5/28/24

Tuesday, May 28, 2024

I fell asleep on the recliner while watching some program on the TV, or rather while Geri was watching the program.  I awoke around 10:45 to turn on the slow cooker and go to bed, but I had trouble sleeping after a couple of hours and moved to the LZB recliner in the bedroom and may have slept for a while, though I'm not sure.  I moved back to bed at some point but was unable to sleep so I got up and moved out to the TV room around 2:30.  Simple insomnia???  I wasn't particularly painful or otherwise stressed but was unable to sleep.  Nor was I particularly tired or sleepy, but rather wide awake.  Prednisone???  When Geri had a terrible reaction to Macrobid/Macrodantin back in 1995, she ended up hospitalized for 10 days with pneumonitis, on a cortisone drip, and then on prednisone at home.  She was so wound up by the steroids that she literally was up in the middle of the night relining our pantry shelves with new shelving paper.  It took her almost 13 months to recover from the interstitial pneumonitis.  A dreadful experience but the corticosteroids undoubtedly saved her life.  These are thoughts that come rushing back at me in the middle of the sleepless night.  How thankful we were that she had stopped smoking cigarettes the year before the adverse reaction to the Macrobid. . . .  At 3, I let Lilly out into the drizzly early morning darkness, and at 4, I finally ate my oatmeal and took my 20 mg. of prednisone, hoping that whatever stimulative effect the prednisone might have would be overmatched by the narcotizing effect of the oatmeal.  By 5, as the sun was about to rise at 5:16,  I dozed off but was up at 5:35 for a pit stop and the start of another day.  By 6:20, the sun was at an altitude of 10°, heading due south to its meridian, high noon altitude of 69° at 12:49 p.m. CDT.  As I write, it is located at 59° ENE,  shining through the TV room, kitchen, and dining room into the sunroom where it will reappear later from the West.

Prednisone, day 16 and all seems well except perhaps for my excess energy and for sure for my incredible appetite.  Food, more food, the less healthy the better!😨😡😟

I'm grateful for our life-giving sun.

Yesterday: Miracle of miracles, I picked up a paintbrush yesterday and applied a few strokes of a titanium white underpainting to canvas I started months ago (an attempt to copy a Klimt)  and then neglected during my dark days of PMR.  Maybe I can start painting again.  Also, I have been doing a lot of writing in my journal since I started up again.  I'm wondering if all this revivification is a bit of mania or euphoria attributable to prednisone.

IDF kills 2 Hamas officials in a Palestinian refugee camp for internally displaced persons at a cost o 45 dead civilians. 

 Netanyahu says it was 'a tragic accident (or mishap).

Mr. Netanyahu said in a speech to the Israeli Parliament that Israel tried to minimize civilian deaths by asking Gazans to evacuate parts of Rafah, but “despite our supreme effort not to harm uninvolved civilians, a tragic accident occurred to our regret last night.” He accused Hamas of hiding among the general population, saying, “For us, every uninvolved civilian who is hurt is a tragedy. For Hamas, it’s a strategy. That’s the whole difference.” . . . Multiple videos from the same location after the strike, verified by The Times, showed fires raging through the night as people frantically pulled bodies from the rubble, shouting in horror as they carried the charred remains out of the camp. In one video, a man held a headless child as fire engulfed a structure behind him. . . 

But at least 45 people were killed by the blast and subsequent fires, according to the Gaza health ministry, including 23 women, children and older people. The ministry said that 249 people were wounded. . .

Dr. Marwan al-Hams, who was at the Tal Al Sultan Health Center in Rafah where many of the casualties first arrived before being transferred to nearby field hospitals, said that of the killed and wounded he saw, a majority were women and children.

“Many of the dead bodies were severely burned, had amputated limbs and were torn to pieces,” he said. 

