Life is a symphony, or not

I'm not very good at multi-tasking, and since I'm involved with several things at once just now and trying to cope with them all simultaneously, my brain tends to get frazzled and wants to fight back by shutting down altogether. "Stop the world, I want to get off!" it cries, and not much gets accomplished when that happens.

I like to read one book at a time, so naturally I am reading two at present. Over a year ago when Mrs. RWP and I were visiting our daughter's family in Alabama, I noticed Sam's copy of To Kill A Mockingbird and asked if I could borrow it if he was through with it. He was, and I did. I read it when it was first published nearly sixty years ago and I thought it would be interesting to re-visit it now that I am past eighty. I laid it aside in a drawer when we returned home and didn't find it again until last week. The other book I have begun, which was sent to me over a year ago as well by my blogger friend Snowbrush out in Oregon, is The Long Loneliness, the autobiography, as the cover states, of "the legendary Catholic Social Activist" Dorothy Day, who was born in 1897 and died in 1980.

Since Mockingbird is fiction and Loneliness is non-fiction, I am hoping to navigate them more or less simultaneously, although literally simultaneously would be something of an impossibility.

My daughter, who began chemotheraphy for breast cancer two weeks ago today, lost much of her hair yesterday. Fortunately, the wig she had ordered arrived in Friday's mail. We had made the 3-1/2 hour drive over on Thursday to keep her company while her husband was teaching a class in Mississippi and we returned to north Georgia on Saturday afternoon. We had a good visit although she has already begun to experience some side effects from the chemo. Her next treatment is a week from today and will continue every three weeks until July, at which time the oncologist will assess the situation. That is on our mind at all times.

I am scheduled to receive injections in both eyes on Wednesday (intra-vitreous injections, they're called) for the macular degeneration that was first diagnosed in 2017. These injections typically occur every four to six weeks. Our son, who has been transporting us to these treatments, is without a vehicle at the moment. A deer ran out of the woods and collided with his car recently and the repair shop had to order replacement parts from Japan to repair some of the damage said deer caused. If his car is not ready today or tomorrow, I will need to make other arrangements. I can drive myself when only one eye is being treated but not when both eyes are being treated. Mrs. RWP doesn't drive any more. A neighbor who had been very helpful and more than willing to assist underwent surgery for anal cancer recently and is now wearing a colostomy bag, so though her spirit is willing, her flesh is weak. I am hoping to hear from my son soon so that I can ask the doctor's office to treat one eye only this week and make a follow--up appointment for the other eye for next week. This novel way of solving my dilemma also means that I will be required to pay two co-payments to the doctor instead of one.

Our little dog has decided to go on a hunger strike of sorts and is eating far less than usual. We have tried giving her dry kibble, kibble with goat's milk, and kibble with pumpkin puree, but it is anyone's guess from one day to the next whether she will eat her food. She was a little on the pudgy side anyway, so losing two pounds of her fifteen in the past month may not be a bad thing, but one tends to worry about one's furry pets.

I don't want to sound like a whiner, a complainer, a lily-livered low-life of a specimen of humanity who doesn't realize that lots of other people have far worse things to deal with, but neither am I ready to sing tra-la-la with Pollyanna and accept whatever comes my way as being the best of all possible worlds. (I have no idea whether Pollyanna sang tra-la-la, but it sounds good, doesn't it?)

Another Dorothy, Dorothy Parker. wrote the following:

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

In case you are wondering why I would include those particular lines in this post, you can find out by reading this.