Monday 12/18/23
Saturday was my late sister Kerrin's birthday. She would have been forty-three. Of course I called my mom to see how she was doing. She hadn't been feeling well the night before and she was full-blown sick by Saturday with what has turned out to be COVID, which my sister Kara also has. She had been scheduled to babysit the kids on Saturday so obviously that didn't happen. The kids help pick her up and give her a needed boost so I was very much hoping she'd be able to see them on Kerrin's birthday. I won't be doing book dedications anymore with future books, but I will be dedicating a book to my sister. She had a hard life and I hope she has peace now. I feel like I let her down by not helping her more. I don't know what I could have done but I still feel like I let her down by not finding a way to show her I loved her as much as I could.
I have two cousins who live within about a mile of me--they are sisters who live in the same building near the Garden (where I was Friday at the Star Market cashing in a jar of coins). I haven't seen one of them in nearly four years and the other in almost five-and-a-half. I've invited the former to various things--Christmas concerts and the like. I haven't heard back from her in all of that time. She struggles with some things, but I don't know if that's what it is or something else. She was very good to me when I had the pneumonia in 2016 and there isn't a day that I'm not grateful for that given how sick I was. If a Zulu warrior is saying how sick they were seven years ago, you know that was some sickness. Seeing that thermometer go to 106 degrees was rather worrisome. Her sister sent me a Christmas card which I received yesterday. I then texted her thanking her. She wished me a merry Christmas, I did the same, and we probably won't say anything to each other--I've pretty much given up--until next Christmas, if that. She's my sister Kerrin's age. Smart, pretty, never married, always single.
I got a lot of peppers at Haymarket on Friday. For some reason, peppers have been hard to come by there. The week before there were only green peppers, and they were waxy and close to rotten. I tried to eat one and spit it out and then just threw them away. Green peppers, as a general rule, are usually the diciest at Haymarket, followed by yellow. You really want the red--they're typically the best and freshest--followed by the orange.
Yesterday marked 2716 days, or 388 weeks, without a drink. On both Saturday and Sunday I walked three miles, did 100 push-ups, and did five circuits in the Monument. That was the first time I'd done five circuits in the Monument on back-to-back days since early 2020 when it shut down--for years, as it were--because of COVID. Since its reopening, it's shut down again, I've been at the City Hall stairs often, and when I go to Charlestown I've tended to do five sets one day, three another. A lot of days of three sets. Five is the good base number you want to have, though. The Monument is closed today and tomorrow, but I'll be back later this week.
