of course there is always cat hair on everything, no matter how often she cleans. And of course there is a litter box in the bathroom, which means that there is often cat litter sprinkled across the floor. When I arrived a week ago, the sink and counter in the bathroom were scummy, though it seems that she cleaned them a day later when I wasn't looking. And she started vacuuming the carpet my second day there as well. She did dishes very often while I was there, so the dish drainer was always overfull. Nonetheless there were open containers of food scraps or other oddments that she was collecting—I think to use as mulch for the miniature garden on her porch. Her toilet has long-term stains on it.

Again, the comparisons with my space remind me how far I am from where I'd like to be. When I first moved into my apartment (eleven years ago) I set myself a schedule of vacuuming once a week and mopping the kitchen floor once a month. It has been a long time since I have stuck to that schedule, or—realistically—to any other schedule instead. Maybe when I get home I can take the inspiration to give the place a deep clean. My toilet is always clean, or at least it has been ever since Kimberly Steele issued her clean-toilet challenge. My counters are usually clean, and I don't cultivate homemade mulch. But I've got to do something about those floors.

What else did I notice?

We went swimming a couple of times at her local recreation center, and I couldn't swim nearly as far as I did the last time I visited her. I have let myself get flabby and out of shape.

We had quite a bit of sex, or at any rate she did. At this point I can't get hard enough to enter her, and the only way I can come is through masturbation. So there wasn't a lot in it for me, but it was (as always) gratifying to be able to do so much for her.

I've been trying to teach her lately about whiskey, so she bought two bottles this week. One of them we finished off between us Wednesday night (along with a bottle of wine); the predictable consequence is that we did very little on Thursday. Friday night we had just one glass each (an ounce or two, judged by sight), with much better results. I reminded her that whiskey is something to drink slowly.

We went out and about, though we managed to miss a couple of the sights we had in mind to visit. We also went to a bookstore, which was a reliable entertainment for both of us. Last night we went out to dinner with some of her friends.

Also we visited a cemetery. Nothing profound and there was no one in particular whose grave we were visiting. We looked for the oldest graves we could find (mostly from the late 19th century) and read the inscriptions. One of them reminded me of a story that Florence King tells in her memoir Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, but Marie hates Florence King so I avoided recounting it. 

So from the perspective of writing a travelogue, there's not a lot to say. From the perspective of general observation, I'm made uneasy by how she is living, and by how closely it matches how I am living.

I don't know if there's more. Maybe after I have mulled a while longer.

    

Intoxicology

I woke up yesterday morning with a hangover, rolled over, and went back to sleep. Later in the morning I finally dragged myself out of bed and puttered through a whole list of errands all day. Because I was away from home until late afternoon, I managed to avoid my midday nap (which I seem to need most days). Finally had something to eat about 5pm. (Dinner? Breakfast? Both?) Dessert at 7:30. Read for a while, dithered on the Internet, and went to bed a little after 10:00. I drank no alcohol last night.

This morning? No hangover. (Well, duh.) And I was able to get up earlier. (Yeah, not staying up till after midnight will do that.) We'll see whether I need the midday nap, but so far the signs are hopeful.

I want to watch the nap, as a marker. I had gotten to the point where I pretty much had to have one every day, where my head would be foggy and in low-levels of dull pain until after my nap. This was regardless how much coffee I had in the morning. Not until yesterday did it occur to me that this might be connected to whatever I'd had to drink the night before. So it will be an interesting experiment to see if cutting out the alcohol for a few days also cuts out the need for a nap. If so, that would be a pretty clear indicator of causality.

On the other hand, I also notice that the amount I drank the night before last would have counted as a pretty normal amount for much of the last year. Normally I don't expect to reach for the Tylenol until I've had half again that much … or twice that much. Maybe I'm getting old. Or maybe the stuff is actually toxic. That's the root of the word intoxicate, after all.

Things to notice.

          

Christmas at home

Just a few words about Christmas.

We collected at Mother's house on the 24th—that's me, Brother, and SIL. Brother and SIL spent hours cooking for the next day. I got there later and brought a shitload of wine. I … actually don't remember what we had for dinner the night of the 24. I know we had to improvise something at the last minute. We all joked over having a house full of food and "nothing to eat"—nothing that wasn't already slated for the next day, that is. But we scraped together something. And we had wine to drink—I'd brought plenty, so there was some for that night too. After dinner, Brother and I put up the outside lights along the front edges of the roof.

