Actually saw Mrs. the Poet today

First things first, I put her phone on the charger to make sure I could call her in the morning. Since the charge cord was laying on the floor there’s no way she could plug it in herself. Also I lotioned up her legs which were very dry and rough. We also talked about how she’s eating and what, and how the protein bars were sitting on a table across the room from her bed, not where she could actually get to them to eat. I swear it’s like that woman didn’t want to come home, since she’s not doing the one thing that can get her home, eating.

Speaking of eating, grocery shopping this week only cost $44, so about half what we spent with Mrs. the Poet eating at home. And a big chunk of that was adult diapers to I don’t end up peeing my pants every day. Well the interesting thing is now that I don’t have to worry about not getting to the toilet in time, I usually manage to make it, so I end up wearing the same diaper for 2 days and then throwing it away because I wore it for 2 days, not because I used it. And I know that was a run-on sentence. I will strive to avoid those in the future. I usually buy frozen dinners or entrees and canned greens to make the meal more balanced.

So this is the month I pay Property taxes, but the problem is I still haven’t gotten all the tax bills. GISD was late setting their tax rates and I still haven’t gotten their bill. This means I’ll have trouble paying them by 1/31. But I’ll figure out a way.

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Still no word about Mrs. the Poet, and Other (Good) News

First post of 2023! As of midnight 2023-01-02 I have no news about Mrs. the Poet’s condition other than her positive C-19 test and a case of sniffles that I knew as of the last post. I think she left her phone on her nightstand out of reach, and then “forgot” to charge it later, because she didn’t answer Thursday and Friday, and it went straight to voicemail Saturday and Sunday.

But I should find out better today as we are planning to at least visit the nursing home even if we can’t see her. And I’m fading so it’s time to put this post to bed and me shortly after.

OK last update of 2022

Let’s get to the big one first: Mrs. the Poet has tested positive for COVID, and so has my youngest daughter, and I need to test again Saturday to make sure I didn’t catch it when I kissed Mrs. the Poet.

Another thing, I have had my last 2 dinners delivered because I got gift cards for Whataburger and I have the delivery app. Last night I had the patty melt because I love the taste of caramelized onions with the creamy pepper sauce on it, and a chocolate shake because I only needed one more thing to get double rewards.

Something I’m embarrassed to admit, I bought a male sex toy because Mrs. the Poet is halfway across the county in a different city. Well this sex toy didn’t work. It functions perfectly, but it just doesn’t do the thing for me. $58 after tax and shipping, plus another $4 for lube so it would function, and it doesn’t work, in fact it leaves me numb after a few minutes. One thing it does do is get me hard enough to get off without visual stimulation. So it wasn’t a total waste of money, and it did feel good on lower settings, just not “that good”.

The weather is much warmer now, currently 65°F with the same “feels like” temperature, they are forecasting a 40% chance of rain with a warm front passing through. Locally NYE is expected to have clear skies and warm weather. Another statement about Texas weather, if you don’t like it hang around for a few minutes, it’ll change. See you in 2023!

I survived so far

They’re expecting one more day of sub-freezing temperatures here in North Texas. It got down to 10°F locally with a wind chill of minus 8, spelled out for emphasis. I used to have cold weather gear that Mrs. the Poet gave away because “you never use it” even though the purpose of having warm clothes is to not need them but have them if you do need them! Her take was if you haven’t worn them in a month, get rid of them. Which I suppose is good for like summer clothes in the summer, but winter clothes are kept for emergencies of cold. Not as a fashion choice. Which for some reason didn’t get through to Mrs. the Poet.

They are having a minor emergency at the home, 8 patients and one employee testing positive for Trump’s virus. They’re still open for Christmas, but everybody has to stay masked up during visits. Which is going to make kissing Mrs. the Poet interesting to say the least. Plans are still up in the air right now.

And I haven’t been able to get anyone presents except for Alex. because everyone else jut wanted gift cards and I haven’t been out where I could get gift cards in at least a couple of weeks. Alex asked for and is getting books and a Nerf rifle, because I can order those from the jungle site and get them delivered to the house.

And that’s pretty much all I have to tell today.

It’s literally freezing here

As I sit here at 1500 the outside temperature is 16°F with the wind chill of -1. I have lived in North Texas since 1989 and it has never been this cold during the daytime while I lived here. The heat pump can’t keep up and it’s currently 66° in my office with the thermostat set at 68, but not dropping very much. And as I typed that at 1530 it went to a reading of 65° on my desk clock/thermometer.

I’m thinking I might wanna tape over the edges of my window to keep the outside air out and the inside air in, because I can feel the breeze from that window. But I can’t do that right now, because I’m not mobile enough and might fall through the window, which would be a disaster, letting all the cold air in.

And now it’s 1600 and I need to eat to keep me warm, so I’ll take my cold fingers to another room where I make hot food, and I’ll eat some hot food.

