What Is Time?

 I haven't blogged since New Year's Day. Where does time go?

I'm not sleeping well. I wouldn't call it insomnia exactly, but my sleep schedule has devolved so that I sleep a bit from after dinner until ten or midnight, then I'm up all night and I sleep again from six until 8. Sometimes I get a bit of a nap in the late morning or early afternoon. Sometimes not. 

I'm still in pain daily from my tailbone and there has been other goings on, healthwise. I'm exhausted from it and I haven't wanted to do very much. Even with cushions, sitting hurts so I haven't done any sewing. The limited time I spend sitting is either painting/art journaling or having meals with Dave. Sitting in the car is worse than sitting in a chair so I haven't gone out very much.  I've spent a lot of time lying down with my hips propped to keep the pressure off my tailbone. I've watched too much Netflix and done not much else. 

Despite all that, it does feel like things are getting better albeit very slowly. I can bend over and pick things up off the ground now, whereas just after that happened, it was too painful to do that and I had to ask for Dave's help to do things like unload the bottom rack of the dishwasher or to put away things in the lower drawers in the kitchen or pick up anything that I accidentally dropped. I'm able to do those things now as long as I'm careful.

But enough about my ass.

It's a dark and wintry morning. There was supposedly snow in the night but there is no evidence of it this morning. There may be more snow later in the day. 

We spent the week divided between our place and Kelly and Kevin's place. We took Chance with us and he mixed in with Olive and Lester for the week. That meant that Gray Kitty had the run of the place and I think it did him some good. Now that Chance is back, Gray Kitty has gone back to his same three rooms and limited outdoor time. One interesting fact is that since he hasn't had access to the outdoors, he didn't put on as much weight as he normally does in the winter. I was telling Dave that he must have been really supplementing his diet with what he was hunting in our old neighborhood. He would readily hunt and eat lizards, birds and mice and I think that made up a big part of his diet as the weather changed. 

We are still getting to know this place, so Gray Kitty is not allowed out unsupervised. (I would prefer that he be an entirely indoor cat while we're out here because there are many coyotes around and they do not hesitate to kill and eat cats and small dogs.) Luckily we have the small patio with the pond/river/water feature in it and he goes out there with Dave. We also have a larger completely enclosed courtyard--the walls are about six feet high and Gray Kitty is too old and arthritic to make it over walls that high. He can go out there, too.

I don't know why I'm writing about these weird little trivialities that govern our lives at the moment. Probably because I don't have much else to write about.

What else has been going on?

Last weekend before we went to Kelly and Kevin's, the electricity went out here. Turns out it was the fault of one of our neighbors and it was a quick and fairly easy fix by the electric company, but while it was out, absolutely nothing in the house worked. I couldn't even use the stove to boil water for a cup of coffee because the stovetop is electric. After talking with Dave about how frustrating that is, he got online and ordered a gas burner that runs on canisters (he's been wanting one for awhile) and we also got a couple of large storage batteries that can be recharged using solar panels and which will run the house at some reduced capacity for most of a day. (The house has solar but it doesn't power the place directly, which seems like a waste to me.)

I also spent some time updating our first aid kit for the house and making a fairly comprehensive first aid kit for the car. I hate to be out and about and need something, some hydrocortisone cream or diphenhydramine tablets or a bandage even, and not have it at hand. I think the last time I gave this much thought was when I has commuting about 90-120 minutes a day to and from nursing school and would sometimes arrive to school having forgotten something. The campus was too remote to easily go out and buy anything quickly and there was no bookstore or convenience store or cafe around anyway.  I started keeping backups of everything in the car.