Unproductive

I've fallen into a pattern in my days that's really unproductive.

I get up late, because I stayed up too late the night before. Sometimes I'm mildly hung over. That is to say, I'm not badly hung over—not to the point where my head hurts and my mouth feels foul and living is unpleasant. No, not at all. Nothing like that. Just to the point where I'm sluggish, and unimaginative, and uninspired … just to the point where I can't quite muster the gumption to do anything more ambitious that to doomscroll* Twitter.

What's wrong with the Five Mindfulness Trainings?

Last night, the Unitarian Sangha that I belong to recited the Five Mindfulness Trainings. This is something we do every month or two. The Five Mindfulness Trainings are Thích Nhất Hạnh's recasting or interpretation of the Five Buddhist Precepts. They also serve as the entryway into the Order of Interbeing. (See also this link here.) So they are kind of a big deal for the Plum Village Tradition of Buddhism.

Overall, or at a high level, I don't really have a problem with the Five Mindfulness Trainings—that is, if you see them basically as injunctions to be a nice person and don't look too closely at the details. But you all know me by now. When have I been able to avoid looking at the details? And when you subject them to that level of scrutiny, … well … there are issues with them. Problems. Things that don't make sense, or that really should be worded a different way. 

Things that I can't fully agree with.

Now, any member of the Plum Village Tradition will be quick to tell you that the Five Mindfulness Trainings are precepts—often they take this to mean suggestions or advice—and not commandments, strictly speaking. In principle they won't insist that you stick to every jot and tittle; but they will tell you that the closer you can come to abiding by these, the less suffering you will feel in your life and therefore the happier you will be. Well and good. At the same time, I don't feel that most of them want to hear the flaws—the misconceptions or simple errors—that I find in them. So you're going to have to hear them instead.

"Can't"—part 2

A while ago—gosh, it looks like it's been more than nine years already—I wrote a speculation about why Wife insists so devoutly on her illnesses and her incapacity. I said she must be getting something from seeing herself as weak.

Just this evening I read an article by the School of Life ("The Upsides of Being Ill") which proposes much the same thing. This article goes so far as to suggest, in fact, that every illness has a psychological upside, because it protects us from some realization we'd rather not face. Or at any rate the article suggests that we would do well to ask ourselves whether this is the root cause every time we get sick, as a way to keep honest with ourselves. It can be a kind of discipline, for the sake of moral and intellectual hygiene (at the very least).

So then I suppose that (rather than stopping with a discussion of Wife) I also have to ask myself … what benefit do I get out of compulsively reading Twitter? And while I recently stopped drinking for 30 days in a row, what benefit do I get when I start up again?

          

Lost day

I was going to call this post "Hung over" but couldn't quite bring myself to do it. But that's what I mean.

Monday was the same way. That is to say, Sunday night I stayed up too late and drank too much; Monday was a waste. Tuesday night I stayed up too late and drank too much; today was a waste.

If there's a good part to the story, I'm drinking less than I was back in May and June. I look at how much it took to make me worthless today or Monday, and there was a whole week straight back in May when I had more than that every single night. Of course I wrote you about it too, so clearly it concerned me. (And except for writing all my West Highland Way blog posts, the month of May was pretty much a loss for me, as I discussed here.) Anyway, if I'm now tolerating less booze before it wipes me out, maybe my body is finally balking and telling me to quit. That would probably be a good thing, I suppose. 

Also this morning I had a Skype call with Marie, and for the very first time we actually used the video link for sex. (I know, I know, other people figure this out when they are teenagers and not in their sixties. But Skype hadn't been invented back when we were teenagers.) In the moment it was exciting and fun, but I found myself feeling kind of squicky about it afterwards. That might be partly because I realized only afterwards that all my windows were open (though with the blinds drawn), so I wonder if anybody heard anything. Also maybe partly I was still feeling the after-effects of the hangover.

Maybe I can make tomorrow a better day.

               

Becalmed, 3

I also think I'm drinking too much.

My cough has certainly made this easier to do. If I sit up late writing a blog post (like I'm doing right now) my cough will start to ramp up. And it's so easy to pour myself something to soothe my throat. In this post a couple weeks ago, I called that an excuse, but that overstates the case. Swallowing anything will temporarily dispel the urge to cough, and thick liquids work better than thin ones. (This means spirits work better than water, since I'm not going to sit here sipping maple syrup.) Also, while the alcohol doesn't prevent me from coughing, its anesthetic properties certainly make my throat feel better afterwards. If only I could metabolize away all the booze ten minutes after I swallowed it, then it would be a great solution. Too bad it doesn't work that way.

