I don’t know exactly what happens when I lose contact with time, the flow of time. I feel out of focus, disconnected. What have I done? I don’t know.
No, that’s not true. What I have done is taken a deep dive into reading/listening to books. I guess it’s been, what, 3 weeks ago? I started checking books out of the library again. I reread Then She Was Gone (best narrator ever!) and The Girl on the Train. I also bought a few Audible books (I listen almost exclusively). I read A Slow Fire Burning and Justine Bateman’s Fame. I read the short work, Look At The Lights, My Love. I read Gone Girl which is over 19 hours listening time. And I just reread Donna Tartt’s The Secret History which is even longer than Gone Girl–22 hrs! And I’m working on the fun fun fun book What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
The problem (and joy!) of listening to books is that it can be constant. I can literally read while I’m folding clothes and doing dishes and cooking and driving and drawing. I can read while I’m doing anything pretty much. And I really do love it. But listening to a book for hours and hours and hours has the same effect as reading a book for two or three days straight has. And maybe it’s even a little bit worse. Because you’ve been listening all that time to someone else’s voice reading to you… It’s a little weird.’
I’m trying to revisit a certain “magical” reading summer years and years ago when Dale and I read three books. I think the books were Ellen Gilchrist’s The Annunciation. John Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire, and Mrs. Demming and the Mythical Beast. The Annunciation and Mrs. Demming are not available to listen to, so I got out the the hard copy of The Annunciation and started reading it. But it was a bust. Unless I am in total bright light (I have a full spectrum light but it gets old fast), I really cannot see well enough to read from paper anymore. But I do okay with my Kindle, so I bought the Kindle versions of Mrs. Demming and The Annunciation yesterday.
But it remains to be seen if I actually do read these books in print on the Kindle. Listening to books is such a pleasure because it is so effortless… Well that’s not entirely true either. Some things just don’t work as well on Audible as they do in print and listening can be difficult. Or unwieldly. Like poetry. And any kind of reference book that I would take notes in. I’ve never really gotten used to taking any kind of notes on an Audible book. Actually, I haven’t even tried. However it is pretty easy to read a Kindle book and take notes. But lots of Kindle books do not have a proper table of contents which can be very frustrating, so E-books are really best for memoirs and novels and light nonfiction.
All this is to say that I like to listen to books more than reading anything in print at this point. But come to think of it, Dale bought this light for the office that is so extraordinary. It’s one of those things that has a clip for the desk and then you have this swing arm and the light comes down to go wherever you want it to go and it is also a friggin magnifying glass with a light. Maybe I will have him order one of those for upstairs and I can use it to read print? We will see.
James is sick. We just tested him for Covid and he’s fine, but I’m reluctant to go out into the world and possibly give whatever this is to anybody. He’s having a hard time not coughing. I’m gonna have to call the heart doctors today to see what kind of medicines he can actually take. I wish there were a true cough depressant other than dextromethorphan. Of course there is codeine, but I think they have pretty much stopped writing a prescription for that kind of cough medicine because of the epidemic of overdoses. So I’ve gotten in touch with my counselor to change my noon appointment to Zoom. And I’ve gotten in touch with my friend Katy. We were going to have lunch but that’s not going to happen now. And we were having a friend over but also I have cancelled that.
I have messed up my knee again. This happens quite often. So I have been sitting a lot more than I would have liked the last couple of days. I can certainly be up and around the house more today if I wish.
This morning and yesterday morning I woke far too early and just got up because I couldn’t sleep. I turned on Morning Joe which is very annoying but I kinda like it at the same time. I don’t really listen to it of course. I mostly love looking at Mika who reminds me of my dear friend Lanie whom I do not see often these days.
Today I can clean house and work on getting “the room” in order. “The Room” is Roslin ‘s old bedroom that we have turned into a pantry/storage room and will shortly be putting the washer and dryer in there. I’m so excited about this because I will be able to do laundry again. I just can’t manage the basement stairs anymore. I have enough trouble with the stairs going up into my attic bedroom. The attic stairs are brutal. The risers are just shy of nine inches. Even though I would miss the upper bedroom horribly I am so tempted to just move downstairs. We could put James upstairs. He has trouble with the stairs as well but he’s only 39 years old and he spends so much time in his room that he would just be… well, not going up and down the stairs a lot. It is incredibly tempting to do this. Then I wouldn’t have to even deal with one set of stairs to do laundry, because as it is, while I will be able to do my laundry, I will not be able to carry it all upstairs. Dale will still have to do that part.
And then there is the matter of avoiding going up and down the stairs as much as possible. Once I do get upstairs I tend to make sure that I have all of my water and drinks and anything I want to eat and anything I need to do up there with me so I don’t have to deal with going up and down the stairs anymore than I absolutely have to. Which is an annoying way to live. If we moved downstairs it would be just so wonderful.
Of course I do love the upstairs. I absolutely love it. It has been my haven, my refuge, my own little world. When I’m up there I can’t hear anything and no one disturbs me. But I would be willing to give it up to live on one level. We have thought of selling this house and getting a different house, but we own this house and we don’t want to go into debt for another house, which would surely be the case if we wanted to get a flat house that has all of the features that we love about this house. So what would we need to make this house livable?
First redo the downstairs bathroom… Take out the tub and put in a walk in shower. And the upstairs bath…put in what? I’m not sure. James has trouble with balance and I’m not sure that he could easily navigate the upstairs tub which is a clawfoot that is not against the wall–there’s nothing to hang on to when you get in and out except the sides of the tub. It is literally kind of free floating in the room, which looks really great when you’re in your 30s but when you’re in your 50s?
It would also be good to redo the front steps leading up to the house and install a railing there. I don’t even use those steps because they are not navigable for me. And it would be good to have a railing on the steps leading up to the postbox.
But all of this is so frustrating because in the back of my mind every time I think about getting older, about my knees, about not getting around well, I think about being fat and I think about being fat because being fat all these years has maybe, likely?, made everything worse. Has being fat caused me to not be able to do the stairs? I don’t know. I will never know. But it certainly hasn’t helped matters. Nor has my tendency to be inactive. Inactive? No. Sedentary. My tendency towards sloth, gluttony, somnolence.
Bah! Enough of that.
I can…work on getting more fit, which I have been doing. And I can do the things I would need to do to lose weight…but they would need to be done differently than in the past. I cannot, just will not, ever do another “Diet.”
I think I’m caught up. Surely.
~r.
