“St. Agnes’ Eve – Ah, bitter chill it was!
“The owl, for all
his feathers, was a-cold!”
(John Keats, you bright poetic meteor, blazing across the sky, you died way too young.)
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I hear it is chilly right now in my
old stomping grounds in NW Pennsylvania, although not reaching the degree of
the long, deep bitter cold spells of the 1960s and 70s. I miss bivouacking out in that sub-zero snow,
in the silent still air. Utter
stillness, complete frozen silence. The
Moon and stars sparkling in crystal-clear heavens.
Here, tonight, it is rather comfortable,
for the tropics, when sitting outside.
The air is relatively cooler and drier than the normal for the rest of
the year, and there is a gusty breeze that is refreshing. (It is overcast, and tomorrow will be cloudy
with a very small possibility of rain, which is rare for this time of year.) Still, mosquitoes are always a problem at
night, so I have a lit mosquito coil in front of me with a fan behind it,
blowing the coil’s fumes in my direction.
Sitting in swim trunks, I have also applied a bit of repellant to my
feet and shoulders, spots that often get bit.
An update on my health: The biopsy I had done on my prostate last
month provided rather good news. There are
no obvious signs of cancer. (Yet much of
the science on these prostate problems seem to be inexact and prone to flip-flops
in diagnoses, so my doctors and I still have a heads-up attitude and will
monitor the case closely and regularly.)
In other health news, my FMS (fibromyalgia)
is knocking me completely out right now.
Pain City. Cripple Creek. Undoubtably, my surgery and its down-time
contributed to this. Then I got horrible
leg cramps and pulled leg muscles a couple of weeks ago when walking my normal
routes, which put me further out of action and into a further downward FMS
spiral. I think the cramps might have
been caused by stopping my usual vitamin and mineral supplements, stopped by
order when taking specific antibiotics after surgery. I also think I over-did it, getting into the
Gung-Ho attitude and marching too fast for too many days in a row without any
rest days. (However, I refuse to accept
that “getting old” – soon to be 72 years old – has anything to do with
it!)
My primary FMS pain sites have been
predictable for 40 years. The first and foremost
is at T7 on my spine, right between my shoulder blades. In the last few days, it hurts so much there
that it is painful to take a deep breath.
The secondary FMS pain site is my tailbone/ sacrum area. But lately I’ve been having a new bad pain
more widely in my outer hips, which makes walking difficult. (I normally walk briskly, and no one ever
overtakes me, on foot, on the sidewalks; yet this week I’ve had young Thai men
walk past me, and yesterday two Thai women walked right by me easily!) This alarms me, since walking is my primary
way of life – and it always has been. Hobble
along, hobble along!
On the plus side, I’ve been reading
great stuff on Kindle, and I have been keeping up with seeing decent films in
the cinemas. Costing less than two bucks
a flick – senior rates here – I see films in matinee in almost empty
theaters. I love movies, and seeing them
on the big screen is amazing.
It’s getting late toward midnight,
and the mosquitoes are closing in on me despite my defenses. So, I will close now and post this.
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