But I started tracking how much I drink each night, a little over two years ago. And, taken as a whole, the six weeks since I got back from Scotland have been heavier than any comparable period since I started keeping the records. I can't speak to the years before that, but still.

I have not gotten to the point where it interferes with any of my regular obligations. But of course, as I pointed out before, I don't have a lot of those right now. 

Maybe I should just go to bed. Night-night.   

          

Becalmed

I got back from Scotland over three weeks ago.

When I got back, I learned that the owner of the company where I have been consulting had just sold the company the day before. The new owners saw no value in keeping me around. My last day there was about two weeks ago.

My cough is back. Again.

Last weekend I drove down to Big City to spend a couple of days visiting Mother. I briefly mention the story here.

I have kept posting once a week on the professional blog I keep under my real name.

I have a phone call once a week with Marie, and another (on a different day) with Debbie. I join a Zoom call for Sangha once a week, as well.

But for the most part I have no obligations to anyone, and nothing that I especially need to do. Let me say that again, for clarity.

There.  Is.  Nothing.  I.  Need.  To.  Do.

The technical term for this condition is freedom. Nobody ever bothers to tell you that it sucks.

Drinking with Debbie

I'm writing this in the middle of June, but I've backdated it to May because it's another one of my posts about thinking through the outcome of my trip to Scotland with Debbie. Ironically, last night I wrote this post here, about drinking. So tonight I'm writing another about the same topic? Sure, hell, why not?

When Debbie and I first got together back in 2013, one of the few hard disagreements we encountered was over alcohol. I remember walking past a city park with her one evening, trying to suggest that alcohol could have a place in a well-managed life as long as you didn't let it take over. Since Debbie was a nurse [still is, I guess], I compared alcohol to a medical anesthetic: you don't want to abuse either one, but each one has its place. Anesthetic allows you to undergo the pain of a medical procedure placidly; alcohol can take the rough edges off your day and let you see the world in a more graceful light. But Debbie was resolute: she had watched her parents get drunk and then beat on each other, and so she didn't see any redeeming benefits in it. (See for example her references to this behavior here and especially here.)

Not listening and no accident

OK, this story doesn't look good for me. But hell, when have I ever told you stories that do?

This morning I did a Tarot reading for the day. What it said the day would bring me was the Moon reversed. That can actually mean a lot of different things, and some of them are pretty good. (For example, "Change will not be disruptive," or "Deception will be unmasked.") But my immediate, off-the-cuff reading was, "Things are trying to crawl out of my subconscious, but I'm not listening to them." And of course the word subconscious can also be used to describe any planes of activity or existence besides the material plane that we perceive with our five senses and interpret with our rational intellect—in other words, anything that our conscious minds aren't really aware of.

Was this true today? When I saw it, I assumed that it was a statement about my career and that it's pretty much always true. I tend to assume that I don't have a strong intuition, and therefore that my subconscious has to shout if it wants any chance of getting my attention. I thought, "Maybe I can meditate later in the day. Maybe meditation will quiet my mind enough that I can hear the promptings of my subconscious."

In the end, I didn't find time to meditate. Shocker, that.

But evening came, and I didn't go to bed early because I was working on something. Now, the last couple of nights—for what must be almost the first time in a month—I've had no alcohol to drink. And somehow, at a level that isn't strictly ratiocinating, I've clearly known that this has been the "right" thing for me to do right about now. I have sensed that somehow I've been drinking too much, and it's time to pull back. The only thing is, ... booze (or at any rate spirits) give me a real lift in my energy levels when it gets late. If I want to stop drinking, one thing I have to do is to go to bed early. (Or at least more-or-less early.) But I didn't go to bed early tonight because I was working on something.

Hair, part 4

I think I just saw a connection between two themes I've written about at different times.

One of them is hair. You know I have written that I don't like the shaving of body hair, for either men or women. It's not that I insist the hair has to be heavy -- for some people, it just isn't. It's shaving it off that bothers me. I've discussed this here, here, here, here, and here, for starters.

The other is monasticism, which I discuss in my posts "Contra monachismum," "Pro monachismo," and "De monachismo." (I list these three by title, because I'm likely to search on one of those titles when looking for related posts in the future and I want to find this one too.)

