2020 Diary: A Foreshadowing of Fall

8/15/2020: Woke up about 6 AM from a dream; spent some time writing it down and thinking about it. Prayers, Bible. Fiddling around on the computer. Came to realize I hadn’t written Diary for a few days; darn August.  While I was writing it up, a centipede (about 2 inches long) started crawling around the desk. Washed dishes, moved the couches. Put on ‘C. S. Lewis Through the Shadowlands’, then paused it to pray the Rosary. Then put on Shadowlands again. Now it is 9:11 AM (that time again!). When I finished, prayed rosary.  

What a day of doing nothing. I had a couple of ramen and old (from Tuesday) cabbage and taters. I watched ‘Journey to the West’. I posted a lot on NOT. I looked at Wikipedia articles on South Park. At 6:55 PM I went in and got a cup of soup. I gathered the dog toys into a pile in the back yard. I finished this week’s WWF challenge. My legs feel sore as heck today; I can barely move. I feel great urges for chicken, fried shrimp, chocolate, soda water. Amy posted the picture of John’s finished Uncle Silas for this year; it is sweet. Just now I looked up and it was 9:11 PM. Oh, boy. Bed at about 11:30 PM.

 

8/16/2020: Up at 6 PM, feeling very weak and stiff. Got grinding: said my morning prayers and Bible reading, washed dishes, took a shower and got dressed (shaving and rinsing mouth with peroxide), then participated in Mass over YouTube. 

Saw nobody had won TX Lotto yet, so that was a relief. Wrote 3 pages on American Prometheus (first time in over a month, maybe two). Saw tail end of Laurel and Hardy ‘ghost ship’ on TMC. Did my three posts on NOT for the day, and now it’s 10 AM.

Day went on kind of scanty. Andy brought me 3 boiled eggs and 2 bananas (one was half rotten) about 11 AM, then about 4 PM he brought me the last-thirds of a couple of Whataburgers and a scant handful of fries (with ketchup). About 7 PM I went in and got a couple of beef ramens. No tea.

Went through a whole 221 posts of the worst book covers (I’d had a surprising amount of the books, one time or another). Saw the tail-ends of Kung Fu Panda 2 and Shrek. Rosary. Watched some Season 7 ‘Adventure Time’, but it was a sad affair.

 

Been reading ‘Tom Sawyer’ on and off through the day and mean to finish it this time at long last. Never have before. John e-mailed me and said he has a PS2 that’s working that he might bring tomorrow. Just looked up, and blamed if it wasn’t 9:11 PM again. Caught up diary and mean to go on with TS.

 

8/17/2020: The best thing I can say is that at least August is more than halfway over. Woke up at 5 AM to the phantom three knocks (which happens now and then and might be the dogs scratching themselves against the wall and their ‘elbows’ hitting but might just as well be an auditory hallucination like the ‘Brer!’ that wakes me up sometimes). Checked outside, just to be sure. Prayers and Bible. Got dressed. The little (caterpillars? millipedes?) have started invading again. On with the circus.

Well, I swept house and posted on NOT and watched PM(?). At 9 AM I started my wash, boiled eggs, made egg salad, and had 2 corn dogs, a ramen with eggs and bread, and then another ramen for ‘breakfast’. This was spread over the morning till 10:30 AM. Reading TS. Went I went outside this morning it was overcast and kind of ‘fallish’, with a considerable drop of green dried leaves and a bit of a breeze. Wrote 3 more pages on Franklin. Changed the load at 10:10 AM. My legs are sore already from the little I’ve done so far. Now 10:33 AM.

I finished TS. At 11:46 AM John called me, and about ten minutes later he and Joey arrived. He set up the new, slimline PS2, and it worked fine. I couldn’t find Dragon Quest 8; it wasn’t where I had imagined it was, nor Kingdom Hearts or my memory cards. But the other games worked, so there was that. We visited a bit, which was nice, and he borrowed a few movies (Lon Chaney and so on). I asked Kameron if I might have let him hold the games; he thought maybe, but he wasn’t going to look for them for 2 minutes. As he needed a nap! Made cucumber salad. Finished wash. Spent most of the afternoon digging through stuff, but no go. Went back at 4 PM and made supper, fed pets, etc. At about 5:30 PM we had a deluging sudden rain, with lightning. It kept raining quite a while, but now at 8 PM it seems to be done. I played some Hobbit.

I’m sort of dreading going in, as 1) it is muddy, and 2) I don’t know how Susan will react to John’s visit. Need to do rosary. No internet connection right now.

Well, it wasn’t bad. I even got a part of a piece of cake out of it. Came in, played DQ8 until just before midnight, then prayed rosary. Then played until 2 AM (and Alexandria, in the game) and hit the hay.

 

8/18/2020: Up at 7:30 AM. Prayers, Bible, and got dressed. I mean to do 4 pages today.  And so I did. Spent most of the rest of the day playing DQ8, though, and just got to Ascantha (after dawdling) about 9 PM. A day of scarcely accounted ramen, then sausage taters and cabbage for supper. Hot all day, then cloudy and thundery at 8:30 PM. Health fading fast. Must do Rosary before I plotz completely for the day.

 

8/19/2020: Up about 6:30 AM. Did all my normal doings for the day, all squeezed in around enormous amounts of DQ8. Around lunchtime, Susan come in with me letter from SS, and says I must arrange a ride to San Antonio, which she doesn’t feel capable of. I contact Amy, and she says ‘tis slate that she’ll take me. That’s Sept. 22, NOT how I’d like to spend Bilbo’s Birthday. Wrote 3 pages. Played till 2 AM.

 

8/20/2020: Up about 7:30 AM. Prayers, Bible. NOT. Wrote one page, then let myself play DQ8 for most of the day. Rosary at 4:30 PM. Felt terrible and weak all day. Is it summer? Is it playing games too much? Let’s see if I can write 2 more pages (it’s now 10:30 PM). And to my relief, I did so. It’s now 11:30 PM. Dare I begin the fight in the Dark Ruins? No, not this late. Went to bed about 12.

 

8/21/20: Woke up about 5:30 AM; tried to get back to sleep but couldn’t, so up at 6 AM. Prayers (and today I could say all of them w/o reading, even the Acts, with just a little stumbling in the phrasing here and there) and Bible. I’m going to try to do those 4 pages, which will make 20. Whether John can get me $20 for the weekend is a moot point. TX Lotto still grows.

In the case of the matter, I did a page and a half, and played DQ8 most of the rest of the time. At 2 PM I started frying taters, which I didn’t finish until about 6 PM. But I took the first 3 batches in for S&A and fried mine last (having started to prepare the fish about 4:15 PM).  DQ8, washed up at 8 PM, them more DQ8 till almost midnight, with a break for rosary at 10 PM. I have opened the Baccarat Casino, and played roulette until my eyes were heavy and I hit the hay.

 

Notes

‘Uncle Silas’ is of course an old family tradition of making a stuffed Halloween figure to set on the porch; John is the maker par excellence, even crafting a mask or a head to top the figure. I wrote a short story, Brother Silas (published here on the Niche) based on the tradition.

Dragon Quest 8 is an old PS2 video game that was my go-to time waster. I found it infinitely fascinating; I don’t know how many times I brought up all the characters to Level 99, using different skill sets (axes, swords, magic, etc.) to see how it affected play, and sometimes just roaming the open countryside to build up levels and get treasure. I would spend hours playing the roulette wheel in the casino in Baccarat in order to buy the Gringham whip or liquid metal armor for the whole company. Finding every item and killing every type of enemy. Learning every spell and making every alchemy mix. It was all broadly the same, but with interesting variations.