Just listening to some classic rock

And Neil Young came on with a line that speaks to me today, about the current political situation:

“This much madness is too much sadness.”

And that’s pretty much all I have to say for today, except I hope you can avoid the sadness.

Went to celebrate Mrs.’s the Poet’s Birthday today

Just got back from celebrating Mrs. the Poet’s birthday with her at the nursing home. There’s a very good Japanese restaurant literally a block from the nursing home, so we got take-out Ramen, restaurant style. Now this is nothing like those blocks of fried noodles you get from the grocery store, these noodles were fresh, not preserved, and there were chunks of vegetables and meat and spices (mine were curry noodles, with big thick square noodles like strips of lasagna noodles), not just noodles in weak broth. We also had egg rolls, and my youngest brought a Quadruple Chocolate cake. This was the most food Mrs. the Poet has eaten in a single sitting since before Father’s Day.

Mrs. the Poet wanted me to be sure to tell you she turned 69 today, because there was some question about her living to celebrate today. Well, she made it. And it looks like she’s going to live to celebrate a few more birthdays. She’s wearing regular clothes again and is out of the hospital gown she had been wearing, she had on her kitties in space T-shirt and a pair of olive stretch pants. Not as comfortable as PJs, but much cozier than a hospital gown. Her legs are warmer and her feet feel better now, because her legs are warmer. She still needs to get her legs rubbed down with lotion, but we were out of lotion, and the long pants made using lotion on her legs tricky at best even if we had some lotion to use on her. Next trip I’m bringing a big bottle of lotion for her legs. Because they need it.

Well, not a whole lot more I can say, except to talk about the receptionist at the massage place maybe sweet on me, as she got a few minutes of time on my neck and shoulders before the regular tech could get started, and rubbed my glutes for a minute, and tried to give me an entire bag of Reese’s Cup miniatures, of which I only took one because I’m not greedy and already have too much candy at home. I should mention the receptionist is just my type, skinny and flat as an ironing board. She’s also much younger than I am, but at this point she could be 50 and still be much younger than my 64 years. But I think this woman is in her early 40s, so 20-25 years younger than me. I don’t think she’s poly, though.

Well, I rambled on enough, time to put this post to bed.

It’s my Blogiversary

Fourteen years ago today I mirrored my first post on this site. I forget how many links or even what kind of wreck was most common that day, and I had a bunch of trouble because this site and MySpace used different flavors of HTML for links and neither one had it automated back then. Now WordPress uses another flavor of HTML from the one I used back then, and MySpace is where you go to listen to new music and not where people meet to discuss whatever. And also, today is the 59th anniversary of JFK getting shot. And also the same anniversary of the first episode of Doctor Who.

Also, I did not win either the Powerball or TX Lotto yesterday, so my financial status is still p’, as in too impoverished to buy a vowel.

Well, poop!

Mrs. the Poet is settling in at her new address nicely, but it’s just a little too far for frequent trips by ride-share, and DART is still dodgy from driver shortages. And I haven’t had a hug in 2 weeks and few and far between before that. I’m not going to spend this post feeling sorry for myself, but dangit it’s hard not to. I’m facing the same dilemma as most people on fixed incomes, I have to keep cutting things out of the budget but soon I won’t have anything unessential to cut.

The massage budget is gone, the transportation budget is down to almost nothing, food budget is up but the costs of food is up more, utilities budget is overdrawn, and the entertainment budget is basically the internet budget.

Needless to say the build budget for the Sprint-T is also wiped out pretty much for the forseeable future.

Coming up on my blogiversary

Hard to believe I’m coming up on the 14th anniversary of this blog on this site. The first edition of the blog was on an adult dating site, because I was running Linux and that was about the only blog site that didn’t crash or crash my computer. Then I migrated to MySpace because it also didn’t crash my computer, but after a few months it would block people from reading it because I linked to a bunch of external articles because I was covering media treatment of bike wrecks and there were like anywhere from 6 to 20 wrecks reported in the media, and they thought I was pushing Spam. I was getting 1k to 1400 readers a day then so blocking my blog was cutting their nose off to spite their faces. But anywho, I started posting here I think on the 22nd of November 2008, I’ll have to look it up because I accidentally did my first blog post here on the anniversary of JFK’s assassination. Not on purpose, but there were a lot of coincidences between that and me.

I was treated in the same ER as they treated JFK after he was shot. He died in the ER, I died before I was taken to the ER and came back before they took me. JFK never spoke again after he was shot in the head, I apparently never shut up even when I was unconscious. I gave the wrong address for my home, giving the one where I lived while I was in high school 25 years prior, my parent’s phone number from several years before we moved to Dallas, and a whole bunch more information that while correct was not current, and none of it was for the state I was living in. I was in the middle of telling the joke about getting hit by a truck because the bus had stopped running at that time of night when I regained consciousness, and was able to talk seriously. I think that because I was dead when they first got to me they weren’t expecting me to make sense when I talked.

Anywho, there were lots of crossover things between my life and JFK.