And the linkage? That comes from a couple of discussions between John Michael Greer and the commentariat who contribute to his blogs: briefly here, and at greater length here. The gist of these discussions is summarized in one remark as follows: "Religions that grow the hair and cover the head don't tend to favor celibacy and are comfortable with emotional and intuitive experiences, while religions that shave the top of the head tend to expect serious practitioners to be celibate and to focus on clarity and self-control."

Really? Who are these traditions?

Some of the traditions that shave or tonsure the head include:

• Christian monasticism
• Buddhist monasticism
• Jain monasticism
• ISKCON (Krishna Consciousness) monasticism

Do you see a pattern in that list?

By contrast, some groups that grow the hair include:

• Orthodox Jews
• Sikhs
• Hindu sadhus
• Rastafarians
• Ancient Greeks
• Cherokees and some other indigenous American peoples 

These groups don't have a lot in common. But one thing they do have in common is that none of them are monks, and all of them somehow accept the world rather than rejecting it. Even the sadhus, who -- yes -- are indeed renunciates, reach that point only at the fourth stage of life, after having led a full life as a student, and then a householder, and then a retired elder. They are not fleeing from life in the world, so much as consummating it.

And ultimately this is where I find myself too. In my "De monachismo" post I quote George Orwell on the irreconcilable difference between those who choose this world and those who choose the next. And one way or another, I choose this one. I see a lot that's beautiful in certain kinds of Christian life, and in certain kinds of Buddhist life -- just as I see a lot that's attractive in the secluded life of scholarship. But I still choose this world over the next. Who knew that this choice was connected to my opinions on shaving?

     

Bad at parties

Jack and Jill threw a Halloween party tonight. They had skipped it last year because of COVID-19, and in fact they haven't thrown any parties since the outbreak of the pandemic, so far as I can recall. (Or at any rate, they've had people over from time to time -- rarely, to be sure! -- but this is the first one that was general enough that I was invited.)

I knew that I couldn't afford to get really hammered, because I'm planning to visit my mom tomorrow, and that means a drive of a couple of hours. Plus, after I get there, we're going out for the evening somewhere that will require a bunch more driving. So I have to be functional tomorrow.

But also I have come to realize that I am really bad at parties, or at any rate at the kind of parties that Jack and Jill throw. I'm not good at small talk, or at least I'm not good at small talk with people I scarcely know. I'm not part of these people's lives -- none of them, not even Jack and Jill themselves, really, even though they are my next-door neighbors. And I don't dance, not unless I'm so drunk that the next day is already destined to be a total loss.

The one thing I know how to do at their parties is eat and drink. And they always have food out, and plenty of alcohol. So in the past I have often spent my time drinking and drinking again, occasionally chatting with someone who decides to be nice to me, and maybe dancing if I finally get drunk enough not to care that I have no clue what I'm doing.

No, that's not fair. The people at these parties are genuinely nice to me. Even the ones that I know the least smile and wave, and their eyes show recognition; others remember my name even when I've forgotten theirs. They recognize me, and even seem happy enough to see me.

It's my problem. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to interact. These people are all friendly and willing to interact with me in whatever constitutes "a normal way." It's my problem that I have no idea what that means, or how to do it.

This evening's party was scheduled to run from 6:00 pm to midnight. I arrived somewhere around 7:00 pm, I think. I chatted aimlessly with a couple of people, and drank four or five glasses of sake. (Jack had just come home from a trip overseas, and had brought a lot of sake with him.) I was the only one there without a Halloween costume, but Jill cleverly told someone else that I was dressed as a sociopath -- you know, they always look so normal! I thought that was pretty clever. (And in fact I wondered if she had been talking to Marie, but I managed to stop myself from asking.) And then, when no-one was looking, I snuck quietly out their back door and back to my apartment. I was home by 8:15. In fact I was all ready for bed before I decided to write this. But I'm going to bed right after. 

It's times like this that remind me how isolated I really am. And it's a depressing thing to remember. Oh well. Tomorrow is Halloween, and I'll be driving to visit my mom. That will be nice.

Time for bed. Maybe I can forget all this for a few hours while I'm asleep.

    

Feels like a long month, part 2

I think I'm learning something: Never, ever, tell you readers out there (if any) that I've stopped drinking; because the act of telling you so guarantees that I will fall off the wagon that very evening!

I've been in a foul mood all day. Part of it is the other stressors that I talked about in my post earlier today: the job hunting (combined with ambivalence for even getting a job in the first place), and Wife's contemptible stunt of wheedling a place to live out of Son 1 because she's afraid that the alimony I pay her might be interrupted (if I am jobless long enough).

