How Did It Come To This?
to the tune of "ramble on"
I have a lot of sotto voce moments - well alright, hours then - these days when I look placidly, rather like a lizard, at the mess around me. Mess of my own creation, I will easily admit that. And what do I see? Piles and piles of music vinyls and piles and piles of music CDs. More the former than the latter because the CDs have a home in various racks and shelves. The vinyls though seem to have taken a philosophic “better out than in” attitude to their existence, goddamn disorderly urchins. Oh fuckthis! who am I kidding? They don’t have a mind of their own. This mess of plastic fantasia is entirely my doing. From decades of my life when I could tell you which album existed on which row of which cabinet I have slumped to this: I have ordered records that I already own! The frikkin’ ineptitude and messiness and forgetfulness of that man! See, it’s so messy that I often talk of myself in the third person now!!! This is no way for one to live. Oh! maybe it is but it is most decidedly no way to treat gorgeous repositories of music. Catalog, organise, stack and store; that is what I must before I double-purchase again.
How did I come to this?
A long-pending (entirely my laziness, nothing else) visit to my GP recently made what I already knew myself official; he’s a diabetic hypertensive. He’s? Alright, alright, I am. The heart, while not broken, is a cracked pot which can still function fairly well if given some tlc. The excessive bloody sweetness can be toned down as well. Statins and blood sugar control meds it is then. For about half a day after that consultation I brooded, not in sadness but in disappointment with myself that despite being well aware of where I was heading these last few years, I still went along. Then the usual curiosity and excitement for new things that squirrels and hopped up children seem to possess - as apparently do I - in superabundance took over. I want to see what these meds do for me. Or to me. Nobody’s paying me for it but I’ve turned me into a lab rat because I know I’ll be messing around with this. Following instructions, doing the done thing is an unsustainable activity for me.
My current state of health is hilariously ironic when one considers that for the most of my life I was very fit physically - short distance runner early on and then later as someone who used to go on 100-km cycle rides on Sunday mornings for fun (my mental fitness is a matter of debate for others). It seems to me the biggest reason for my decline is that somewhere along I stopped taking active interest in things. Sure, I was doing much that might have seemed interesting to others but for me it was all just force of habit. And that is a kind of laziness very dangerous to one’s well-being. What the conversation with my GP has done is that my keenness is aroused by this little hill of improving good health that I have to wind my way up. I have seen a lot of debilitating illness around me and I have been there caring for a number of those afflicted. Having taken care of people and having had them confide in me their anger and misery and frustration and fear, I have a reasonably well-developed understanding of the ill as well as of the caregiver. I’m an immensely proud man; I will not be a burden nor will I be beholden. Dependence is my second greatest fear. And for me to have a good shot at not succumbing to that, I don’t have a choice but to be as healthy as I can be.
Clearing up the big pile of mess that my records are is a good workout. And once that is done, I’ll have to engineer some other mess to sort out. Just so I continue to work out and be healthy.
p.s.: there’s a prevalent thought and practice that one doesn’t talk about one’s illness. I suspect that’s very particular of men. Well…fuck you! I won’t do what you tell me.
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I asked a dear friend - she’s my wife too - which glucometer to buy. She said she’ll send them over (she’s in a different city). She also said she has two. “Why the bloody hell do you have two?” “I don’t know but I do” These were my mother-in-law’s and it looks like I have earned them as my inheritance. So I have two of these things now. Excited child-man checks them. Fits in new battery, no problem. But WTF? No test strips?? For those of you who don’t know, test strips are vamps too lazy to do the work and expect you to drop your blood into their measly mouths for them to suck. Then they and their glucometer drac tell you how sweet it was. So, no test strips. Excited child turns grumpy old man but then buys bunch of blood-sucking vamp strips. Feeds them.
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I’ve heard this before and I heard it again: “oh! it’s no big deal; so many people are on these meds.” That a large number of people are on statins and/or blood sugar control medication is a tragedy and in most cases, an avoidable one. Not something to be normalised.
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I am listening to more of my records as a result of this slow cataloging I’m on. I might find a bunch to let go of. Both good things.
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I wonder if these vamp strips might overcome their laziness and revolt. If the readings are right, my blood has been getting less sweet over these last few weeks. Good for me, revolting for those suckers.
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