 Proportionality???  How much worse can life (and death) get for the Palestinian Gazans and for the standing of Israel in the world's eyes?  And what are we to make of Netanyahu's admission of 'a tragic mistake' following the official IDF's statement that the attack was a targeted strike on a Hamas compound using “precise munitions” and “precise intelligence"?  The IDF also said “There were many measures taken before the attack to minimize harm to non-involved people.”  Pissing on our shoes?  And, BTW, I am wondering whether the munitions for this strike were American-made and American-supplied or financed.  And why the widespread fires?  Were the munitions incendiaries?  If so, why?

Mohammad Al-Haila, 35, was headed to buy some goods from a local vendor when he saw a huge flash followed by successive booms. Then he saw the flames. . . “I saw flames rising, charred bodies, people running from everywhere and calls for help getting louder,” he said. “We were powerless to save them.”

Haila lost seven relatives in the attack. The oldest was 70 years old. Four were children.  “We were not able to identify them until this morning because of the charred bodies,” he said. “The faces were eroded, and the features were completely disappeared.”

Ahmed Al-Rahl, 30, still hears the screams.  “I didn't know what to do to help people as they burned,” he said. Around him there were “dismembered bodies, charred bodies, children without heads, bodies as if they had melted,” he said. 

Spoon River's green burial.  Fifty years ago I bought my first house at 2316 East Newberry Boulevard.  I  kept rose gardens there, as well as a little rock garden of succulents, hens and chicks, and another garden of other favorite flowers, the species of which I now can't remember.  I do remember however having the thought that I wished I could be buried there in the gardens, uncorrupted by embalming chemicals, with my body merging back into the earth and nourishing new plant life.  I remembered this as I read the epitaph of Conrad Siever.  And though I won't be buried in my former gardens on Newberry, I have purchased a spot in the green burial prairie at the historic Forest Home Cemetery on the south side.  No headstone or marker other than my name engraved with many others on a large boulder on the green space's perimeter.

Not in that wasted garden / Where bodies are drawn into grass

That feeds no flocks, and into evergreens/ That bear no fruit —

There where along the shaded walks / Vain sighs are heard, / And vainer dreams are dreamed / Of close communion with departed souls 

But here under the apple tree / I loved and watched and pruned / With gnarled hands / In the long, long years;

Here under the roots of this northern-spy

To move in the chemic change and circle of life,

Into the soil and into the flesh of the tree,

And into the living epitaphs

Of redder apples!

O frabjous day! walking with Rachel.  I took a walk down to the cul de sac with Rachel and ran into our next door neighbor Debbie returning from dropping off 2 Afghan girls at thier school.  She and John are sponsoring the girls' families.  We had a good chat about any number of things, including John's wondering whether he may be needing a walker.  He and I are the same age, born within months of each other.  I mentioned to Deb that he is a inspiration to me with his disciplined walks each day.  I enjoyed the walk down the street, as usual, and turned on my Merlin app when a heard a bird chirpping I ccouldn't identify.  It turned out to be a loud House Wren, which I've never spotted around our house or feeders.  I also heard the usual cardinals, robins, blue jays, and mourning doves, plus a red-eyed vireo, which I also have not sighted personally.  It's a spectacular morning, sunny, dry  (after a nigt rain), and sunny.

Robin's nest.  A robin has nested in the berry tree next to our garage driveway.  She gives Geri and Lilly hell when they come up to driveway after their walk.

At Last!  I spent time in the basement mixing paints and trying to do something with the Klimt knock-off I started months ago, all while listening to my Country Women playlist.  I can tell it won't turn out the way I had hoped but I'm not bothered; my credo is each canvas, like each batch of bread dough or soup, is just an experiment.  Some come out the way we hope; some do not.  All is well, all is well.  It was so pleasing simply to sit at my workbench, mixing the flesh tone and blue paints, brushing them on in layers, and then cleaning the 3 brushes I used.  I hope to start painting regularly again, after months away.  Fngers crossed.

Geri has an Italian natural sense of design, composition, and presentation not only with her food dishes but with everything she does. like these flowers she brought in from her gardens.