Thursday is payday where I work. The direct deposit record, without getting too specific, is for X dollars.
This afternoon, plumbers told my wife and I that they recommend replacing the toilet in my bathroom due to nearly 25 years of hard water deposits that have built up within it. Cost of replacement: about 2/3 of X.
Easy come...
Too often the days go by, one after the other, with hardly any difference from one to the next. Work from 8:30 to about noon, then pass some time with BB downstairs at the kitchen table, and back upstairs around 1:00 for another four hours.
The weather and the season don't help. The daylight hours are cold and the nighttime hours colder, and since the end of daylight time a month ago, the nighttime begins before 5:00 p.m.
So I make my way downstairs by the light of the shiny brass chandelier which is missing a few working bulbs. Finding replacement bulbs isn't the problem; getting into the position to change them is. Although we have a large metal ladder, reaching the bulbs would require just that, a long reach across empty space some fifteen or twenty feet above the ceramic tile floor. At 66, I don't feel lucky.
As good as life is, with more than enough money and stable good health, I fear the rut of every day the same.
And at our age, meals don't take long. Fifteen minutes after sitting down, the one-egg omelet with cheese and the two strips of bacon on the side are eaten, and I'm giving thought to how long to wait before reaching for the cookies/brownies/sweets. Less than an hour later, BB is going upstairs and I'm deciding whether to watch TV from the sofa or choose from the library of YouTube videos.
It wasn't that long ago that we'd watch something together, but since her health has slipped, she watches her cozy mysteries from Acorn or Britbox alone during the afternoon while I work. Upstairs, she has a 32-inch curved monitor for her games and her jigsaw puzzles. Along about 8:00 or 8:30, she shuts it down and plays with Nora in the bedroom before climbing into bed with a paperback or a Kindle book on her iPad.
That's too early to bed for me. Besides, there's so much interesting stuff out there to watch and to read.
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Early this afternoon, after we'd finished a meal consisting of leftovers from yesterday's Christmas feast, BB and I were sitting at the kitchen table.
The venetian blinds were tilted to keep out the most direct of the bright afternoon sunlight, but there was still plenty of light.
(I was alone and had been for some time when I began to write. Midway through the second paragraph, Good Queen Swirly made a light thud as she hopped off the sofa, then approached me. I set aside the keyboard and placed a blanket on my lap. But before she could jump up there, the hall light blinked on and BB came downstairs. The cat went into the kitchen for crunchies and BB talked to me for a minute. Then she went back upstairs and shut off the light.)
BB said, "This is what it'll be like when you retire."
I said, "Provided our health holds out."
Earlier, we had gotten milk and eggs (since when did eggs shoot up to $5.00 a dozen?!) and a couple of other items at Wegmans, chatting with the cashier, Noelle -- no, she wasn't born on Christmas. Then, less than a mile up the road, we stopped at Wild Birds Unlimited for still more bird seed, plus peanuts for the squirrels and blue jays.
(At which point Swirly re-appeared and jumped into my lap, settling down for an hour and fifteen minutes of rest as I petted her.)
It's what everyone wants, isn't it? Romantic love with someone who knows who you are and appreciates you for it instead of reacting with ill-disguised contempt. Add to that sufficient money to help you sleep at night, and to be able to live comfortably. A healthy portfolio and enough insurance to protect it.
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Other tasks: removing months and months of catalogs and magazines from a floor rack in the kitchen, organizing them, and asking BB whether she wants to keep any of them. She didn't.
Installing a window shade in the laundry room. I got it straight, but neglected to drill the holes in places where the brackets could actually align. Got it right the 2nd time.
Learned more about Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve, just south of Tabby's Place. In 2022 I happened across several locations containing naturally-occurring wildflowers, and it's hard to believe I'm going to have that same kind of luck next year just driving to and from TP. I would have to work harder to find undiscovered areas with wildflowers I haven't seen before, and I don't see me doing that.
Note to self: an end-of-year post with highlights of those new-found fields of uncultivated wildflowers. Point Pleasant across from the Fire Company; Quakertown, NJ; that field just off County Road 519; the little bridge crossing Swabia Creek. Lots of rural places I haven't yet been, though, and maybe only a little out of the way.
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What we did Xmas Eve:
On the edge of a bomb cyclone, we got plenty of rain while areas farther north and west got hit with bounteous snow, and they're welcome to it. All of us have a follow-up of severe cold.
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