annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Cat Hat and That
That's my cat hat, the best hat for keeping your ears warm in an icy wind. It's not everyone's idea of appropriate clothing for someone like me - whatever that means. I know that when I wear it some people grin at me and say, "Great hat!" and others look at me as if I'm deliberately being ridiculous. Obviously I don't give a toss about the latter group - one of the benefits of getting older is you realise that no one is universally admired, not even Shakespeare or Patti Smith so def not me in my cat hat. Every time I wear it though, I forget after a while - I get distracted by something else - tonight it was a new (ish, maybe not brand new) moon over the sea and the fact that I couldn't get it in focus either without my glasses or through any part of the varifocal lenses so I tried each in turn several times then just ambled on with my pal M, having a coffee at the new place with outdoor seating right on the beach, knowing how lucky we are to be able to do such things, even though her daughter is in Australia and hasn't been seen since forever - M was due to visit in summer 2020 and that was after what had seemed like a massive separation - and one of my daughters is gone forever and the world is in chaos, beset by a pandemic and ruled by fools and bastards and worse, but here we are, best buddies, wrapped up warm, drinking delicious coffee, eating flapjacks, watching the sky darken and the moon gradually create a reflected path of sparkly light across the calm sea, directly to where we were sitting. Bloody lovely.
On the way home I stopped at the garage to buy a bag of smokeless fuel for the fire - no more coal - and the guy was trying not to smirk and I thought he was laughing at something I didn't know about - he'd been looking at his phone till I came in - then I went to the loo and fuck me, there I was in the mirror, in my cat hat, and that made me laugh so we were all good. I didn't get a good picture of the moon. You need a proper camera for that.
I went to therapy this morning, face to face in the end, though I didn't go to my usual cafe as sitting indoors in a small, crowded, low ceilinged room seemed to be a bit chancy. In therapy we discussed how hard I find it to keep a good perspective on the challenges I set myself. Up one end there's dossing about, eating loads, doing nothing. Up the other end is pushing yourself ever harder and harder, giving yourself a telling off for being lazy if you ever take a bit of time off, or fail to achieve a random task you've set yourself, even when walking 835 miles a year is a fucking good achievement for someone with a leg so dodgy I've had an MRI scan. [Yes I know I drifted about with the subject of that sentence, I'm allowed, it's mu blog.] I need to be in greater contact with the healthy adult perspective, which is easier said than done. Then I came out, didn't go to the cafe but bought a sandwich and walked miles on the beach then met M and walked more till I said my leg hurt (yay!) but by then I'd walked five miles, which is probably not a healthy choice as I'm tired and my leg hurts.
Tomorrow my car is being looked at - I've been driving Bloke's brand new Seat which does everything on its own, like the lights and the mirrors but where the fuck is the switch to turn the heater on when the window is steamed up? Eh? Tell me that? I keep forgetting to ask Bloke and just wipe the windscreen with the back of my glove then drive with the windows wide open till it all fucks off. I don't know if my car is mendable or dead. Tomorrow will tell.
Today I am grateful for a long chat with each of the kids. Son is finally getting over the Covid fatigue which has lasted three weeks and Daughter is appreciating Adrian Chiles on the New Year Taskmaster Special, as am I.
12:46 a.m. - 06.01.22
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