I am exhausted

I am exhausted from reading the newspapers (the few that still exist), watching TV and trying to finish this week’s New Yorker Magazine.

I care deeply about the state of our nation, about what some have described as the assault on its soul.

I need a break. I need something less enervating, less depressing … more … I don’t know.  More local …? More that I can do something about.

So, today I am taking a break from worrying about the Constitution, DACA, immigration in general, a crumbling infrastructure, the dumbing down of our educational system … ugh … too many globally existential worries to worry about.

I will worry instead about how I am going to lose enough weight so that the orthopedic surgeon, the great and renowned Seth Greenky MD (not to be confused with his twin brother who looks nothing like him, but who is also an orthopedic surgeon) can replace my right hip in such a way that I don’t have to try to sleep on my back for a month.

Talk about torture and crumbling infrastructure.

Closely related to that, I will worry about cheese.

I love cheese, especially blue cheese in all its forms: bleu, stilton, gorgonzola, etc., but cheese has lactose and I am lactose intolerant. Lactose looms on the horizon like the sleeping on my back thing.

It’s treacherous because even a small amount can wreak havoc on my digestive system and wreck my day, and if I am particularly unlucky, my night. Add to that, the new advice about weight control that says that dairy is important for weight loss.

You need some but calories do count and cheese is calorific. These weight loss people also recommend green things like kale.  I’m not particularly fond of kale. OK, I hate kale, unless its covered with bacon, but then anything covered with bacon is irresistible. Could this be the new epidemic? Hooked on bacon?  About the only bacon that is safe when weight is a concern is the word bacon itself. These worries dovetail in an insidious way.

I have anxiety about my basement needing organization and purging. Collecting is one thing, accumulating is another.

Since 99 percent of the accumulation there is not of my doing, worry is just about all I can do, except see refuge in the refrigerator where the kinds of comestibles that I can safely consume gets fewer each day. There are those that say exercise is a tonic that erases worry. I think of that as a kind of fake news.

Which leads me to why my garbage disposal, which gets very little use and keeps freezing up.  How can I possibly get that Allen wrench into the little port at the bottom of the unit to free it up with this crumbly hip set in a zaftig body?

On the positive side, I am thrilled to have been so prescient to have purchased thermal underclothing this year and to have at least one bullet proof, with respect to its ability to keep me warm, sweater. Said sweater was knit for my son, but it didn’t fit him. So, now, thankfully, it’s mine.

There is the book that I just finished. “Women in the Castle,” a page turner that rolls out not just an elegantly written historically set plot but a superb way to enliven the many faces of the female experience through the lives of three women. I start a lot of books and find that I lose interest quickly, so when one like this comes along, I make time to finish it. Of course the floors still need washing, but the book is finished.

I am learning how to use my Echo Dot, which can entertain or be an adjunct helper with its ever-growing skill sets. From setting an alarm to playing games, it’s a fancy-dancy Christmas present that doesn’t grow stale. Want to know how much Jabba the Hut weighs or listen to a podcast…Just ask Alexa.

Ask it, “Alexa, play a box of cats,” and smile.

And yes, I’ve read that it is always on, awaiting my command and maybe…and there are those who suspect this to be true, listening to what is going on. If this is so, Alexa or Jeff Bezos is listening to what is going on in my kitchen and may become so bored that she no longer answers to her commands.

I worry and worry is really not the appropriate word because it is far more than worry that consumes me.

There is knowledge and care and concern and affection rolled into this … about our cat, our 18-year-old sweet marmalade cat-boy, known as the “Keek”, who has lost most of his teeth and who is medicated every day for hyperthyroidism.

He’s lost half his weight in the past two years. I look at him with this fearful knowledge and give him the love he deserves.

Now, wait a minute.

Maybe the Keek carries an answer to one of my overriding worries. Maybe all of this concern about food and weight is something else. Hmmm. Maybe it’s my thyroid that’s the problem after all.

Yeah, I wish.