I am getting old enough that I am feeling it. Spring has come, and the work along with it, and I am feeling it every day. But we are getting lots done, and are looking forward to a good year this time, and hope to really reap the benefits to all this work. We got a couple of the raised beds done in the herb garden for Missus today, and some lovely flowers on the other side of the house. But you know that after a warm spring, and the decision to plant these flowers, sensitive to frost, we are now headed for maybe four nights of frost this week. So, I learned how to quickly protect them from the cold as best as could be done, and we went out and did it. Looks like the coverings need to stay on most of the week. We are doing all we can to pull up some flowers before it’s time to push them up instead. Well, that’s how it feels some days.
All joking aside, as I have matured, I have searched high and low to find the pinnacle of sophistication for a man of my age, the right nightcap, or evening drink before bed that would help me relax and fall off to sleep. I have finally found it, and I must say, it is the perfect blend of relief from pain, and relaxation. It is Pepto Bismal. Yes, Pepto is my dismal companion before I lay me down to sleep. A dose, and I am cleared up of antacid, and digestive pains that cause restless sleep and irritation.
I snore. I have been told it is pretty bad. I know it is because I have woke myself up with my own snoring before. I have also been told that it is a sign of sleep apnea, and that it is a risk to my health. I have been told that the danger is that I might stop breathing and forget to start again, then die in my sleep, and to avoid that, I would have to use a CPAP. I don’t see how sounding like Dearth Vader would help me or my companion sleep any better, what with the noises, and the hoses and the machine all irritating me so much that I would have to have an extra does of Pepto to drown myself in. But what really, really chaps my hide is that the medical profession wants to sell me one of these machines and take away my hope of dying in my sleep! No sir! Set the money aside to help pay for my funeral, and let’s call it quits!
But really, I am only forty-eight now. And if it feels this rough rolling up to the summit, I dread what things will feel like when I have rolled down the other side for a while. I try to take it a day at a time, and to live every moment in it. I realize that the lucky ones are already dead and don’t worry about who is going to go next, or when they are going to go. No matter who we are, ten minutes after we are gone it is all the same as if it were ten thousand years or ten billion later. The only important part is the here and the now, and that is where I intend to stay for as long as I can, pain be damned.
Now, before I go for the night, and get to bed, I should remind you that I have no proper medical diagnosis on anything. Just speculation. Apart from the diagnosis on my mortality. That one is a sure bet, and the doctors can’t tell me how long I have got left. They could only say that it is probably fewer than fifty years. Fifty years or fifty minutes, the only important thing is making them happy, because as long as I do, the time itself really doesn’t matter.
Goodnight.
KJB
Fairview, Preston, Idaho