Wednesday, the second morning I have woken up in the spare room as I quarantine myself from my partner with my lousy cold. That’s me who has the lousy cold not my partner. My partner brings me a coffee when she hears I am moving about. I sip it gratefully and check my emails and social media. Nothing pressing there so I get up and have breakfast. The post man delivers the usual recycling but this morning there is a letter form a friend. So I am able to sip more coffee and have the pleasure of reading my letter. No matter how often I get a letter or reflect upon getting letters I always get the same sense of excitement and gratitude for the writers effort. I read my letter slowly and then I retreat to the sofa to fill up my journal and to get a grip on what I might do today. My initial thought is not much. I drift for a while having half thoughts when out of the blue the solicitor’s office rings me. Apparently the house clearers and other folk have got as far as they can and it is now up to me and my daughters to make our final visit to take what we want before everything else goes.
Without thought I commented to my partner if she fancied a trip to London tomorrow. I do not know where my head was at, having ignored two rather salient facts, one, I have a cold and feel below par so driving would be a pain, and two my partner is on annual leave and the last thing she wants to do is be going off to London to a dead persons house to rake over old belongings. She made this point very clearly. Neither was too chuffed so a period of displacement activity occurred. My partner went to the shop and I went to the Shed to write bad tempered poetry. My partner returned and came to the Shed where we able to be the reasonable rational adults we usually are. There will be no annual leave trip to London nor a “I’ve got a cold” one. There are more important things to be thinking about right now, including the health of my partners mother and my up coming Radiotherapy oncology appointment next Thursday. I also need to prepare myself for that and will travel to York on Monday to talk to my mentor. This process helps me contain all the various aspects of managing my situation. Its difficult to keep making the right decisions when the oncologist keeps telling you there are no right answers. I’m not inclined to live the rest of my life on the toss of a coin on the basis that any answer or decision will do, my personal universe does not work like that. There are always options and some are better than others, the problem is that sometimes the better options are not and vice versa. Hence the need for reflection and hearing the thoughts of those outside the situation.
My partner goes off to collect her brother to visit their mother and do the weekly check in with the carers. I continue to use my inks to colour in an old board. I’m not n the mood for the Shed and its artistic possibilities so I pack up adn move back into the house for a soup lunch. I am not long back on the sofa when a friend calls from the very rainy York. we of course talk weather as Brits are honour bound to do and then compare our domestic to do lists before moving on to how we are and what lays ahead of us. It was an unexpected call and prompted me to get myself moving again. Going to the gym or training is not a today wise idea so the least I could do is bring the bins in. That done I settle down and start to draft the blog and as I do so I discover that Alexa will play me Scheherazade, so I am able to recapture some of last nights delights from the concert.
Tonight I want a quiet night of watching football and the last in the Race Across the World series. A bit of a misnomer as the contestants are just racing across Canada, which appears to have really shit public transport system. Apart from that I shall read my book on Consciousness, a small bit at a time before downing my night meds and probably quarantining myself for one more night. The tax return, car insurance and the house clearance can all wait.
