You don't come out of life, you don't get out unscathed

And today the urgent care appointment for which we spent the afternoon and evening running around the barn and back was spatch's. The telehealth for which we had scheduled him last night after the cold that had been stringing along for the last week flipped suddenly into his characteristic skull-lancing presentation of sinus infection should have been enough, but he encountered an unnecessarily dismissive doctor and instead I had to scramble him an appointment in person which for given values of luckily we were able to make because he was doing so badly that he was allowed out of his nine-hour shift early. The urgent care doctor was chill and competent and recognized me from a different clinic, pre-pandemic. Rob has antibiotics and we had a dinner of fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits and brussels sprouts and ranch fries from Lily P's in Kendall Square and I passed out on the couch again from not having slept the previous night. I am reading Edwin P. Hoyt's Mutiny on the Globe (1975), which my father saw in a little free library on the Cape and brought home for me on general grounds of maritime. I keep watching movies which I think will be disposable and then wanting to say something about them. Send universal basic income, please.

I make a stew with rainwater and frozen meat, thick with pine needles, warm beer, and baby teeth

I was in bed for just about twelve hours last night. I estimate I slept between eight and ten of them. The only dream I remember is the one which had to do with cider-making and a museum in nineweaving's Cloud. I spent a chunk of the afternoon on the phone—to a long-distance friend whom I miss, so even when the conversation becomes contemporarily grim it has the pants beat off a doctor's office—and walked out to see about the flowers.

( Young girls spread their hair like straw into baskets. )

It turns out a different friend of mine is moving his family to Canada. I found out because he thought I already knew. The first strangeness that hit me was not the irony of family histories, but simply that I know someone who can cross national boundaries with what sounds like less of a strain than I can find an apartment in my own city.