New Routine

Yes, this is what you will get for awhile.  My days are not my own.  No more languorous wasting of hours contemplating artistic greatness.  No more thoughts of pursuing artistic goals.  Hell, I don't even have time for email.  So I take my camera with me on my walks around my "new" neighborhood.  Soon, these will be just as oppressive as the Covid photography I practiced during lockdown.  Selavy.  It is just how we are going to roll.  

I don't know how I managed to manage my part of the factory floor and manage my studio, too.  Where were the hours in the day?  Where have they gone?  

My mother is a zombie half the time.  The other half, she issues forth moans with each exhalation.  I try not to be maddened, but for one so accustomed to quietude and silence, this, in combo with the hours and hours of commercial t.v. . . well, my thoughts are scrambled.  

And my diet is a mess.  We've had plenty of comfort food.  Today, I think, we will need to realign.  

My mother's neighbors brought over dinner last night--chicken and dumplings with cornbread and apple pie.  They are very sweet.  They stayed for awhile, of course, and chatted.  You know how such things go. Oh, they don't watch anything but OANN and Newsmax.  They are big law and order people.  Mom's neighborhood and the nice people who look after her.  I smiled and sweated.  

Mother just woke up.  The t.v. comes on.  Local news.  Local weather.  Those jolting, weird broadcast voices.  The excruciatingly long, horrendous commercials.  Babysitters of the aged.  I believe one day they will discover that commercial television contributes to old age dementia.  They probably already have, but like Global Warming, there is too much money involved to do anything about it.  I feel I am already being affected.  

The funny thing about today's photo is that you never see any children at play.  They are all, I suppose, stuck to a computer screen.  Nobody lets kids go outside now.  Not on their own.  The sign is a relic of days gone by.  

I am going to suggest they put a pay phone next to it.