An average Antigonos day begins about 7:30 in the morning, when I crawl or stagger from my bed. It usually takes me about 2 hours to sufficiently limber up to the point when all my joints stop screaming at me and my vertebrae stop feeling like a Slinky toy going downstairs (as long as I'm horizontal, the vertebrae are loose enough to only ache; once vertical, I feel them all compressing downward, due to the influence of gravity. I have several ruptured discs in my lumbar spine, with corresponding degenerative changes. Hell, I'm a nurse and I'm in my mid-60s. I've had back pain since I was in my first year in nursing school). After the usual ablutions, I have to check my blood sugar, and take my medications (type 2 diabetes, hypertension, congenital high cholesterol, gastric reflux, and an antidepressant because of all my other chronic conditions). Then, I eat breakfast while watching the news on Sky (British and world) and the BBC. When the antidepressant and my pain medication have kicked in, it's time to begin cleaning up yesterday's mess. And there is always a mess: the Holy One, Blessed Be He, has decreed that for giving my ultra-neat mother, z"l, many years of anguish with my slovenly habits, I should marry a slob and produce slob children. The children are all adults, but we still have a married daughter and husband living with us -- and, as of mid March, a further distraction:
My granddaughter, Shir. Yes, I've become a savta.
By this time, if I'm lucky, it is about 11 a.m. Now I rush to the bank, the shops, the market, etc. Fill the car with gas, get more credit in my E-Z Park device, in short, do everything else. And, not forget to arrange for some lunch to take to work. The life of a diabetic is obsessed with food; you can't skip meals or even delay them much or there will be an attack of hypoglycemia.
At 2 p.m. I'm at work. It isn't physically demanding work, in the main, but the pressure is steady and constant. Every woman who comes to the Women's Health Center I work for wants instant attention. I give instruction about injections, or the injections themselves, to women undergoing fertility treatment; do regular antenatal checks on women who have appointments with one of our high-risk specialists as well as give instruction to those diagnosed with gestational diabetes on how to check their blood sugar properly; and handle all those women who come to the walk-in "emergency" part of the clinic. (Rarely are these women actual emergencies, but nearly all of them are anxious and do not want to wait in line for the doctor. Some are downright crazy; some are physically aggressive)
When I get home at 7:30 p.m., my husband wants pampering and by the time I fix him a meal (we had an agreement that he'd eat his main meal during his working day, but he has long ago forgotten that), and my own, I fall into bed at about 11 p.m., having made the mess I'll have to clean up tomorrow. Let's not talk about laundry.
In between all this, I read my emails and a lot of internet journals and blogs. Often I say to myself, that I simply must reply to this or that article -- but never get around to it, and events usually overtake me long before I have the time to compose anything. Right now I badly need to revise my blogosphere list, as well as post links to my favorite commentators and news analyses. Ah well, I'll get to it when I retire, I say, much as Scarlett would think "tomorrow is another day". The only problem with this is that, although legally I reach retirement age in October, I doubt that, for financial reasons, I can stop working then.
I belong to a number of internet lists. Some are literary, dealing with the works of Dorothy Dunnett and Diana Gabaldon. The Dunnett lists have sub-lists for discussion of other topics, notably politics, and the Compuserve Writers' Forum actually is involved with much more than Diana's writing. I've made, over the years, some great friends on these lists; in 2000 I got to meet other Dunnettophiles in a Gathering in Edinburgh; next time I'm in NYC to visit my son I hope to meet some Gabaldonians.
My other interests include midwifery: two notable blogs are At Your Cervix and Navelgazing Midwife, although I find myself philosophically at odds with both, more or less. These bloggers probably have reservations about me, too. I can only point to my 40 years of experience in the field in defense. I also read some medical blogs written by both American and British doctors --it makes me sad to read what the Brits have to say about the NHS. When I was part of it in the mid-70s there was a lot of grousing about excessive politicization, but in Cambridge at least, it worked well, and there's nothing wrong with the concept.
The first internet list I ever belonged to (and still do) is Tachlis, which is a list devoted to giving practical answers to questions about all aspects of aliyah. "I'm coming to live in Israel in 4 years --should I bring my pressure cooker?" is one of the more meshuggeneh questions asked on the list, but many posters have real concerns that the various aliyah agencies can't, or won't answer. The list is very wide ranging.
The list of online magazines I read is long, tending to political analysis, particularly about Israel, but also about US and European politics, since those issues affect us eventually. My son was particularly concerned about what I thought of Obama's speech the day before yesterday. I'll deal with that in a separate post.
And now it's back to the @#$%^&* dishes....
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