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Back to "normal"

 


Mitzi is glad to see me. And so is R. I arrived back in Phoenix at about 6:00 pm last night. R wasn't aware of how chaotic it is in Arrivals at Phoenix so it took awhile for us to meet up with each other. We eventually did, I heaved the cases into the car (last time this trip, yay!) and R drove back to Tucson, which is about 2.5 hours. Arrived home at about 9:00 pm to rapturous affection from Mitzi and a leaking toilet in my bathroom. We'd closed off my area of the house so that the dog wouldn't lie on the bed. A lesson learned: check on toilets, even if they aren't being used. When we go off traveling, we usually turn the water off. Ah well, it's fixed and thank goodness we have two bathrooms! Of course if we'd only had one, then R would have known about the leak....

I woke up this morning at 5:00 am full of energy. Groceries done and put away by 8:30, dog walked, all my clothes and stuff unpacked, washed and put away or hung up by noon. And then I collapsed for the rest of the day. R tried to wake me up at 5:00 pm but I couldn't keep my eyes open. So I slept another hour, then got up, made some dinner.

We watched a very interesting series on Amazon called "The Salisbury Poisonings" about the 2018 nerve agent attack on a Russian spy and his daughter who had been allowed to leave Russia to live in England on a spy exchange; they had located to Salisbury. But they hadn't escaped the clutches of the Russian gov't and both were poisoned as well as a policeman. They all survived after weeks in hospital but another woman who came in contact with the discarded vial of nerve agent weeks later died. Her partner spent weeks in hospital.

My cousin Bill had recommended the program after my visit to Salisbury--where I didn't come across any mention of the episode. As I said, it's quite engrossing and, especially after the last eighteen months of COVID learnings, it was surprising to see how long it took the police and health officers to recognize the dangers of contamination. I couldn't help thinking how human beings can aspire to the greatest of accomplishments--like building beautiful cathedrals or creating the COVID vaccine--and also plot the greatest of evils. Like warfare, and especially chemical warfare.

What do we do about it? I don't know but stories like this remind me that mindfulness isn't just about looking after myself.

Comments

  1. OneKidsMomOctober 9, 2021 at 10:34 AM

    Glad you are safely home and any travel related "hiccups" with the plumbing rectified! Travel across multiple time zones can really mess with the sleep cycle, so being alert and then crashing is pretty normal. And totally agree that mindfulness is about more than our individual health and well-being!

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