“Remoted” – Day 438 (Friday)

Today, Friday, was a vacation day. It started like many of my vacation days, with a medical appointment. I woke up tired, because the night was interrupted by numerous nocturnal awakenings, The Canine Overlords (but mostly Moose) demanded to go outside at 12:30, 2:30, 4:00, and 5:30. It was glorious. Really.

The appointment was at 7:00 am, which required being up earlier than on a work day. Getting up early for fun vacation day plans is one thing, and getting up early for an annual physical after being awakened all through the night is a completely different feeling that isn’t fun.

Blood is usually drawn at the annual checkup, so the fasting ritual was observed with no breakfast and no coffee on a morning it would have been most helpful. It turned out the blood work done during the cardiology capers of a few months ago negated the need for bloodwork today, so it was wasted un-caffeinated suffering. But I got a tetanus shot, so that was exciting.

The plan was to meet with Mom after my physical to decorate the family graves in Fitchburg with flowers. First, I backtracked across town from the doctor’s office to the house with the idea of having coffee. Once home, coffee was ruled out because it would take too long to brew and prep the coffee for the road, and the way coffee instantly converts to pee would definitely result in the crisis situation of needing a toilet in the middle of the cemetery planting 45 minutes from home. The dogs were let outside, re-diapered, and I was on my way again. The absence of caffeine-induced alertness nearly caused a side-swipe lane change incident on the highway and the jolt of adrenaline was helpful.  

Mummu!

The planting was fun. Mom had bought purple and pink petunias and some cool white flowers. She was the art director and I was the muscle. Oddly, the lushest and densest grass of the whole place was growing up close to every headstone we were planting. It required extra effort to pull the grass out to plant the flowers on the graves of Mummu and her parents and several of her siblings.

There is no photographic evidence of our horticultural handiwork. Part of the plan was to take photos of the headstones for the ancestry records, but my phone chose this morning to go on strike. It’s been warning me for months that the storage is full, and I’ve been deleting apps and photos every day to squeak in a few more images, but today was the day of reckoning. It flat out refused to take a single image, even after deleting more photos and some of the 93 remaining apps. It may be time to start schlepping around the ten-ton Nikon to take any photos.

The vet’s office was visited for prescription food for Winston and the kibble rationing program can end. Back at home, the lack of morning caffeine caught up with me. Hard. By noon it was nap time on the couch, which consumed most of the afternoon. the day was largely unplugged with minimal social media and no email checked until after supper. In terms of time well spent, the morning was great, but the rest of the day was not necessarily well spent.