St. Pat's Day...

 

It's the Irish holiday & we're more than halfway through the month.  It'd be nice if it was a warm & sunny, but it's not.   We're supposed to be cold tonight & tomorrow & then back to more Springish temps.  Speaking of the season, the equinox is 2 days out.  

I hope I make through this year without too much of a SAD issue.  I'm not sure I will.  It's been dreary a lot & the forecast has a lot of cloud cover & rain.   I'm really starting to feel it.  Little things & nothing are setting my nerves off & stressing me out.  We had a wifi blip yesterday & was corrected.  Still the resolved issue set my nerves on edge for hours.  I'll probably pick a new router up on Monday.  There was no call for my stress, yet there it was & it's still here a bit this morning.

The neighbor's put their house on the market back in November.  It bothered me then.  They'd been good (quiet) neighbors.  Well, it sold & they packed up their stuff in a U-haul yesterday.  If they come back, it'll probably be just to clean up or check the mail.  

Watching them pack up really bothered me.  It wasn't really any of my business, but still it got to me.  It was part apprehension of what the new neighbors will be like.  There's nothing I can do about that, except hope they're decent, quiet & nice to strays.  

I'm irritated with myself for being so nervy about everything.  But more, I found myself jealous of those neighbors.  Like that last dandelion puff last fall that sent it's white seeds sailing into the sky, they were going somewhere.   Maybe it wouldn't be far, maybe it wouldn't be better, but it'd be new.  It'd be moving.  That may be my biggest regret, I stopped & I never should have.

I think any moves I wanted to make or grand adventures have long passed.  I may have to accept this life, but I doubt I'll ever embrace it.  I've been here a long time & I know no one.  I could leave tomorrow & not miss anything outside my house.  Other than my roomie & cats, I have no attachments.  I have a problem with the word home.  I've lived many places, but I've never really felt like they were my place or home.  I doubt I will.

So, I'm annoyed at my nerves & my envy.  I detest that most the new things ahead of me will probably be mostly hardships, challenges & bad news.   I don't see good things on my horizon.  Maybe that's why so many people stop fearing death.  It just might be new adventure or at least a way out of this tedious place.

When the light comes back, I'll be able to put on a better face.  Still, it won't really change anything about me, this life or the way things are headed.  Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to be less of a downer, but I needed to put this down this morning.

Take care.

Cya...

MayDay...

 

Not much going this 1st day in May.  It's not super  sunny, but it's better  than yesterday.  There are  rain chances this week, so  I handled some yard work earlier.  

After seeing my doctor on Monday, I found out some news about his office last night.  The local paper reported his office was moving.  It  isn't relocating far from where he was, but still no one said a word about it on Monday.  I'm not  sure how I feel about this.  I'll  find out more  on Monday.

That's all for now, take care.

Cya...

A Nothing Thursday...

Nothing's happening for us today.  Which is a good thing.   The trip to Tulsa was a bit rough.  Yesterday was cooler, so sleeping was easy. 

The neighborhood is in flux.  The lady across the street  moved in with her daughter in April.  Slowly, they've been emptying her home.   There used to  be a lot of outdoor decor, including a large wall piece.  Now that's all gone.  The house has gone from being homey, to lacking any character.  I know it's the process, still it's odd.  It doesn't even feel like the same place.  I hope whoever gets it next will make decent neighbors.

That's about it for now, take care.

Cya..

A Wet Friday In May...

We had a bit of  severe weather last night.  It didn't impact us too much, but it has the power blipping.  This will be early & short.    We're  expecting more of the same this afternoon.  I'm not sure how bad it'll get, but at least I"ll have my post up.   Such as it is.

Tinkerbell, the sole survivor, is being a bit odd.  She's not eating much.  I can't tell if it's the weather getting warmer or if she's reacting to Rowan's passing.  The storms haven't helped much.  I'm sure she spent most of the night under my bed.  She hates thunder.

Life goes on.  At times, that can really suck.  It makes things fade.  I grew up moving a lot, I was in a different school almost every semester for quite a while.  We'd occasionally move back to where we started for a bit, but everyone knew we'd be on our way again soon.  It made life very transitory.  Things fade out of my life very quickly.  I guess it was a coping mechanism.  There's a lot of people I don't even remember from where we lived.  On some things, I can be very out of sight, out of mind.  Sometimes, I hate that.

For now the sky is clear.  I'll enjoy it while I can.  I need to go out for a it later.

Cya...

Maybe Not Upward...

But definitely onward, such is life.  As a life form our only choice, until the day we no longer have choices, is to go on.  Sometimes we find ourselves in places where we're not sure that moving onward is what we want.  We may not want anything at all, but standing still really is an option for long.  If we don't continue on, we  fall behind, until there is nothing left of us.

When I was younger I dealt with the temporary nature of things better & I think it's something I need to wrap my head around again for my own sake.  Where I live, my health, the animals in my life, as callous as it might sound, they're are all temporary things & at some point they won't be in my life.   I used to move constantly, at least annually, if not more often.  I remember thinking it wasn't a life to always be on the move.  But the fact of the matter is simple, I may not have had roots, but I was far more fortunate.  

