Sol III date: 18 October 2015       Stardate: 93399.58 

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I am still trapped in my residence and in my own head without a means of escape as I have not been able to find someone who can repair my slipping clutch for the slightly under $700 I have as opposed to the repair shops $1,000 [based on what ‘the book’ says].

Trapped in my own head is a very bad place to be trapped in terms of good mental hygiene. When I realized I would not finish all that I wanted to write before election day, those nattering nabobs of negativity started in on what a worthless piece of …….. ahem. A state of internal affairs that I needed to deal with before it dragged me down into ‘the pit’.

The truth, which is neither here nor there to the nattering nabobs of negativity loose in my mind, it turned out there were a lot more words to be said and it is pretty hard to type all those words when your hands look like:

Hand pictures

That is why I am typing this now even though I am in pain which has me hot, trembling and suffering a clammy sweat, a condition that foretells a bad hands day tomorrow.

Bad knees with a right knee is prone to unexpectedly dumping me on my ass; a very bad needs replacing hip; a back and discs that have on occasion put me in bed for up to a week and that, from time to time during the day, demand I sit for a few minutes to let them adjust [under threat of a week in bed if I don’t – a lesson learned the hard way]; these are the culprits that have over time limited the range of my mobility to the extent that without the car I am trapped at home.

I know that tomorrow my hands will look like the picture because that is what they looked like when I woke up Wednesday morning after using the bus to get to the October AMHSUAC meeting and down to the meal centre for food and bread to take home.

Friday I bussed to the library to return all the library materials I had checked out. The cost of the bus was offset by the fines avoided by returning the materials to the library. Hauling the stack of materials to the library was painful because of the weight of the books. Fortunately the shopping basket of material on hold for me only had one book so the return home was not nearly as stressful or painful for my back and hip.

Since the bus, discomfort and pain were all sunk costs, costs already incurred by my trip to the library, I took the opportunity to stop by Safeway for margarine because I had none and toasted bread products require [for me at least] margarine to be edible. The margarine was not on sale but what can you do? If you are out you are out. Safeway did have Kraft peanut butter on sale buy one get one free. Kraft is not my favourite peanut butter, I prefer Skippy, but poor folks can’t be choosers.

I bus back to Ridgeview, ignore the flat tire on the rear passenger side of the car, take to extra strength Tylenol for the pain, remove my shorts and shirt and lie down to try to relax and let the pain drop to a level where I am no longer suffering micro trembling and the clammy sweat fades.

When I got up Saturday my hands looked like:

Hand pictures

It is not only tricky typing with a finger on each hand locked in a tight curl it presents a few challenges when using the hands to take a picture of each other.

If I am patient at some point in the day I will be able to will the finger on my right had to straighten. The finger straightening feels somewhat painful and very disconcerting. Straightening the left hand requires I soak it in water as hot as I can stand; after which I can use my right hand to straighten the finger on my left hand,

I don’t know if I could straighten the finger without first soaking it, I know  – from experimenting – I would not want to try to force it open without soaking the hand first.

To keep the hand from curling back up I tape it to the finger next to it. It turns out that after an excursion by bus and foot is that even when taped to the finger next to it, the finger will curl – ripping or curling the tape. Very Strange.

I plan to use crafts popsicle sticks to splint the finger tonight and see if that prevent from curling up. Since the fingers propensity to curl shows no sign of ending I plan to get a proper finger splint, when the opportunity presents itself, and see what affect that has.

I know the finger will be trying its best to curl tonight because I am sitting here in pain, although the trembling and clammy sweat have passed.

The pain and its companions was a result of the long – slow – walk down to Harry Sayers elementary school to cast my ballot.

As painful as walking to the school, standing in line to vote and walking [more like tottering] back from the school was we have a duty and ethical imperative to take time to vote and to have invested the time to think about the issues and vote accordingly.

Whether it involves a painful walk to and from the polling place nor the need to invest the time, effort and thought to be able to form informed consent, Canadians have to do what is necessary if we want being Canadian to continue to be the privilege it has been.

PS

It is Election Day and as I wrote this chronicle politics wove itself into the tale, making the tale twice as long. To shorten the Chronicle and to enable a clear focus on the political content and commentary the political portions of the Chronicle were extracted and placed in a separate post to jameswbreckenridge,ca.

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