Catch Up

 

Today is the shortest day and it has come around very quickly.  It won't be long before we are into January and we start to notice the days drawing out a bit.  None of this is so important to me now that I don't go out to work but it is more of something that I just quietly notice.

I am a good sleeper and have a routine which has also changed since I stopped working.  I have become more of a night person and less of a morning person.  I go to bed a bit later than before a work day and I can, of course, get up at bit later.   

My usual getting up time is now between 7.30 am and 8.30 am.   I sleep through until about 5am and then turn over, breathe slowly and go back to sleep for a further two hours.

Routine is vital for good sleep and health and if on a rare occasion that I get up before 7am I will spend the time relaxing and reading.

My Samsung phone health app tells me when I was on screen and for how many hours, i.e. using my smart phone,  and I find this is a good guide for saying to myself, "hey, stop and do something else".    

My time at the moment is spent on exercise and mobility as I mentioned a few days ago and I am spending time with leg and arm exercises to assist me in getting up from the floor unaided.  My oldest brother who is 82 is joining me in this and doing the same at his house.  I have guided him to the videos to watch on You Tube which illustrate the muscle strength that is needed and the techniques involved in getting up from the floor. He rang me yesterday to discuss progress. 

I am pleased to say that I am now doing it with some ease although I would suggest that it is still not necessarily a pretty sight.  I have to work on the aesthetics of rising from the floor from all fours and looking more elegant in the process. 

I watched a programme on Netflix last night regarding pole dancing as a form of exercise and it is certainly a very good way to build core, leg and arm strength.   I did not feel particularly in tune with the crying and female empowerment aspect of the participants and teachers but simply on an exercise level I could see that it cannot be faulted.  Many of the exercises reminded me of the rope exercises we did in the  school gymanisium in the 1960s.  Strip Down, Rise Up, is the name of it on Netflix if you wish to see it. 

I later watched Fargo, the Coen Bros movie, streaming on Netflix at the moment.  It is a brilliant film of very dark humour and drama.  I am surprised I have not seen it before.   It is one of the best movies I have seen in a while and I highly recommend it if you like this kind of humour.   It is all in the timing and delivery.

Today is a fairly normal Sunday and my youngest brother has telephoned me to say come over this afternoon which is what I will do.  I haven't seen him or his wife for a few weeks.   

Christmas does not feature very much in my life nor that of my family.  It was always a low key affair when we were children.  Farm life is busy at all times of the year but especially apparent at Christmas for those with livestock and sugar beet haulage.  It was one day off from haulage and no days off from livestock.  I loved growing up on a farm and the Christmas dinner was always much fun then it would be outside for milking at 3pm to start before it got dark.  Milking would finish in the dark. My father would invariable be working on something in the workshop on a lorry even on Christmas Day.   I wrote a poem about farm life and the day my father died when I was on my recent Creative Writing course and drew attention to  the cows still having to be milked although we started a little bit later that day and the cows were getting very disgruntled at having to wait.   My poems about family farm life were always popular and the reaction of both professor and students illustrated very well what a different world farming is and a complete mystery to those not born into that world.  It is very sad that the Labour government hold it in such contempt.