Crazy busy crazy week

I’ve been crazy busy this week, part of which flowed on from other recent events. All of which is on top of many other things I need, or want, to do. It’s that time of year, I guess.

I mowed my lawns on Tuesday, something I mentioned wanting to do in my post about mowing this past Saturday. It went better than the mowing expedition I talked about in that post, if for no other reason than the fact that I got it all done in one day.

After I was done, I posted about all this on my personal Facebook and included some of what I said in my blog post. On Facebook, I talked about hiring a service to take care of the front lawn (the only part the neighbours can see), and I also said, “Feeling like I might die—literally—while mowing isn’t something I want to continue to experience.” I also added:

I’ve known for a while now that this decision was rapidly approaching, and I knew it’d feel like defeat, and it does. I hate that my life is increasingly being dominated by thoughts about what I can’t do anymore, what I shouldn’t do, and what will soon be in one of those categories. When Nigel died, I said that I felt like it aged me ten years, and I’m beginning to think that was literally true.

Since I wrote that, I have, of course, been thinking about it. I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m giving up too easily, that my problem is more that I’m unfit than it is I’m getting older. That could also explain some of my ongoing issues with feeling tired. Put another way, I feel like maybe I haven’t done all I can do to improve my physical state, and that’s making things harder than they “should” be at my age.

On the other hand, as I also said this past Tuesday on Facebook,

When I was mowing the back lawn just now (after the battery was recharged), I thought, “If I was given months or a year to live, would I insist on mowing the lawn?” Obviously, the answer was, “hell no!” (though said more profanely…). I’m keenly aware that none of us knows when our days will run out, so to hell with stubbornly carrying on with mowing when it makes me feel so physically awful at least once every two weeks. I’ve got far better things to spend my time and energy on.

That’s definitely all true, too. What I said Saturday was exactly the crux of the issue: “This period in my aging has been confusing as hell, and trying to work out what I can or should do myself, and what I should pay others to do for me, has been exhausting.” In so very many ways, too.

At any rate, the main reason the mowing itself went better was that the weeds’ flower stalks were much shorter than a week and a half earlier. The two photos up top shows the some of those stalks, the left photo was right after I mowed part of the lawn. I also got the rest the edges in the back done while the mower battery recharged, and I should’ve done the edges out front, too, but, yeah, no. I skipped it this time which means I’ll have to do them next time. On the other hand, with summer weather seeming to settle in, it’s possible that the lawn will slow down and dry out now.

On Wednesday, I ran errands: I went to The Base and got a haircut, popped into The Warehouse to pick up a few things, and even got petrol on my way home. What I didn’t know until today, though, was that I did those three exact things exactly one year earlier, and Facebook “Memories” let me know that. I said recently on Facebook that those FB “Memories” show me how often my life repeats itself, though this time it was an almost exact match. Maybe we really are living inside a computer simulation or game?

There were two things that were different and notable—well, I think so, anyway. The first is that I also went to the supermarket, which I doubt I did last year because at the time I was trying a delivery service subscription. The other is that when I went to get petrol I got an extra two cents off per litre because I loaded my Super Gold Card into the App, which I use so I can pay at the pump, and not have to go into the shop. I began doing that in the Covid days, but now I enjoy the speed and convenience. Wednesday is a day when they offer a six cents per litre for anyone signed up for the scheme, and I got two cents per litre more.

On Wednesday, I paid at $2.527 per litre, which is US$5.71366169 per US gallon. Approximately. My discounts brought the cost down to around $2.48 per litre, and my saving amounted to a huge $4.98—which won’t buy a whole lot these days. Still, a penny saved is a penny earned, and all that.

Apart from that, I’ve been doing a lot of household chores over the past couple day (three loads of washing washed and dried today, among other routine stuff). I have a lot of other stuff to catch up on, including this blog among other things.

Right now, though, I have something else I want to get done. Stay tuned. [I was vaguely hinting, because I hadn't done it yet, but a new podcast episode is now available]