But part of it is my phone call this morning with Marie. While I was cursing at the walls and failing to accomplish anything useful all day, I also found myself making up lists of things to yell about:

Item: The only two people whose spending I have ever tried to control before this were Wife (who spent like a drunken sailor) and D (who berated me for failing to follow through on an alleged promise that I still think I never made, to pay for one of her plane tickets). But now it's come up with Marie. In an email back in March she wrote:

I am realizing I owe you an apology.

I have been affected all along by knowing that I don't have the income to support indefinitely a jet-setting relationship.  And I've felt you were uncaring when that's what you seemed to want, when you seemed blithely to assume that we could just happily jog along the way we started.  

When I had deliberately hidden from you that I couldn't really afford this.  

I don't know when the right time to have had this conversation would have been, but I'm pretty sure five years in isn't it.

I hid pertinent information from you, and then, worse, I have been blaming you for acting in ignorance of that information.

As a rhetorical device, it's clever that she phrased it as an "apology." It sounds like she's claiming to be in the wrong. But surely this belongs on a list of historically magnificent passive-aggressive apologies. If you can read this and walk away thinking that she's really admitting to being in the wrong, you have a blessedly thicker skin than I do.

We emailed about it in March. No resolution. We talked on the phone. No resolution. I agreed to visit her in May, which I did. But that was a distraction, not a resolution. Then a few days ago she told me she had gotten a bonus at work, and how about if she spent it on a plane ticket to come see me?

And I told her No. Not on your nickel. If you are going to come see me, somebody else (like me, for example) has to pay for it.

So controlling.

And that's what we talked about this morning. She was offended at the idea that I should pay for her flight. I told her that now I knew it was a problem, there was no way I was going to allow her to keep paying for her own flights because I know for a fact it will come back to bite me. That some time five or ten years from now she'll be saying, "But Hosea, you knew that paying for these visits was hard for me. And yet you've allowed us to go blithely on as if we didn't have to change a thing. As if my finances didn't matter. As if  I  didn't matter." (Incidentally, did you pick up on the word "allowed" in that speech? After Wife and D, I have come to expect that any unsatisfactory arrangement will be retroactively ascribed to me as if I had the authority to change it. Better, therefore, to step up and change it now … by being so controlling. Marie has up till now not remarked on the choice of word.) We agreed that she will come to visit me some time soon, and I'll pay for the ticket -- even if only just this once. In other words, another distraction. No resolution.

Wow. That was a lot of background, wasn't it? The point of all the explanation was simply this: when I start micromanaging somebody else's spending, it's a sign that I do not feel safe in the relationship. It is therefore a danger sign for the relationship itself.

Item: Part of why I don't feel safe in the relationship is that Marie broods silently. She overthinks things heavily, and then follows the counsel of her inmost heart without ever communicating to the outside world. So, for example, she told me today that it hurt her feelings deeply that once I knew I was going to be laid off, I didn't consider moving to be near her. But I did consider it, I objected. I thought we talked about that. Apparently not, or at any rate not in her world. (I can't swear in a court of law that I discussed it with her; but gosh, I kind of thought I had.) The point, though, is that those discussions were back in February or March. This is the last day of June, and it's the first I heard of it. 

In the same way, I confirmed with my mother back then that if I never found another job I could move in with her. Marie says she offered that I could move in with her too, and I ignored the offer. OK, I'm not sure I remember her offering, but maybe. But again, that was February or March. This is June 30. What else is she hiding in her breast that I don't know about yet?

Hard to feel secure when I don't know what's coming.

Item: So -- about those offers to move in with her. Some time after we got involved, Marie explained that she had always wanted to be Mrs. Tanatu and she figured now was her big chance. When I explained that this was impossible because I am still legally married -- and in fact that there's no way I will ever marry again, even if Wife drops dead or is abducted by space aliens -- it did not go over well. But that discussion was more than four years ago. Surely she has had time to get over it?

Maybe not.

The thing is that I don't think I'll ever want to live with Marie, unless I've gotten old and feeble and need someone to look after me. It just feels like too much work, like the relationship comes with too much baggage for that. I love the literary side of the relationship, when we can trade poems back and forth. And the sex is fine too. But I'd have to be paying attention all the time. And the extent to which she needs me is just wearing.

