!Daily life
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agk's diary
28 February 2023 @ 04:25 UTC
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written on GPD Win 1
in bed while Evy sleeps
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On work days a Casio F-91W wristwatch, draped over
the clock radio, beeps me awake at 0415. It cost
$15 at walmart, unscathed survived a month under
mud, water, snow when lost in the backyard. Battery
lasts 10 years and is replacable. It goes on my
wrist before I leave the house.
Shower, eggs & greens, maybe yoga, scrubs on, chant
a psalm because it's Lent, drive 100km to hospital
for work. On the drive I listen to Thomas Aquinas's
Summa Theologica on a busted old offline Android
discarded by Kirsa. Thanks Librivox & VLC.
I pass meds, do assessments, write progress notes,
report abuse, teach card games, ask for stuff from
the psychiatrist, case manager, rec therapist, etc,
educate, update report, count meds, and 13 hours
have passed, it's time to go home. If I get a 30
min lunch break, I read a couple paragraphs of
Agnes Heller's (1996) Ethics of Personality, then
nap. The watch beeps me awake.
My favorite card game to teach my teens is Oh Hell!
It's a bidding and trick-taking game with a trump
suit. Cards dealt change by one per hand. You can
play with a deck missing cards. I wrote rules for
Uno cards when there's no poker deck.
I had to stop using the 4G Nokia brick phone. It
never supported T-Mobile's VoLTE. There were still
3G and 2G base stations left til there weren't. I
carry the cheapest KaiOS flip phone I could find (a
$100 Alcatel Go) in my backpack. KaiOS sucks, but
is better than Android. I charge it twice a week,
call or text a few times a week.
On days off I wake when first daughter wakes, usu-
ally 0600 or 0700, sometimes 0800. I cook her porr-
idge of steel cut oats with bean or lentil & seed
(flax/sunflower) flour produced by coffee grinder
and gelatin powder. Once cooked, I add butter and
frozen fruit & spinach.
After breakfast she baths in one sink. I wash
dishes in the other. We wash diapers, hang them on
the line, read books aloud in the bathroom while
she poops, play with a ball, eat snacks, take out
compost, learn words (bike! wheel! boys! jacket!),
fix, clean, tidy. She whips through the house like
a tornado.
After nap we do errands on the bicycle. She rides,
content and regal, in a towed cart. Bikeshop for a
chain, post office to mail a letter, friend's house
to visit, grocery, playground, one of the mountains
to hike. The bypass blasted thru pasture's paved,
bridges completed, but closed to traffic. It's our
personal 4-lane bike highway. All we need's water,
an orange or two, cheerios in a mason jar.
After dinner and bath, radio playing bluegrass, she
sleeps on a sheepskin in a pack n play. I take down
dry laundry, fold, tidy kitchen, put away things,
walk with baby monitor receiver in my pocket (in
range). Before bed, work night or not, I read a few
pages of Woodward's 1951 Origins of the New South.
If Evy and I are both home, we give each other
breaks to nap, write, or think. We walk, bike, eat,
play, fold, talk, sometimes drive, sometimes rope
bondage when first daughter's asleep. Sundays,
church. Thursday toddler time at the library, Sat-
urday Farmer's market. Evy held 1st daughter, they
watched the shower of sparks as my bench grinder
ate through hardened steel.
Each Lenten day, a chanted psalm. "The sacrifice of
God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite
heart, O God, you will not despise."
