Back To Shore

Sleep | Finally another decent night of sleep. I clearly needed the weekend to catch up with that. I woke up early-ish, but stayed in bed to listen to my current “go-to-sleep” audio book a bit more attentively. I picked this one a bit randomly, because I was looking for other books narrated by Elizabeth Bower, the female lead of “The One Plus One” audio book, which I enjoyed a lot recently. I found a few, some more thrillers and such, but another series was labelled as “Cosy Crime” and sounded interesting enough, so I used one of my many audible credits for that. And then fell asleep quickly every night, so I had to restart or get back to chapter one or two a lot of times. So I thought I’d listen to some of it when I’m awake to get what it’s actually about, because from the glimpsed it sound like a interesting set of characters and all that. Interesting in such a way, that I bought the first book as ebook and will now read the story rather than listen to it, because this way I will at least be able to follow. It’s the first one in “The Dale Detectives” series. I will need to find another book to help me fall asleep. I could go back to Harry Potter, I stopped a bit in book 7, because it was getting so dark.

Wordle | I still enjoy playing this every morning. Even the few times I despair, because I’m stuck on one consonant in the right place, but am down to only one vowel and none of the other 16 letters I had tried worked. I pulled the dictionary from the shelf looking for clues. And got there in the end after all, so: Go Me!

Grief | Today I finally got around to filling out the form for officially requesting to update the ownership of the property in the court documents. While I saved the file to my computer I came across the folder with all the other information about strokes and therapy and nursing home and care and all that kind of paperwork from last year. Deleted some. Couldn’t bring myself to delete others yet. Was reminded of all the phone calls and inquiries and forms we filled out last year. Avalanche of memories and emotions and… ugh!

Streaming Services | On the one hand I thought I really should use “Neil Young vs Spotify” to leave the service as well, because there are quite a few good reasons to. On the other hand, ever since I bought my new car with a modern digital service (whatever you call), I was using it to listen to my music and podcast in the car, instead of hooking up my very old iPod. And I thought with all the crap going on I can’t be bothered to deal with switching services right now. Current crap of course, Bro2 with COVID – still doing okay – and I’m in an anxious worried state over the possibility that I might have caught it from him yesterday. Anyway, by pure chance I read someone on Twitter asking for Spotify alternatives, saw some of the replies, clicked a few links. Read a bit. Downloaded apps for the PC and my phone. Transferred some of my Spotify data like playlists. Checked if it all works in the car. It does. So… I’m good to go with Tidal and Pocket Caster for now. That was easy…

LEGO | I also continued building my ship in a bottle. It took much less time than I had expected.

As I mentioned just earlier today, I spent some time with my brothers this afternoon, who are back from a skiing trip. I don’t think we spent so much time together in the same room. 15 minutes. Maybe 20. At some point sitting across each other at a table, at other times they were walking around, unpacking… that kind of thing.

They also mentioned that Bro2 felt a bit off yesterday and went to bed earlier. He felt fine today. They also mentioned a negative test, so I didn’t worry. I wouldn’t have worried either way probably, because of this fucking stupid but oh so human “I know him, I’m related to him, I trust him, he won’t hurt (infect) me” thought, so many people fell prey to during this pandemic.

Turns out he did a test two or three days ago after a contact warning from the app. He did take another test a few hours after we sat together. Just to be / make sure. And of course that test turned out positive. Yes the line is thin etc. but there clearly is a line. Some last ditch hope the test might be faulty, because he left them in the car overnight with below freezing temperature, but I guess that would rather mean the test wouldn’t detect a positive case. Not be so fault that it shows a false positive, right? He’ll do another test tomorrow.

Either way: I masked up, dropped off some of my tests with Bro3, who lives next door to Bro2. He’s still testing negative even after having spend hours in the car with Bro2 over the past few days and sharing rooms / apartments and all before that. I then went out, stocked up on some more food essentials as I would have usually done. And snacks and sweets. Because I might not leave my apartment for the next few days. I also bought a bunch of rapid flow tests.

And when I say bunch, I mean a dozen or so. I still have many more in my cupboard, but I guess I will be testing myself at least once a day from tomorrow on. Maybe even twice. I did mention that I worry excessively sometimes? Well, yes, this is one of those times. FUCK!

Family | Typing this in my mum’s my / our dining room, waiting for my brothers to come back from their skiing trip to catch up and just spend some time. As the whole house wouldn’t be lived in for a week my Bro3 had turned down the central heating and it’s a bit chilly. I have no idea how to turn it back on and I don’t want to mess up any settings so I’m drinking lots of hot tea. I’m quite glad that we are in no real hurry to make decisions about the house and who might move in on the ground floor (me probably at some point). But I’m so not ready to think about that and start any kind of process for it. Let’s get life back to some kind of new normal when the worst of the pandemic has past. I almost wrote when the pandemic has past, but it won’t ever really, turning endemic and all that. We’ve all read about it.

Other people | When I say “we’ve all read” I obviously mean my social bubble which includes family, friends, neighbours, coworkers and the like. I still wonder from time to time how the people outside my bubble get their information about COVID and recommendations and regulations and all. And I’m not talking about the anti-vaxxers and their like. I have an idea where those people get their information. But the regular folks, who two years in still wear only cloth or surgical masks, ill-fitting in such a way that you could easily pour liquid down it from above . Wearing the masks below their nose. Still. And sometimes – not too often anymore thank God – I genuinely wonder: Do they really not know better? And why don’t they? [Yes I know, there is a whole big bag of social, economic etc reasons to unpack] Or do they just not care that much? Sometimes I wish I could live as seemingly carefree as those people do. Not worry so much! And I know I worry way more than I need to, but still. Re: COVID I have reason to worry and I envy those who don’t or do not have to.

Grief | (You didn’t think you’d get a grief free post these days, did you?) Though it’s more memories than grief possibly. I visited my mum’s neighbour and long-time friend of the family yesterday for a coffee. Because the weather was so bleak here the last few days I hardly got out the house / car, so yesterday with a bit of blue sky it was time to walk over and check if she’s home. She misses my mum as much as we all do, I think, so it’s nice to connect over that and to have one of the few remaining people from that generation to chat with.

Work | I worked overtime yesterday. Not much. But on a Friday! I usually don’t because I’m in need of my weekend. For the first time in a while I felt like I actually had accomplished something. Although I still feel bad too often about things which are out of my responsibility. Or at least not my responsibilitiy alone. I don’t want to go into details here, but…. yeah, I felt like I actually did my work properly yesterday. Which hasn’t been the case too often these past few weeks/months. So I’ll take it.

LEGO | As I see myself more or less housebound for a while longer and am a bit sick of TV and my books I’ve decided to start working on the two remaining sets I bought some time ago. I also finally broke down and ordered the world map a few minutes ago. I refrained from that for so long for two reasons: I thought I had wall space to put it. Yesterday I stood in my lobby and looked at the holes in the wall still left from the hooks and hangers I had replaced with a coat stand last year. Thought about with which to cover that. Looked and the wall and thought, that the world map might just fit in nicely.

The other reason was that I was worried that might not enjoy working only with tiny round or flat tiles for a whole big project. After the coffee mentioned above I drove to a toy store to buy a tiny set with mostly flat tiles to test if I’d be ok with doing that for a while. And I was.