a poetry Christmas

T and I both gave each other (paper) books of poetry!  What a pleasant coincidence :-)

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T was up at 6am and proceeded to clean the kitchen from my cooking efforts yesterday, and then when I came down at 7am he started making breakfast for us, so he's back to a sort of normal :-)  We decided to dispense with our infection control procedures, both of us agreeing that I would've caught it by now, and he's probably not so infectious anymore.  Just a common cold.

So I made Christmas cocktails to go with his waffles.  Yum!

Then we opened presents by the tree -- I'd managed to put up and light the tree before we both became incapacitated, although we never got around to trimming the tree, the boxes of ornaments are still boxed, stacked on the dining table.

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Last night a tremendous storm came through shortly before midnight.  Heavy heavy rain and strong winds.  Our basement was fine, but the roof leaked a bit, and the wind tore our Buddhist flagpole off the house.  We'd already deflated our lawn ornaments as a precaution, so they wouldn't blow away.

I told T I'd spend the day here with him, so we might watch some TV together.  I'll probably head to the condo for one night tomorrow.

Meanwhile, still slowly investigating GarageBand and Ableton Live.  I learned this morning how to "play" guitar and other string instruments on my iPad.  I'm slowly investigating all the pieces of all the tools, in no rush, this is a long-term slow-burn project, if it takes me 5 years to put together my album that's fine.  But I want to continue working on it steadily.

Also read a bit more of Red Mars, I'm still finding it, this second time around, so rich, like reading cheesecake, I can barely eat a few bites at a time before I feel full.  That's it, re-reading the Mars Trilogy is my literary dessert, so delightful.  Could I possibly spend an entire hour reading it without a break?  That feels impossible, like jumping into an olympic-size pool of lime-flavored Jello without an oxygen tank.

felt like a long day

T made breakfast, I cooked lunch, T baked Christmas cookies & a chocolate cake, we had kabobs delivered for dinner.  So T is getting back to normal activity levels.  Then we had a TV date night like we'd been doing the past few Thursday nights (I know this is Friday night, though).  Caught up on Discovery and finished Mandalorian.

I stretched and foam rolled this morning, which seemed to have mixed results at first, foam rolling isn't always an instant fix for muscle, tendon, or joint pain.  After I cooked lunch I was feeling the back pain like "when will this ever end", ugh, WTF.  So then I went out to the hot tub and the hot jets felt great on my back.  After that I definitely felt better.  This evening it feels almost 100%; if I couldn't remember the past two weeks, I'd think I was fine.  It's been challenging trying to figure out what caused the pain, what exactly is hurting, and what to do other than rest.  Past experience tells me if I went to the doctor they'd give me Motrin & muscle relaxers, and tell me to rest.  Well, I already have Motrin & muscle relaxers on hand, and I've been resting.  It's slowly improving but with ups and downs.  Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up and it will be OK.

I'm pretty sure I'll head to the condo tomorrow for Time to Self regardless of my back, I need a break after the week of T being sick and me feeling crippled, worrying about catching possibly COVID-19 in my own damn house.  And the pets have been more demanding for some reason, breaking stuff daily.  Get me out of here for a night!

Can't wait to try some of T's chocolate cake in the morning -- I can't have that much chocolate before bed if I want to get much sleep.

Looks like we won't need to cancel the Monday maids visit, as T is feeling better now and I didn't catch it from him.