Item: Speaking of that last point …. Over and over, Marie is distressed about things that come down to "It feels like I love you more than you love me." And I'm sure that's absolutely true. I haven't said so, because it's a hell of a thing to tell someone. But Marie seems to be still head-over-heels in love with me, suffering from that kind of self-forgetting romantic love that needs the other person 24-7, that is so captivating and delightful -- the kind of love everyone should enjoy at least once. And I don't think I have that in me any more. After Wife and D, I don't think I can trust anyone that far ever again. I'm happy with the time that I spend with Marie, but I don't think I'll ever again put my eggs in someone else's basket. That's why I'll never marry again.

And what this really means is that Marie isn't getting her needs met either. The relationship isn't right or fair for her either.

Have I just talked myself into breaking up with her?

I don't know. I'd better sleep on it. Maybe I'll get one more drink as a nightcap.

Bloody hell.

   

Feels like a long month

It feels like it has been a very long month.

I've had a couple of screening interviews: one for a job six hours from here that I really don't want, and one for a job that they said could be done remotely (though the office is about three hours from here). The second one also produced a real interview, by Zoom, late Monday. I think it went OK. At any rate there were no embarrassing silences. I can't tell whether they liked me, and in any event they were still in the middle of interviewing other candidates. We'll see.

On paper the job is perfect for me. I was excited while I was doing the interview. Now I just want to crawl into a hole somewhere. I find myself hoping I'll be rejected on the first pass.

I started a blog under my real name, about my real-life work. No links from here, though. Sorry.

Debbie visited for a night. Her plan was to visit a number of her friends in this town, and to spend the nights here. No, nothing happened in that sense -- I mean, no sex. Also she got sick for most of the night with some kind of gastrointestinal bug. I slept through it but she told me the next morning.

Debbie also has a number of hikes she wants to take me on. I've been trying to exercise more, so that these might even be possible. But I'm tired and I'd rather nap.

Last Saturday I had a routine physical checkup. My blood pressure was a little high, so they asked me to take it at home when I'm relaxed and send them the results. I'm doing that. But I've also stopped drinking in the last few days, to help pull down my blood pressure. I'm sure it's good for me, but I miss it.

Next month Wife is moving in with Son 1. He seems to have his eyes open about the whole thing. I think it is the most despicable thing she has done in a long time. Why hasn't she found some other form of income? Why does she insist on being so god-damned dependent? 

I've started to fight with Marie about how she pays for her travel to see me. I told her the same thing I once told D, that I have to pay for all her trips after this. She balked. We talked. No resolution. She's also been hurt ever since I decided not to go to Sticksville that in my worst-case planning I considered moving in with my mother but not moving in with her. She said she offered. I didn't remember that she'd offered, and I can't imagine a world in which I move in with her.

Maybe I'm depressed. Ya think?

      

A week with Marie

I spent last week visiting Marie. Air travel is possible again, and I've been vaccinated against COVID-19, so I flew there on Monday (a week ago yesterday) and flew home on Saturday. A week.

Of that time, we had Tuesday and Wednesday completely to ourselves. She works in retail, and those days are her "weekend." Thursday and Friday she had to work; but I brought her lunch from nearby shops (instead of her having to pack a sandwich), ate with her in the employee break room, and then we had the evenings together when she was done. Her boss let her sign out early both days so we could have more of the evening together.

What did we do for entertainment? Let's see. Tuesday evening we visited some friends of hers for dinner. It was a pleasant evening, even if their son did start monopolizing the conversation towards the end with his views on world politics. Wednesday we drove out of town to see some of the natural scenery nearby, had a picnic, and then came back in time to catch a showing of "Here Today" -- only the second movie I have seen in a movie theater since the pandemic started early last year. And of course we fucked.

A couple of observations about the week.

We fucked mostly in the mornings. (By evening, I at least was generally too tired.) The first morning went very agreeably for Marie, and I got hard a couple of times. I was able to slide inside her for a while but -- in a way that is more and more common these days -- didn't come. The second morning was better. I started the morning asleep, dreaming that I was hard and trying to fuck Marie. About the time I succeeded, I woke up to find I was hard but had only been dreaming; so again I maneuvered around to enter her. And then I woke up again, to discover that even that had been a dream! Seriously frustrated, I decided that this time she wasn't going to dissolve in my arms. She wasn't really awake, but she started to wake up as I rolled myself on top of her; and she was very agreeable to my sliding inside. I was harder than usual, and more determined; and so in the end I was able to come, after which I lay there dazed for long enough that she finally got up, kissed me, and made coffee. That was the only time that I actually came during the week, but it was definitely worth it. Also I think it's a good sign that it's still possible.

