i woke up sick. again. i had stayed home the day before due to the same illness and i would do the same this day. i had no fever and very unlike the COVID bout i had back in january, i felt fine other than sinus pressure, ear dulling, and a sore throat beyond the nonsequitur coughing that would leave me reeling on the edge of passing out. i still got up at the same time. i did not feel like sleeping in despite my illness. i let my supervisor and staff know that i would not be coming in to work.
in my last entry, i mentioned that these diary days often fell on days between interesting days, living in the shadow of them. this time proved different. the days surrounding it played out very much in the quotidian realm.
(i love the word “quotidian,” i think mainly for its irony of seeming exotic and esoteric yet meaning ordinary and everyday)
i let the dogs out for their first bathroom break of the day, said good morning to the cat, and had some breakfast: OJ and a bagel with cream cheese, toasted. then i did my puzzles from the NYT and some others. i checked my weather apps and scanned social media and my email. random tidbit: to have any semblance of an accurate picture of what the weather might do, you have to check at least two to three different weather apps that use different models. the best way to forecast precipitation involves doppler radar and direction of the systems and cells depicted therein. too many people complain or state with much certitude the forecast of only one app/model and often get it wrong. averaging between apps/models gives a better sense of what might happen. when coupled with the radar, they become a fairly accurate predictive set of tools. i settled in to watch some streaming stuff, starting with YouTube. i have gravitated more and more to that community forum recently. for some reason, fictional and more mainstream narratives do not hold me as they used to nor do they draw me. i do not crave the escape the represent as i have in the past. the desire to read has returned to me in part, to my interest queue but only marginally and with effort. my attention drifts more and more towards the ephemeral moments of everyday life and the feeling of taking the pulse of the discourse of society – at least in the US- through YouTube and other similar conduits.
for a while, i sat on the back porch in front of one of the open sliding screen doors to hear the pre-dawn sounds, smell the back yard, feel the air movements, and watch the light come up in the sky while the dogs did their thing. all part of my mostly usual first-of-day ritual.
my partner wandered out some time later and slowly got ready for work. i did log into my work email and calendar to make sure i would not miss something very important and ended up replying to and taking care of a few email exchanges. later, my boss would text me about an incident at work involving one of my staff. i called in to find out more and then texted the person directly. i found out that nothing too serious had happened but work had found a way to find me at home.
i ate lunch, spent some time with my partner when they came home for lunch. after they left, i proceeded to putter around the house as much as i could, wished i could work in the garden, and generally bided my time. i did harvest one root veggie to give it a try. i felt unsure of whether or not i liked it. by itself, i would have to say no, i did not, but eaten together with other food, i think it would taste fine.
thinking of lunch and my staying home sick AND the diary days surrounded by eventful days, at lunch the previous day my partner and i heard a jet fly low over the house. not unusual since we live in the flight/landing path of the local airport. but it did sound a little odd. a few moments later, another jet that sounded odd in the same way passed over. “hmm,” i thought and went outside to watch the sky. i wondered if the same jet was circling for some reason or something else was happening. soon the sound started again and a fighter plane shot by at very low altitude (just a few hundred feet above ground); then a fourth the same interval later. a squadron of fighters had flown by. we felt a bit scared at first, not knowing why fighter jets might be flying low over Muncie because of the powderkeg state of our government. i thought at first they were F-18s but, no, they ended up being F-16s flying out of the Fort Wayne Air National Guard base. apparently, that base had begun transitioning from A-10s to F-16s a couple of years ago. we had seen a training run. again, this did NOT happen on the diary day.
after lunch (on the diary day), i continued in the same vein as the morning: puttering, watching, social media, the dogs, etc. but i also dozed on the couch then turned my attention to dinner. usually, i would cook for us but this evening i would not have any company. my partner would be out late and so i would eat by my lonesome. i chose simple and indulgent: microwaved chicken nuggets and then some salsa and chips. i finished a certain sci-fi series i began binging the last few days and had a bit of a shock and the finale. i generally like such twists but this one worried me. had they jumped the shark? would they resolve this in a way that does not break canon or destroy the intrinsic properties of the show? i would have to stay tuned…
then The Partner came home and we talked about our day and evening apart along with a recent slightly disturbing family development. by then, the dark had come again, the grow lights on my indoor plants had timed out, and bedtime seemed imminent. except, i did not feel it. so, we watched another episode of a new show we had found together. it proved somewhat emotionally intense for me and soporific for my partner.