i'm draggin' like a big ol' chain, because i got sick after my surgery. it was a combination of taking lots of meds, being cut into, having bad weather, being under a lot of pressure, being needed for rides and such, never really resting well upon my return, and then losing a night's sleep on finding out that my one remaining hearing aid had lost its battery charger. I had nothing for a few days! In a panic i retreated into a sore-throat flue kind of funk.

sometimes i come around a corner and feel much older. such a thing happens when they cut into my jaw and insert a tube so that it will delever electric signals to my brain and i can stay in the game, socially. all music, gone. all hearing of little things, gone. but the implants are picking up words and helping me understand them and this presumably will keep me in the game so i can hear what people say or are saying about me.

but oh the pain of hanging around with a sore jaw, and an earache related to the sore throat, and the blahs, real bad, that make me want to just roll over and go back to bed. every day three or four cups of coffee aren't enough. i ignore my main writing project not to mention all the others. i just don't feel well enough to tackle stuff.

puppy and i haven't been out for walk in weeks. it's been real cold and only now is warming up a little. puppy just pees and poops wherever he wants anyway so he's acting like it doesn't matter that much - but if i do go, it actually matters way more to me than to him. i need the fresh air and the exercise. I need to be alive again.

outside, things look grim. it's been real cold for a long time. leaves are soaked down on the ground as the last of the snow has melted on them; that snow lasted for over a week, which is very unusual. christmas will be warm, though, and that too is a little unusual. we went right past the solstice and now days are getting longer - that's as it should be.

then there's the ho-ho-ho. we have an extra kid this year. took in another foster kid, sister of the two who are already here. i see the two little girls, nine and eight, at the dining room table, making noise, being girls. there we go again. twelve and thirteen, and lots of the concerns of the younger generation. main one is, you gootta have a phone, and know how chargers work. don't know if these two, nine and eight, will actually have that chance while in our care. i've become against the whole business.

for reasons too numerous to explain. a seventeen-year-old will watch some media while we're driving around, because media is life and saves you from the discomfort of actually talking to someone. there may be something to see on the street but if so multitasking will take care of it because the media is like glued to the attention vortexx. i worry about the future of this country but so what, these kids are nowhere near the worst. but exactly what is it on media that's so attractive? nothing, really, not even worth finding out probably. it's just a placeholder, it holds their attention so they don't attract it from others. in a cocoon, they can make it to another day.