2020 has been bad

 I have surgery tomorrow. It's going to suck. A lot. Six-inch incision, three layers of stitches 4-8 weeks of recovery and a lot of pain. Ugh.

My persistent philosphical argument

Part of working from home during a pandemic means watching a lot of television. Today I happened upon Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Season 5, Episode 22, "Painless." The whole story centers around the question of whether or not death by suicide is a fundamental human right. I still say it is.

The never-ending Florida

I'm still in Florida. It has been 56 days. I don't know when I'll be home. I'm starting to know my way around, even though I don't go out much. I know where the Goodwill next to the new tax office is and specifically, where to drop off donations. I know I prefer the Disston Plaza Publix to the Winn Dixie on 54th. I've made some friends here-- that feels surreal.

Metro Diner's breakfast is pretty great, even when delivered a little late via DoorDash. The Home Depot on 22nd Ave. is always too busy, even at 6:30 in the morning during a pandemic. Haines Rd. always seems to confuse me--something about running on the diagonal and halves of intersections that are blocks away from each other. Jacaranda trees in bloom are one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

I went to my first open-air laundromat today--having never known they existed before this. Gas at the Wawa south of Walgreen's at 38th and 34th was only $1.71 today, and I can't wrap my brain around that. I got my mom out of Freedom Square just before they got slammed with COVID-19 and 17 people died (so far). When I no longer needed navigation help to get there, I knew it was time to get Mom back to her own home as rehab wasn't doing much, anyway.

The FedEx store at 4th and 52nd was extremely busy when I was there today making copies. That surprised me, just as I've been surprised every time I headed out of the house that the roads were busy, busy, busy. If you didn't know there was a pandemic going on, you certainly wouldn't figure it out from Floridians' behavior.

The people at Haines Road Animal Hospital are incredibly helpful. I like the sign near the pharmacy drive-through.

I prefer the pizza from Fortunato's to any other I've had here. If I don't get to Mazzaro's Italian Market before I leave, that will be criminal--it's just down the street.

The people at Accord Home Medical Supply are just gems. Total Wine delivers and has helped me keep my sanity. I've learned what number most of the channels I watch are on Spectrum's service.

I want to go home.

I'm in Florida. I've been here for weeks. Since March 9, so, about a month. The weather is wonderful. Nothing else is.

I am stuck 1800 miles from home in the middle of a global pandemic, caring for an elderly parent by myself. I can't even go to the beach, which is something that would normally bring me calm.

Writing usually helps, but I don't have time.

The photo at left was taken the last night the beach was open for sunset gazing. A treasure.

A lesson learned and still in progress

This has not been an easy lesson along the way, but the dude has a point or two or ten. The last minute and 45 seconds nailed it.

Writing is a lost art

Maybe it's Twitter. Or Facebook. Or Instagram. Or Tumblr. Or TikTok. Nobody blogs anymore. People who have something to say have stopped writing and instead are limiting themselves to photographs and 280 characters. Maybe they all moved on to podcasting. Maybe people who liked to read are listening, instead, to podcasts and Audible books. Whatever the cause, the blogoshpere has become a barren cyber landscape of abandoned blogs.

I'm still here, sort of. In 2011, I felt like my blog was home to perhaps too many thoughts, and I was starting to ramble. I gave myself the assignment of joining Twitter as a means of forcing myself to express my thoughts in 140 characters or less. What I didn't know was that Twitter is a bizarre, addictive bubble of nonstop interaction that seems tailor-made for the ADHD brain. I love it there. I hate it there.

In 2020, I'm planning to spend more time here. Writing is much better for me than whatever it is Twitter does to my brain.

An observation

Over the last couple of weeks, I saw people posting lots of things online about what their decade looked like. Many talked about the milestone achievements and major life changes they had seen between 2009 and 2019. I couldn't come up with anything of note that I had done in the last decade, so I decided to read this blog from 2009 to present.

First observation: I was a better writer ten years ago.

Second observation: Given the odyssey of health related issues I was trying to navigate in 2009, I'm surprised things turned out reasonably well. Also, I inadvertently figured out the  answer to much of what was wrong when I started this blog--and I wrote about it a full two years before a doctor figured it out. The thing is, my memory issues were so severe at the time, that when I was finally correctly diagnosed with a B-12 deficiency, I had completely forgotten that this had been my own conclusion in early 2007. Mind blown. Trust your own instincts. Float your theories to the doctor when you have them. I now wonder how much pain and true suffering I could have avoided if I had simply mentioned it to a doctor that my overall symptoms appeared to be pernicious anemia.

So much wasted time and money trying to figure out the wrong things.