3/6/2026

 Friday, March 6, 2026

2025 Geri's new knee "manipulation"

2025  Trump announced a pause on some tariffs on both Canada and Mexico until April 2. Mexico's president Sheinbaum stated that Mexico will collaborate with the United States on migration and security issues, including controlling cross-border fentanyl smuggling.

In bed at 9:35, awake and up from the LZB at 3:53, awakened by my low glucose alarm on my phone.  The Libre3Plus sensor & app on my phone tell me I've had 3 low glucose events in the last 7 days, 4 in the last 90, but there have been many more than that, most, though not all, are at night and may be caused by sleeping on the same side as the sensor and are fixed by taking a cough drop.  I have no explanation for the few I get during daytime hours. 37/56/36  118/65/56  105  Another dense fog advisory, through only till 9 a.m.  At about 6:30 a.m., I became seriously nauseous and dizzy.  I returned to the LZB in my bedroom 

Morning meds at 10:30 a.m.  Trulicity injection at12:30 p.m.  

Two years ago, I wrote:

Why keep a journal?  I ask myself this question fairly often and I've come up with some answers over the last 19 months during which I have been doing it.  I wonder about it again this morning, recovering from yesterday's bladder surgery, having survived (of course) the post-anesthesia shakes, the catheter pains, and the indignities of peeing in my pants, then in a nightshirt, and then in a towel.  Now I have successfully managed to pee twice without pre-leaking, or more accurately, pre-gushing, and with less burning and stinging, so I'm feeling temporarily at least on top of the world, almost a bit euphoric..  But why write about it?  My usual answers have been either (1) birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, writers gotta write, or (2) this journal is just a poor substitute for my daily exchange of texts with my sister.  I became interested again in the question while reading a feature story in the NYTimes about Tom Meschery, a former Golden State Warrior All-Star basketball player and, later in life, an accomplished poet and mystery novelist.  He is 85 years old and has done most of his writing after he reached age 60.  I knew it was odd but I kept on writing my morning texts to Kitty even after she died, not pretending that she was still alive, but rather because of the daily habit I had developed of writing down some of the things on my mind.  I sent my last text to her on March 21, 2022, almost 3 weeks after she had died.   I wrote my first journal/blog entry on Saturday, July 30, 2022, 4 months later.  Kitty effect?  Writer's gotta write?  Or Flannery O'Connor's "I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again."  Some of the stuff I write in this journal is pretty incoherent, even inconsistent.  Seeing it in black and white on a page drives the point home, whereas if those thoughts just stay bouncing around in my head, I'm apt to forget how confused or incoherent I am about so many things.

I receive benefits from journaling.  For one thing, I've followed the recommendations of others to remind myself at least once each day of what I am grateful for and who I am grateful to, even when I'm feeling crappy or blah, everything and everyone from my wife, my mother, my sister to the feeling of wearing shoes on pavement instead of boots on sand and dirt, from my liberal arts education to the Veterans Administration.  Also, I get to blow off steam, which I suspect relieves some stress when I am so often disgusted by what happens (and doesn't happen) in our capitalist, imperialist, intrinsically corrupt government, in our economy, and in our culture.  It provides occasions to recall and reflect on my personal history. events, people, and conditions that influenced the course of my life and the shaping of my character.  It probably helps me to understand myself better than I would without journaling, to process negative thoughts and emotions, like sadness and anger.  It helps me to keep an eye on my cognitive and physical declines, and my 'executive functioning.'  Am I still able to type on my laptop's keyboard?  With the fingers of both hands or hunting and pecking?  Am I misplacing things?  Forgetting stuff?  It is not as if this journal is a complete record of everything that happens in my life, quite the opposite.  But it provides a place to record whether there is anything troubling that is bothering me, or making me wonder.  Additionally, just doing the typing, choosing the words and composing the sentences provides some evidence that I am still compos mentis to some significant extent.

Journaling also provides a benefit of which I too seldom take advantage: trying to understand things from the point of view of 'the other guy,' to 'walk a mile in his shoes.'  I do some of this mentally but too seldom try to write it up.  I'll try to do this more often.

Lastly (for now at least), journaling provides a record of how bad my memory is.  So often I describe a movie we have watched or something that I have read and when I look at it months later, I have no memory of it whatsoever.  Maybe it's more a record of how little attention I pay to what's on the TV or what I'm reading.  In any case, my long-term memory is often pretty good while the short and medium-term memory leaves a lot to be desired.😰

Nineteen months of daily journaling, 66 entries in 2024, 365 in 2023, 165 in 2022 = 596 days

I've stopped making gratitude notes each day, which is a mistake. 

We watched The Last Train Station last night, about the last year of Leo Tolstoy's life, and his conflict with his wife over his plan togive away the copyright to his literary works.  Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirren, both superb.  Paul Giammatti his usual excellent professional as a nasty religious zealot.