Once you stay somewhere for a while, you get used to it like an old pair of shoes.  You nest & settle.  You tone down your wanderlust & accept the more mundane.  You tell yourself this is the better way & for a while it might even be so.  But at some point the urge to move will hit & you'll start to notice all the little things about life that bother you in your new permanent home. 

I've talked about the book/movie Up In The Air,  before.  I could've lived this man's life & been perfectly happy.  He only felt some remorse when others led him to believe he should want something else.  Something more like their sedentary life.  People should move, explore & grow, not settle in & grow roots & moss like some old tree. 

I miss travelling.  Unfortunately, as expensive as gas is these days & being on a fixed income, travel is a luxury I really just can't afford.   But I do miss it.  I miss sailing down the road, not really sure where I'd wind up.  Who would I meet?  Would it be a fun place?  Would there be good entertainment?   Good food?  Nice People?  If I have a regret, it's not that I'm HIV +, it's that I stopped moving.

Cya...

Reason Quo...

Finding myself without any articles I wish to explore & finding myself in a bit a debate yesterday has led to today's post.  A weight lifter & avid exercise enthusiast began telling everyone they had to get their heartbeats up to specific range for 30 minutes daily if they really wanted to be healthy.  

OK, I've heard this before & I started to ignore him.  However, he went on to say that anything less wasn't really exercise & that you might as well do nothing.  Then I called BS on the little banty rooster of a man.  He's like 5'5 or 165 cm.  The man is always sounding off about his fitness.  

I told him that if an overweight person who never moved unless necessary decided to get up & walk a circle around their home & then added a lap per day a week (considering that they added no more calories to their intake) that they would begin to lose weight.  Optimum exercise may be obtained where thia man said it was, but it's not the only way.   He had no idea that the heavier you are the more calories you expend doing anything.  Check out any decent calorie burn chart & they should ask for your weight.  According to the one at Health Status a person weighing 150 lbs/68 kg would burn 397 calories/hour of walking at 3 mph or 5.8 kph.   A person weighing 300 lbs/136 kg would burn 594 calories.  Then a person weighing 450 lbs/204 kg would burn 891 calories.

This man never took into consideration these people who outweighed him were hauling extra weight & not just during the exercise routine but every minute of the day.  The lightest person only burned 44% of the calories of the heaviest.  That's because they weren't carrying the extra weight.  Next time you wonder how hard is to be fat try adding some weight to your daily routine.  A fat suit is probably out of the question, but there are exercise weights for your wrists, ankles & waist.

If you're heavy, do as much as you can.  If it's just wiggling to start with, then by all means wiggle like a little kid stuck some place boring.  Then add more.  Eventually you'll be surprised with what all you can do.  Do what you can & if that doesn't suit someone else, that is their problem.

One of my favorites quotes lately is, "No matter how slow you're going, you're still lapping everyone on the couch."  Just remember motion is the key, keep moving.

Cya...

Off On Out Of Focus Tangents...

I don't always talk about being +, but I'll try to get back to it, at least a little while before I veer off into something else again.  There are many things I hate about being + & the one I'll try to zoom in on today is my lack of focus. I used to love to read & watch movies.  These are things that are difficult for me now, especially the reading.  It was nothing for me to read a couple of novels a week on top of all the stuff I had to cover for my classes while I was in college.  That is no longer the case.  I haven't read a novel in years.  I HATE THAT.  I can barely hold it together long enough to get through the ten to twenty pages of Naruto that gets released weekly.

I just can't focus.  I start reading & think I'm doing well.   I look down & I've read twenty some odd pages.  Then it hits me, I can't remember half of what I read because my mind was focused on how much my arm was cramping in that position or wondering what that sound was that I just heard.  I made all the way through college to a Ph.D. without ever really seriously studying for anything.  I could read it in a flash & have it in my memory long enough to take any test.  Those days are long gone.

If my mind wandering off isn't bad enough, my body wants to as well.  Sometimes, even when I feel like crap, I can barely sit still.  I get anxious, my legs cramp or I just find myself walking off for no reason to another room.  It makes watching a movie almost impossible.  Movies I do get through are on a little portable DVD player next to my computer.  That way I can "watch" the movie & continue typing or playing a game.  I watch some TV episodes on my computer & most of the time I use the fast forward to zip through because the show bored me.  If I go to the theater, I have to fight the urge just to give into the darkness & comfy reclining chair & not fall asleep.

These days my mind is about as clear as some fuzzy impressionistic painting.  I know there's a couple of boats on some water & it's either dawn or dusk, but nothing else.  Since I've been + I've been twitchy, fuzzy & jumpy.  My mind wanders down some precarious little path of a thousand plus twists & turns.  I get bored.   I get frustrated.  I just get completely disinterested.  My body wants to keep moving even though I usually don't have the stamina to keep going all that long.

Of all the things I've lost due to HIV, I think the one that pisses me off the most or at least always hits high on the top ten is the fact it robbed me.   I don't like the physical changes in appearance but I can deal with them.  But this little virus robbed me of my drive to read, to learn, to explore.  It took away my ability to just sit & listen to a cd or watch a movie in its entirety without getting up or fast-forwarding.

I'm not sure there's anything I can do about it, but I keep plodding along.  Maybe I'll come across a book that will hold my attention enough to read it through.  Sometimes I do still find a movie that I can watch, like Red or Despicable Me.  I guess I'll just have to wait & see.