TIME AND MERCY IS OUT OF REACH

There seems to be a lot of death around. I know it is partly the time of year and partly the age in life when it becomes a more frequent occurrence, but it certainly does add to the overall cold. We lost an M from our fabulous Brooklyn reading group. EW, her best friend and the running buddy of her misspent New York City youth staid by her side for the last six or eight months, going to doctor's appointments, holding with her until the bitter end. One-of-the-Bs and I had a sad chat about it last night, but we did remember fondly an excellent meeting wherein we discussed The Radetzky March, only earlier this year. Listening to R.I.S.E, Oh Death.

'O, Death. O, Death.
Won't you spare me over 'til another year?

Well, what is this that I can't see
With ice cold hands takin' hold of me

And I was checking in on FB as another friend's mother is in the immediate process of moving on. This M and his mother were quite close and his sorrow is palpable.

Kind of hard to know what another beer might do. I've had two in 4.5 hours, so it doesn't seem as if I am headed for any kind of drunken territory. It strikes me now that I haven't really had enough water today. Where did today go, anyway?

Last night, young R's alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. (Do. Not. Ask. Me. Why.). He slept through it until 5:30. My bedroom door is generally left a bit ajar for the nocturnal comings and goings of felines so closing it seemed the quickest way to stop the noise agony. There were none in the bedroom at the time of the door shutting, so, of course, there were scratchings to get in where the food and reliable heat source were. That was kind of a no win situation, but I just didn't have the heart or energy to deal with the alarm clock, which could have well ended with me ripping it out of the wall and just destroying it in frustration that I couldn't figure out how to reliably turn it off. I've been through it with this kind of alarm clock and deeply sleeping male before.

At any rate, this led to, yes! again! sleeping rather later than I would like. Other than getting a life, I had no particularly pressing things to accomplish or places to go. The universe cooperated to the extent of bestowing a sunny, if cold, day on us. My mental list of things that need to be done is long and one of them is to write down all the things I should be doing. Well, that one didn't happen. I did return a book to the library and get an impossible-to-read-in-two weeks pile of things I had ordered. I bought cat food (which, I am reminded, is still in the boot of Lil' Carl), wandered around Trader Joe's fending off the delectable holiday cookies and candies that screamed to be bought and consumed (I did buy dark chocolate fleur-de-sel caramels ... only ate one), scrambled around in the basement (and found another box of Vera scarves before the mold got them), and lurched through the day not feeling accomplished nor satisfied.

Yet, to paraphrase our Scarlett, tomorrow is another day ...

In other news, I finished my the Christmas mix for TLB and am making progress on the RT selects mix.

And it is killing me that the title should be "Time and mercy ARE out of reach ..." Now I feel a little better.