When you wake to a new day, one never knows how that day will turn out to be. No matter how it begins, how it will end is always a puzzle and a mystery. Take my yesterday for example. I woke up at my usual hour of 5:30 AM, thanks to Cleo’s, my faithful cat’s reminder it was time to rise. She walks over my head to make her presence known. Cleo has only one thing on her mind; going outdoor.
I managed to find my socks and undershorts and shoes, put on my trousers and the new shirt my daughter Christina gave me. The shirt, the company of which Christina is a part, was new and just designed. That design on the back of the shirt is a work of art. It is a symbol of abstract design and colors Leonardo da Vinci, or Vincent van Gogh would be proud to create.
My bedroom has begun to look like a hospital ready-room and a junkyard all rolled into one. Besides my bed and clothing drawers, there is my computer, my printer and paraphernalia, which are parts of my internet connection. There are books of all kinds because I like to read. There are stacks of CDs; Opera, Jazz, Blues, Dixieland and Fifties popular singers. There’s more stuff but you must imagine the rest. It is crowded.
Cleo and I manage well enough. Shaving is a ritual completed quickly and then to breakfast of my oatmeal and fixings (apple bits, raisins, nuts and some milk and honey). Breakfast may be varied, now and then, for some sort of egg dish. I was ready to drive to my postal box two blocks away for my mail.
Carrying a small fifteen-inch oxygen cylinder in one hand so I could continue to breathe, and my keys and man-purse in the other, I sat in my car and turned the key. Nothing happened. There was no sound or reaction. The battery was deader than a door nail. After I fiddled with the controls, I was pretty sure the engine had no juice, so I called AAA for a jump start. Although the KIA was new when I bought it, four years had slipped by me without any warning. I had, mistakenly, supposed with a new car I could expect the battery to last forever.
Upper Lake’s Napa Auto Parts couldn’t help. They had no KIA batteries` or Tester in stock. I had to pick up a new battery in Lakeport. I drove to Lakeport and Napa fixed my KIA problem with a new battery quick as greased lightning.
On my way home I stopped at Bruno’s for a small apple pie, a watermelon and some avocados. Then I drove to my mail box for all the mail that had stacked up in three days. The avocados will help bring back my weight and my strength and the pie is for the sugar monster inside me. The weight of the shopping bags was a reminder I am not as strong as I once was. A loss of forty pounds is what happens when you can’t breathe. You lose your appetite. It is my only health problem and one I will soon remedy.
Bringing the groceries home was a challenge. The two bags of groceries, the watermelon and the gallon of lemonade, along with my canister of oxygen, my several letters and my man-purse, took four trips. The task had me breathing like a steam engine from the six trips it took me to carry them from the car to my house; quite a change from when I could breathe, when the same chore took five minutes and a single trip.
There was a time not long ago when my grip and arm strength was great enough to hold much heavier weights than a watermelon, or a gallon of lemonade, in one hand. No more. The watermelon and the gallon of lemonade each weighed ten or fifteen pounds each. Yet when I tried to carry each one from the back-seat of my car, up the four steps to my front porch and to the box at the front door, I failed miserably. Each of those two items were all I could manage, breathing like breath was going of style because each seemed to weigh weighed a hundred and fifty pounds each.
By the time the two bags of groceries, the lemonade and the watermelon, (and don’t forget the fifteen-inch-long oxygen cylinder container) to the front steps, it looked like I had been through a war. Even the half dozen letters I brought from the mail box had fallen all over the ground and the steps.
Eventually, I rounded up the stray critters and got everything into their place; refrigerator, food cupboard, and my office. It was evening and every problem had, at last, been solved. Tomorrow will, I hope, bring another exciting day.
To enjoy more of Gene’s writing and read his books, visit Gene’s website; http://genepaleno.com
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From the diary of someone with a temporary breathing problem - Lake County Record-Bee
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