Self-care checklist

Things I didn’t have time for yesterday, due to parenthood:

• the “All Ten” puzzle
• the NYT “Connections” puzzle
• the (NYT) Athletic “Connections: Sports Edition” puzzle

(I don’t “Wordle.”)

• showering
• reading
• posting

Once the children had started dropping off to sleep, I drafted a tedious account of the night’s culinary failure. But I couldn’t bring myself to post it. Even my banality has limits.

I slept well for a change. I awakened with time to spare, and now I’m posting first thing this morning. Or, rather, sixth thing. The routine must be maintained, or the ship goes to pieces.

That’s not true.

About those Internet puzzles. When you solve one, you want to solve another. Then another. Then you start looking around for other puzzles. It could go on indefinitely. When the urge is very strong, I give myself the equivalent of a cold shower: I take the “Agatha Christie Novels” quiz. And if that doesn’t cure me, I do a crossword. That usually tires me out.

Well, I must stop now. We just opened a bill for $888, for an emergency-room procedure that took 20 seconds and, due to insurance, should have cost $0. I must make a call.

A few minor observations

Karin does not have COVID-19.

On the other hand, we figured out that next year, my health insurance will cost another $200 every month.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve been going on long walks with the boy. Today’s walk was a little cold, a little misty. Samuel slept in his stroller.

Earlier, visiting his great-grandparents, he’d had plenty of excitment.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Homecomings is this month’s book by C.P. Snow. It’s the seventh of the Strangers and Brothers novels. It’s only the second book to treat the narrator’s home life in any detail.

A theme of Strangers and Brothers is that character, career, and domesticity are all linked in profound and unexpected ways. I’m not sure if the narrator’s rather drastically compartmentalized presentation is an oversight by Snow or a clever, ironical reinforcement of this theme.

Melting

Most definitely not snowed in; but the last two nights, walking has been perilous due to the ice. There are too few English terms for the different slicknesses I’ve encountered.

Today, though, we’ve had lightning flashes and thick rain. The snow mounds — formerly tall as houses, hard as marble — are greatly reduced.

(Will corpses be revealed, I wonder?)

If we’re lucky, the water won’t refreeze; the air will remain warm until the fluid has all trickled away. Meanwhile our yard is a slushy swamp, impassable in canvas shoes.

The male Sabby has sent me this beautiful thing.

The female has been nagging at me to continue applying, belatedly, for health insurance:

two Facebook messages;
one text message;
one email;
one e-card;
one postcard.

It’s so touching, I almost hate to do it.

August fragments

And suddenly I’m a lot busier because I’ve been hired to teach one more course, Introduction to Philosophy. This will be at Bethel College, my alma mater.

Soon I’ll have taught in the Ivy League, at a state college, and at a Christian liberal arts college. How’s that for job experience?

Once again, I’m starting to appear halfway respectable. I can see it in people’s faces. I regarded my tutoring job pretty seriously, but I guess for most people it wasn’t so impressive.

(I expect to keep on tutoring for a few hours each week.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

And now I wish to complain of my injuries. Last weekend, playing soccer, I suffered a full-body collision with someone who probably has health insurance. (I don’t.) For a couple of days I was sore all over and couldn’t bend one of my knees. This has improved.

Then yesterday I was in the church nursery, and the children were merciless. They assaulted me with medicine balls.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Today Ecuador lost to Spain, but my laptop wasn’t working, so I didn’t get to watch it. The game was held in Guayaquil: the Spaniards were too afraid to play in Quito. That’s our moral victory, I suppose.