I've decided my routine to clear up the cellulitis on my ears is to wash my head/face/ears with hot water and soap upon awaking and upon retiring, following the hot soapy wash with vigorous washing of the ears with Dettol, then massaging in tea tree oil like my hero Kimagure Cook massages salt into shellfish.
However I twisted wrong picking up my washtub and now one side of my back hurts like hell. I can't cough, and am in constant pain now. I didn't think 60 was an advanced age, but maybe I'd better start thinking realistically about this. Even before this "twist" it was painful to walk yesterday, and now I can't even cough.
I'm still emailing daily with Pat and Dave back in Hawaii. Dave, with three properties, can't supply even a small room for me, he says, and simultaneously cries poor and refuses all help so I guess, distanced by email, I'm going to watch him die in a year or two.
Pat's actually doing OK if by "OK" is meant a non-permitted place on the skeeziest part of the Big Island and supporting a non-working girlfriend while on disability. Somehow he had a place in Pupukea which by the 90s when he had the place was already expensive, but managed to piss that away.
Both of them have had very good fortune and have managed to piss it away. Not quite as extreme as a guy at the Gilroy place who inherited $400k and managed to piss it away in 3 years and in the end, offed himself, but the same kind of thing if not the same degree.
It started raining last night and will continue to do so as far ahead as the forecast can predict, up into mid-next-week. There may be a break in the rain on Sunday and if so I'll pack some FedEx things and get them out.
This latest injury makes it more difficult to clean up, too. I've made up my mind I should do a weekly bath, which I do using a tub with cardboard underneath it to catch the splashes. More difficult to move means more difficult to scrub. But scrub I certainly should.
There are basically three ways to clean up around here. (1) in here with a tub, 2-3 500ml bottles of hot water I prepare, Simple Green, back brush, a nicely worn-in Scotch Brite. (2) Get a motel room and shower there. Nice, but costs at least $100. (3) Go to the local gym. It's walking distance away, and when I first came to this area I went there right away to check it out. The problem is that gyms, even in these modern days, adhere to the old Roman baths standards and a big part of that is guys parading around naked with each other. At least with the gym I went to in Gilroy, with an almost entirely Hispanic user base, the showers were private and very nice.
So I'd have no privacy, and due to my injuries and relatively small size, it would be quite dangerous. Plus, showering there would mean I would become known to whatever bad actors were around. I'd have to have dedicated gym clothes because you can't go into a gym with non-gym type clothes, and I'd have to conceal and carry a knife and pepper spray. So I'd have a whole bundle of stuff, special get-up to walk to and from the gym in, have a Ka-Bar or a Fairbairn-Sykes commando knife concealed in all that and yet easy to deploy at a moment's notice. And lopping a few fingers off of or gutting a bad guy means even *more* inconvenience. I guess I'd have to have a bottle of hydrogen peroxide handy too because that stuff is the ticket for cleaning up blood.
So cleaning up in here it is! In Gilroy, once I'd made a "deck" by decking over pallets in front of the small trailer I was living in, and putting up fencing and getting grape vines growing, it was pretty logical to get one of those hose hanger things and a dark green garden house with a sprayer. The sun would heat the water in the hose up really hot and as long as I took my shower when the sun was up, it was great. Simple a matter of stripping down, making sure a towel is handy, and showering right in front of my front steps. There was no one I was in view of, and it was as convenient as the shower facilities any apartment-dweller has.
Once I'm back in Hawaii I suppose I'll have access to a real shower and will be able to shower every day if I like. Back to the first world .... people back home have no idea how most people live here.
No comments:
Post a Comment