Wednesday we did a little hiking. Ever since my work ended at the end of March I've been trying to get in some regular hiking at home, just in case Debbie is serious about tackling the West Highland Way at the end of the summer. (For practical reasons that now looks unlikely, but we might go backpacking for a day or two somewhere closer to home. Marie does not appear to have a problem with it.) The result is that my wind and general energy levels were better than they were when Marie visited me back in January. She commented at that time about the weight I had put on during the pandemic, and I'm still fatter than I used to be. But my improved wind looked (to me, at least) like a positive sign.

Marie reported no sleep apnea from me all week.

I also tried to watch how much I drank and how I felt about it. Monday night I drank nothing: my plane got in late, Marie picked me up from the airport, we went back to her place and went to bed. No big deal. Tuesday night we visited her friends, and they certainly served wine with dinner … also beer beforehand, come to that. Wednesday we had dinner out, in a rush before the movie; then after the movie we went home and to bed. No alcohol, and no interest in it. Thursday we ate dinner at home and at leisure, with wine. Friday we ate dinner at home and at leisure, and Marie wasn't interested in having any wine so I didn't either. But I was very aware that I wasn't having any. That level of awareness caught my attention, and not in a good way. 

But all in all it was a delightful visit. Now I'm back home and baffled by the job-hunting process. Marie has suggested that maybe I need to figure out what I really want, and maybe (in order to achieve that) it would help if I wrote something every day. This might end up like 2014, when I was trying to channel Ella Price for a while.

But not tonight.

    

Death in the air, 2

I remarked yesterday that I've been reminded of death seemingly a lot in the last six weeks or so. So I put some of those thoughts in an email to Marie, who wrote me back today. Here are a few excerpts from what she said.

Hey, sweetness.

Some conversations work better when we can hold each other for comfort.

But I noticed in myself, last visit, a reluctance to "spoil" our short time together by having a depressing conversation.  

So I mentioned that you seemed to have developed sleep apnea since my last visit, but I didn't mention how it worried me.  Particularly in conjunction with other changes I noticed.  Did you talk to your doctor?  And is he knowledgeable about that condition?  Because sleep apnea can lead to metabolic syndrome and heart problems, and you're already at fairly high risk for that.  It worries me, how tired you've been.  Might be just depression, which would be bad enough; but it might be something worse.

I am frankly more frightened that you might suffer a heart attack, my beloved, than I am that you'll freeze to death next winter.  Or even fall again and injure yourself badly, though I was terrified for you when that happened.

Other changes--your tiredness, I've mentioned.  Your weight increase.  Your e.d.--you had no trouble satisfying me, God knows, so I had no complaints there, but knowing you're otherwise at risk makes it seem a sinister sign.

Even how we ate and drank, down there; we were sort of en fete every day, and I didn't know how much that represented a departure from how you have been feeding yourself.  I know that the loneliness and stress of the pandemic led me to comfort myself with food, as is my wont.  And so I have gained back 12 pounds of the 46 I had lost.  But even so, it was noticeable to me that we were eating more rich food, and fewer vegetables and fruits, than I do on my own.  I didn't know how much of that reflected the holidays, and wanting to treat me, and eating up the cheeses and wines you had been given for Christmas, and how much it reflected your normal diet.  The DASH heart-healthy diet recommended by the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Health, for example, recommends 4-5 servings daily of vegetables, and as many of fruit.  I usually easily make that for veggies, and barely make that for fruit.  Of course it's much harder to eat fresh if one only goes shopping every two weeks, so the pandemic has hurt that as well.

Back to your letter proper.

Regarding the other deaths you spoke of... yeah, it's weird to reflect that we're at an age where we have to start expecting people in our cohort to die.  Already it's an exception for my peers to have both parents; I think I have only one friend my age who does.  And those who do still have parents, those parents are fragile.  I guess I personally see that most with Schmidt's mom, since I have known her for forty years now, but seen her only sporadically in that time.  

And I've noticed for a while now the decreased resilience of my own body; so have you.... 

But yeah, it's sobering and frightening to reflect that people our age are starting to die of ordinary diseases, not just of extraordinary circumstances.  As well as saddening, when it's someone we like and value, like Fillette.  

I do love Son 1's comment; how nice he acknowledges that if you died right now, you'd leave an intellectual legacy to be managed, even if he firmly declines to be the one to manage it!  And yeah, I would, but I would much rather talk to you about your writing, than arrange to publish it as a posthumous tribute.

