Pinball

I believe this is Day 60 for me as a blogger, and my thoughts are as disorganized as the rest of me this morning.

I am realizing I would do better — and possibly be more coherent — if I could manage my blogging later in the day. I am not one of these people who jumps up in full Go mode in the ay-em. I have always done a lot of my writing — my fiction, my newspapering, my e-mailing, my newsletters — in the evening or even later. That probably would suit my creative sine wave better, but for the part where I am completely washed out by 8 p.m. and asleep by 9.

So I will slog on with my new morning ritual, losing focus and time as I stop to tend to animals, and morning ablutions, and household chores, and I will probably continue showing up late(r) for work. Time management was already not my strong suit, and this year it is crumbling away completely.

Monday I barely made it to work at all. I had all my regular pre-work routine, but then there was Real snow shoveling, for which I did not budget appropriately. And it was the first Monday of the month, which is my one chance every 30-ish days to recycle my TV. I got that TV from Montgomery Ward, and it lasted until sometime late last year. TVs and computer monitors are about the two things Recla Metals in Montrose won’t take, so my option, short of leaving it in this house, is the city’s electronics recycling, available exactly one day each month. For a price: it may have cost me as much to dispose of the TV as I paid for it in the first place.

Then I had my appointment with the naturopath, who told me my Eustachian tubes were completely locked and immobile. So now I am wandering around with mullein-garlic drops in my ears, and trying to fit time in my day for all the treatment recommendations. I did not, yesterday, manage to take my warm water-local honey-lemon juice, and I only gargled once. I have been taking probably two courses of antibiotics annually, only half of which work (on the exact same symptoms) — I need to not be doing that, so I’ll see if I can’t fit in more time for ear drops and warm beverages. The naturopath wants to boost my immunoglobulins (goblins?), and if it keeps me from getting sick every time I turn around, I’m with her.

After a brief interlude at work, I went to lunch, and then I had a request to help Boomers and Beyond, a senior social organization, with bookwork, and — well, not much paid work got done Monday. Boomers would like me to join their board, but it’s an organization for retired people, and as such, schedules everything at times that work for retired people. Which I am not.

Illness struck down Lynn at home and Kara at work (their symptoms aren’t the same as mine, so I’m not sure we can assign blame). Kara opted to stay home, no problem; when Lynn called the overworked and understaffed Crested Butte postmaster to say she wouldn’t be coming yesterday, he blew up at her. I want her — which she won’t do — to say to him in a calm voice, “When I come to Crested Butte, it makes for an 11-hour workday without a break of any sort. Your yelling does not make me feel like doing you any favors.” She is going up there out of the goodness of her heart, and not because it’s required.

If I were the CB postmaster and the Greater Postal System was not providing me with the help I desperately needed, I would post the name and phone number of the person who makes those decisions in my lobby where long lines of people with cell phones are stuck waiting for up to 40 minutes.

There has to be some procedure for determining the staffing levels of post offices, and there has to be some protocol for determining when population centers increase to the point where they deserve their own ZIP code and post office. Just as Lynn needs to advocate for herself, the guy in CB needs to become a lobbyist — loud and long — until he gets the tools he needs.

Which: I am still fulminating over “the” Hartford and their inability to produce what should be a basic form. In the latest iteration — while I have decided to move on to a better company, that requires a few steps I haven’t taken yet — I exchanged a series of e-mails last week with someone who once again tried to tell me the form that says I understand I can have this discount is somehow the same form as the request for the discount.

And when I pointed out the difference, this is what I got: a Monday e-mail headlined “Blank Letter” that says: “Your account is serviced by your Hartford agent, who will need to review and submit. We have forwarded to them on your behalf.” This is not one of Solomon’s lost mines; it should be a basic form. Should. And have I heard from my agent?

Has Na Ki’o arrived to help? Why, yes. And this is where I lose swaths of time gained in nothing more productive than a little commune with a purring cat. Which may not be good for time management, but I find it, like SpongeBob’s Krabby Patty, good for my soul.

Yesterday Oz and I managed our first walk to work this year, which is already nine days old. I should have made it my first bike ride to work in the afternoon, but I defaulted to the car. Garlic drops are not an instant cure.

So I was getting in some reading time, as I do while walking to work, and since I seem to be between issues of Colorado Central, I was trying to catch up on my massive AARP magazine backlog.

Here are some of my complaints about AARP (the magazine, not the overarching organization): it’s more celebrity-focused than I am at this phase of my life; it’s a magazine for older people, and yet the thin pages stick together and are hard to turn; and for a magazine that devotes gallons of ink to trying to encourage seniors to get up and moving, this was a handy tip I read yesterday: Don’t shovel snow; invest in heated sidewalks.

I am well aware that snow shoveling offers some health hazards. Monday reminded my back, in case I forgot. But heated sidewalks? What is the matter with AARP? I know climate change is some liberal nonsense invented by not-real scientists as a means of job security, but honestly. The magazine missed the low-hanging fruit: hire a neighbor kid. That makes it about commerce: it’s job creation. And it’s substantially cheaper (in every sense, including carbon reduction) than heated sidewalks. Honestly!

If the entire world would just listen to me, it would be a much better place. But it doesn’t, so it isn’t (sigh), and so onward I go, careening off whatever bumper I spin into next, my ears loaded with garlic and the reminder of a cat’s purr to keep me toasty. So drink your warm water with lemon juice and honey, everyone — and keep those immunogoblins at bay.