Musings & Thoughts on a Hot October Afternoon Somewhere in Florida

Hello again, Dear Reader. It’s now late afternoon here in New Hometown, and so far, this second Saturday in October 2020 has been a hot day weatherwise. Not as hellishly hot as the past few days have been, but considering that it’s October and not August, it’s not exactly mild or even close to autumnal.

Presently, the temperature in my area is 87˚F (31˚C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at 70% and the wind blowing from the south-southwest at 7 MPH (11 KPH), the feels-like temperature is 98˚F (37˚C), it’s not quite like autumn in New York – or, since I have been there in the fall, Seville, Spain – even though today the heat is not, as Neil Simon’s Eugene Jerome describes it in Biloxi Blues – “Africa hot.”

This Saturday has also not been a particularly happy one for me. The transformation of my study into a combination study/bedroom has caused me more headaches; I hate my new desk, I am now bereft of the shelf where my writing reference books and high school yearbooks were stored, and I absolutely hate how The Caregiver insists that I must accept the layout of my furniture per her particular preferences.

I’ve already mentioned how hard it is to watch my TV – which by the way, has no cable or Roku streaming gadget – if I don’t change the way my desk faces. The Caregiver likes to have the desk aligned so it faces the wall on which my TV – one of the two Samsung HD sets I owned in Miami – is now mounted.

As I have explained before, if my Lenovo all-in-one PC wasn’t so “tall” on my desk, or if my desk were a little lower, this would be a non-issue, as there would be no object in my eyeline from the couch/futon The Caregiver has given me after displacing me from the master bedroom earlier this week. But my desk is a bit taller than I’d like; its top edge is level with my midriff, and because the Lenovo all-in-one is rather tall when it sits on top of it, the upper part of the monitor – actually, the entire PC, since all of the components are in the same place, hence the term “all-in-one” – blocks part of the lower section of my TV’s viewable area.

Per my October 9 post Musings & Thoughts for Friday, October 9, 2020: The Slings, Arrows of an Almost Sleepless Night & Other Insignifica:

In order to see the TV without having the view blocked by part of this monitor, I have to sit on the right hand corner of the couch and sit up as straight as possible.  I can only do this for a short period of time because my back and neck muscles tend to alternate between tensing up and relaxing, and this is extremely tiring.

I solved this issue by changing the position of my desk so that it faces the window, even though the view from outside is boring: all I can see is the tops of some plants – some flowering, others not – that The Caregiver planted when her family moved in here several years ago and the northern-facing side of our neighbors’ house.

However, The Caregiver has stated many times that she does not like this arrangement and tells me at every opportunity that she wants me to put my desk back to where she had placed it.

Now, I’m willing to do this during the daytime hours when I can’t – or don’t – watch TV in my room. But I’ll be damned if I am going to inconvenience myself during my leisure time, especially since we don’t spend any time together anymore.

So, on this World Mental Health Day, I can honestly say that my mental health is not as good as it should be. I’m having to cope with the seventh straight month of not going anywhere fun due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a strong bout of homesickness for my former hometown of Miami, a sad – but in retrospect, wholly predictable – break up, and, of course, the ebb and flow of grief over both my mother’s death and the inevitable but tragic estrangement from my half-sister.

I’m not sure what I’ll do after I post this; it looks (from what I can see through my window – like it is getting cloudy; the forecast does call for rain in the evening, after all. I don’t feel like writing any more at this time, and I also don’t want to game, browse the Internet, or watch any of my movies. I will, more than likely, just adjust my desk – at least temporarily – to please The Caregiver, since I won’t be watching anything on my wall-mounted TV.  I could read for a while, though. I have quite the TBR rotation going, after all.

I’m sorry if this post is not cheery, but I can only write what is on my mind and in my heart. And right now I am, in the words of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, terribly “weary, feeling small.”  I honestly have not felt this unhappy since the middle of July 2015.

I think I’ll close for now, Dear Reader. I hope you are safe and healthy, and that you stay that way. Until next time then, be good to others, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.