Piecing It Together

I just realized how long it's been since I've been in the home alone here. A long time! Michael just left to pick up an order at the hardware store and then get his daughters for the week. The only other time he's been gone somewhere is to take a short walk. Maybe that is why I haven't left yet for my weekly grocery trip, I am now alone briefly before the house is full. We have modified the kids' schedule with this and instead of going back and forth throughout the week, they do one full week with each parent.

Every week when I go to the grocery store things change. I already know this week's change (or at least I think I do), which is that almost everyone has their mouth covered. Usually I'm only there once a week, but we stopped there unexpectedly on Friday and I didn't plan to go in, but Michael wanted me to and almost everyone else had a face cover, I felt a bit negligent. It does make sense to me that it protects other people if you are asymptomatic.

The best info I've been getting on all this are the Cuomo brothers. Andrew Cuomo, governor of NY, whom I knew nothing about previously, and his brother the news anchor who is giving informative and honest firsthand accounts of the illness.

Michael woke up today with a start/wondering why his alarm didn't go off and then soon after abruptly came back. He thought it was Monday. Monday mornings he and I have been doing our own yoga class together, so I would have been up if it was Monday. Anyway, I tried to get him to do a different exercise with me, but he wanted to sit outside with some tea. So thanks to Pandora and Macklemore, I found the gumption to motivate myself. I told myself I'd do a half hour, but the hardest part is always starting and I kept going and even made a new exercise (to me) of chest arm pulses with light weights.

There is a public television special on Tuesday on the 1918 flu pandemic, I'm not sure if it is a rerun of a previous show or if they happened to pull that together recently. Either way I wouldn't have watched it previously but want to now. I was thinking about trying to get Michael to bike over with me and watch it at my dad's so we could get some exercise too.

Speaking of my dad. I found in my 2016 journal something I'd told at my dad's memorial service, but with more detail, a conversation I'd had with my dad in the car.

The nurse told my dad that his father really had a strong heart, it just kept going.

"Yeah but it's really hard on my mom," my dad replied. "Because it was," he said to me. "So maybe I killed him because later the hospital called to say you better get over here, and he died the next morning. He was in terrible pain."

"Was he on hospice or wasn't there hospice?" I asked.

"There wasn't any hospice. The doctor didn't want to make him a drug addict. I should have shot him, pardon my language, I'm still pissed off about that."

(This was 40 years later. I thought he meant he should have shot his father to put him out of his pain, but when I read it here it makes it sound like he should have shot the doctor.)
***************************************************************************************************************
A couple more gratitudes

#1- A friend who reached out on email and asked for some prayers - going thru a rough time - I'm grateful to be asked.

#2 - My brother said he got 8 good hours of sleep for the first time in a while.