Tuesday 7 June 2022

The Cliffs of Fail



 I am waiting for a delivery by FedEx this morning, having received a good half dozen emails earlier revising the delivery date. I got up worried about this delivery today, as I have a card from the dentist’s office with an appointment for June 7th. Somehow this did not seem right, as I have just had a scheduled cleaning and have a repair booked for later this month. And when I called the office, I was correct in doubting it. So why do I have this card? If it is from last year, why does it say Tuesday? Sigh. The whole dentist scheduling thing has been weird this month. I arrived in the office last week to get the repair done, only to find the appointment booking was not long enough. So, I got a cancellation rescheduling for the next day.

On that day, JG was scheduled for a minor event at the hospital in the morning, and when I thought about it, the timing looked tight, and so I called and cancelled the dentist. Good thing I did, as I waited for JG in the parking lot of the hospital for six hours, and I would not have made the dentist. It turns out that the doctor who was seeing JG does not schedule. He brings his minor procedures in in the morning and does them as time permits between longer procedures. So JG lay on a hard mattress on a gurney all day without any food or drink and I hung out in the parking lot. Luckily I had water, a book and cigarettes enough to sustain me. (Yeah, don’t start, eh.)

We were both tired out for the next few days.

And tired about covers it for most days, lately. JG is not sleeping well (AC would sympathise) and is, consequently, not functioning at top form. I do not have that excuse, but am also more than a bit upset at how my head is behaving. I have had proper name aphasia for a long time, but it is getting worse. This morning I could not come up with ‘account’ as in an account number for billing. And that is some scary. Not only are there holes in the vocab, but the tricks I have always used to bridge the gaps are not working as well as they used to. Leaving me teetering on the edge, to continue the metaphor.

Being ‘old old’ is not a lot of fun. I recall my mother quoting, she said, her uncle as saying that he was as good a man as he ever was, but not for as long at a time. I can’t even say that, these days. The latest insult is that the fine woman who deals with my 80-year-old toenails glared at me at my last appointment and told me I had foot fungus. I am, she instructs, to soak my feet in vinegar and water. According to the aggravating guy to whom I am married, apple cider vinegar is the best kind. He googled it. And, yeah, it is certainly funny that I am now going to be walking around puffing apple cider vinegar scent. But if you were within reach, I would swat you anyway for laughing like a loon.

I just did a grammar and spelling check on this essay, as I figured I could not spell gurney correctly, for one thing. And the stupid, opinionated program told me to put a comma before several of my leading adverbs. Since I would not put a pause in if I were speaking, I do not think I need to put a comma into the written text. Apposition requires the comma, but not a simple leader in colloquial terms. Says I. And I am going to stick to it. We will not get started on the Oxford comma today. I will note, however, that I am not, repeat NOT, indenting my paragraphs. If Blogger does it for me, I am not responsible for its quirks.

I am about to go and look for a graphic to illustrate my stuttering brain. A fun job, in my opinion. And an hour or so later, after a fine playtime, the result heads off this post.

There still has not been a delivery.

As of mid afternoon, the van arrived with my parcel. Cheering.