So take care of yourself, my dearest.  Eh?

Loving you always,

Marie

Apnea?

One disturbing moment during Marie's visit was when she said that she heard me stop breathing during my sleep. When we first got together I had noticed this about her, and mentioned it. Since that time she has lost weight and I've gained it; and so on this visit I never noticed any apnea from her but she noticed it from me.

Wikipedia lists 11 basic risk factors for sleep apnea, including:

• being male
• obesity
• age over 40
• allergies

Yup — all those apply to me. Apparently having a large neck is also a risk factor, but I don't remember where I left my tape measure so I guess we'll skip that one for now.

And alcohol can "promote" sleep apnea as well.

So … now that I know this happens, how do I keep it from happening when there is nobody else sleeping here with me to wake me up? I can't do anything about being male or over 40. I do try to keep my allergies under control. Therefore if I want to reduce the likelihood of apnea, it looks like I have to lose weight and drink less.

There have been times in the past, when I have drunk too much before going to bed, that I have awoken in the middle of the night unable to breathe. I don't mean classic sleep apnea, where I come awake in order to breathe. I mean that I get up out of bed, start to walk around, and still can't breathe. 

It's bloody terrifying. 

When that happens I finally force myself to cough and then the breathing finally starts again. And after that I cut way down on my drinking for a long time, out of fear of it happening again. But a few years later, it happens again.

Maybe I need to cut it all the way out, or at least make sure there is no alcohol in my blood when I finally go to sleep. Also somehow it feels like it should help if I go to bed earlier, before I am really tired.

All of these measures would probably be good for me in other ways too. So why is it that I resist doing things that are good for me? Maybe the fear of not breathing will be enough of a motivation. Or so I hope.

  

Distraction

 I remember back when I was in college, some time during the late Stone Age (the early 1980's), I got a job on-campus for the summer between my Junior and Senior years. This wasn't the first time I had been away from home outside of school, but it was the first time I actually lived on my own: rented my own apartment, got myself to work, bought my own groceries … you know, #adulting.

I didn't have a car (or a driver's license), so my apartment was within walking distance of my job on-campus. And whenever I had to go to the grocery store, that meant walking too. Among other things, this limited how much food I could buy at a time. (Now that I think about it, the city had a good bus system. Why didn't I ever use it?) I didn't have a lot of friends who stayed in town over the summer. There was R, and he and I got together once or twice for dinner. There was Marie, but she and I were sort of on the outs at the time: at one point I stopped by her place to discuss political philosophy (yes, it really was as lame as it sounds) and the afternoon was deeply unsatisfactory for both of us. Also this was in the days before mobile phones, or the Internet, or even personal computers. So when I wasn't at work I had a lot of time on my own. 

I read a lot. (That was the summer I read Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy.) 

I wrote a lot of letters home. ("Wrote" by hand. Printed, because my cursive is hard to read. Mailed in an envelope, with a stamp.)

I played a lot of Solitaire. (With, you know, a physical deck of cards that I shuffled and laid out with my hands.)

And I remember thinking, years later, that it was a good thing I was under-age for buying alcohol at the time. Because with that much time alone, if I had been able to buy booze and drink it, I might have had a problem by the end of the summer.

Why am I thinking of this now? Because recently I noticed a couple of things.

These days I have a lot of time on my own. (I live alone, and with COVID-19 I mostly work at home.)

I have a car, which means that my grocery shopping is not limited by what I can carry in my two arms.

It's been a very long time since anybody carded me for buying alcohol. (Do you suppose the grey over most of my beard has anything to do with it?)

My most recent personal computer has Solitaire installed on it … which my last one did not, and which my work computer does not. (The company takes a dim view of computer games. We should be working on company time, dammit! And I guess I can see their point....) 

And all of this means that I weigh more than I have in many years, I'm drinking as much as I have since starting this blog (except for when I've been at one of those riotous parties thrown by my neighbors, but there's been none of that under COVID-19), and I'm playing an awful lot of Solitaire.

Anything to distract myself. 

During the day, this seems like a bad trend. Late at night, after a few drinks, it doesn't worry me so much. Maybe that pattern isn't a consoling one.

There's a story told that Robert Benchley, late in his career, was asked by a young reporter to say something about his career and his life. His answer was, "When I first came to New York I had a full head of hair, I weighed 135 pounds, and I was a member of the Temperance Society." 

There is a moral here, but I'd rather not look for it too closely.