The second day off...  the weather is overcast, about 50.  My sleep schedule is disrupted by the illness.  There's a rotted onion in the trash can.  Early in the morning I take that out, and go for a little walk for fresh air down to the grove of pines.  Afterward I get back and rest some more.  I've made an appointment at the CVS Minute Clinic for the afternoon today, as the hack, the cough, the sinus congestion has continued, along with a lack of energy.  I'm up before noontime then, call Mom, get through, remind her that she is in the right apartment and that she'll be fine there, and that Mary is coming.  I tell her I'll try to come up and see her next week.  And then I start to tick through some things from the to-do list.

I send along the form the Humane Society sent along in PDF form for Mom to adopt a cat, I call around to find if some technician can come by and check the significant hum in her landline...  Soon enough, a shower, and then it's time to walk up the street to the CVS, past the Lab School and the Firehouse, to the old converted movie theater space to sign in at the kiosk for my appointment.  The weather is both warm and cold, and I heat up quickly under two jacket layers as I walk along, with my courier bag over my shoulder, restricting my breath, and soon I am overcome by a gag reflex, being unable to get a good breath in through my nose.  I stop at a tree, taking off my courier bag, opening up my outer coat.  I gag several times, heaving.  I blow my nose to clear it.

I have a book that's due at the library.  Thomas Merton's The Silent Life.  That will be included in my trip.

The doctor, a nurse practitioner, a young woman, takes me in after the wait, closing the office door.  A quick run through.  Sinusitis, it turns out.  I get my medications, the antibiotic, two pills for seven days, and pills for the cough as well.

By the time I leave the doors and make my way westward, past the abandoned Safeway, past the wine shop and Black Salt, the pizza place, Black Coffee, shuffling along now at just past four I don't have much energy after dropping off my books at the library front desk, having stopped at a bench outside to take my two pills.   I leave the library, after a quick peruse of the spirituality section, nothing jumping out at me.   I still have Father James Martin's book to torture myself with anyway.  Now it feels a good deal colder, but I will make the walk, and not bother to stop to eat anywhere, save some money.  I take the precaution of stopping into the wine shop, for a twelve dollar bottle of Loire Valley Pinot Noir, but without any pride and not much interest.  I try calling mom again, and she's left the phone off the hook, and maybe Mary is still there anyway.

And finally, after the walk, I climb the steps and in through the apartment door, to take off my coat and shoes, send a text to my aunt telling her that I made it to the clinic for antibiotics, try mom again, and then fall into a nap, disturbed by the pained cough, but hopefully better soon.  Ready for work tomorrow, for a Saturday night shift, closing, not really sure I'm up to it, I say, and I go off and sleep more deeply after reheating some beef stew I've made in the new Instapot my aunt has sent me for my birthday, a boon to my diet, particularly these days, needing the curative.


I'd mentioned my GGT liver enzyme level number to the young woman, the nurse practitioner.  Her alarm sticks with me.  How much do you drink a day?  Well, a bottle...  A bottle?  Yes, over time...

Antibiotic pills work better with no alcohol in the system, and I'm too tired and depressed to want any wine anyway.  As I've entered that "sick wolf to St. Francis" stage of life, when things are stripped away and the goodness of God comes shining, and when one realizes, yet again, but this time stronger, that life is not about happy things and entertainments and supposedly fun things that leave you with deeply mixed feelings afterward...

This morning, I wake, at a decent hour, and must occupy myself with little things until getting ready for work, later in the afternoon, around three.  I get up, have some green tea, some hot water detox tea, then a bowl of the chicken stew I made, reheated in a bowl in the toaster oven.  I write a little bit, consider my medications, make it down to the basement to put a load of colored laundry in.  It colors the day when you have to go to work later, the intensity of a Saturday night and there will be a large party back in the wine room at that inopportune hour of 7:30, fifteen people, leaving the old bartender  vulnerable between the bar and the main dining room...


Although I'd been talking to my therapist taking my tendency to retreat into my own meditative space, reading good things and grasping again, as younger people do, for the spiritual and spiritually meaningful things in life, I began to see that I was more right than wrong.  Sure, loneliness seems to suck sometimes, but this is what we have to face...


The relationship is with Jesus Christ, first, much more so than the church...  The first gives us so much, so creative...  Don't worry so much about the latter...  You could be your own church, I suppose, following the same...


After the nap, quick, not deep, with coughing's pains, and the shower, I see that time has passed.  I sit on the couch after the shower, sorting black tube socks for work.  Nike, UnderArmour, Adidas logo... They're pretty similar anyway.  The white elastic strands are curling now out of the Adidas, but they still hold up in shape, no holes.

Call mom, again, the phone is off the hook.

It had been all too easy, with all my failures, a strange steady poverty, the travels and cares, too easy to get into the wine and not want to come out.  I'm sure my energy took a toll.