Musings & Thoughts for Wednesday, December 20, 2023, or: A Quick Life Update from Hoth…er, Madison, New Hampshire

Late Morning, Wednesday, December 20, 2023, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the 1,366^th post on A Certain Point of View, Too. It’s just past 10 AM Eastern Standard Time – thank the Force that I’m still in the same time zone, even though I left my home state eight days ago – and it’s a nice if perhaps chilly early winter morning here in the Granite State.

The temperature outside is 32°F/0°C under sunny skies. With the wind blowing from the north at 2 MPH/3 KMH, the feels-like temperature is 43°F/5°C. Today’s forecast calls for sunny skies and the high will be 40°F/5°C. The low will be 22°F/-6°C.

Quick Life Update

Yesterday afternoon, my friend Patti picked me up at 3 so I could go do a bit of grocery shopping and see how much I had in my EBT card. Since we’re up in the northern latitudes (Canada is our neighbor to the north, and Maine is seven miles away or so from here), it gets dark far earlier than it does in the Sunshine State, so then the sky (which was a bit cloudy and a bit uninviting) looked a lot like it does in the Tampa Bay area around five or so in the afternoon.

I needed quite a few items, mostly stuff that’s easy to prepare in a microwave oven or out of the package, but since this was the first time I’d use the EBT card on my own (I could not go to the local Winn Dixie in Fish Hawk because it’s not within walking distance, and I didn’t like asking my former housemates for rides), I bought only the items I deemed absolutely necessary.

I won’t bore you with my grocery list. The important thing for you to know is that I actually had a lot more on my EBT account than I thought and could have gotten more items. But I am, by nature, overly cautious, and I did not want to add more debt to my credit cards than necessary. Plus, I don’t have a ton of cash on me, so….

After Patti dropped me off and headed home – she lives across the road from me – I prepped some ramen noodles and had a glass of orange juice to wash them down with. I could have had some New England-style clam chowder instead of ramen, but the thought of having to use a pot to do so – and later having to wash both the pot and the bowl – seemed a bit overwhelming, so…ramen, which is loaded with tons of sodium, was my dinner for my first Tuesday night in Madison.

Normally, I would have retired to either my bedroom or study to watch something on one of my two TVs or read a book so I could get away from the PC a bit, but my books are in the moving boxes, and the TVs – both of which are 4K UHD sets – can’t be set up till my friends here have the time to work on the “set Alex up so he can be at home” stuff. 

As for the books…I only packed two paperbacks, one being Robert Bloch’s novelization of Twilight Zone: The Movie, the other being the next-to-latest edition of my own novella, Reunion: A Story. Alas, I finished the former even before I left Lithia last week, and, of course, I know Reunion: A Story all too well.

I do have e-books on the Kindle app on my PC and laptop, and if I had not lost my Amazon Fire HD 8 tablet somewhere between Virginia and New Hampshire, I could have tried reading on my futon to at least break away from this PC. I got its bigger, newer replacement at 7:08 PM EST (courtesy of UPS; Amazon Prime has no delivery vehicles of its own ‘round these parts), but Kindles and related tablets need to be charged and connected to the Wi-Fi, and I was not up to doing that at that time of night.

So…I ended up watching The Bourne Identity on Amazon Prime Video right here in my writing room till I got sleepy, turned off my PC, and schlepped my way to my bedroom.

New Hampshire State of Mind

I’ll be honest here. Right now, I’m homesick, somewhat melancholic, and trying hard to cope with the colder weather in New England. As necessary as this move from Lithia to Madison was, I’m still sad that I had to leave Florida. Like my mother before me, I tend to “shut down” physically and emotionally when the mercury drops below a certain temperature. I’ll try to get over it because I don’t have a choice now, but there have been quite a few moments when I ask myself, “What the hell am I doing on the ice planet Hoth?”

I also get hit by what I call “disturbances in the space-time continuum” – momentary bouts of dizziness and feelings of “do I belong here at all?” that come and go at the oddest moments. Mostly in the morning, when (in sharp contrast to how I started my days in Lithia) I must go from my bedroom to the writing room to turn on my PC and follow the same pre-breakfast routine of checking my social media, my bank account – which is still with my Florida bank in the Tampa Bay area – and my two email accounts.

How do I describe these episodes? Well, it’s a feeling that all is not quite right in the world, even though I already know the layout of the house in Madison. I know intellectually where I am, but then I feel like that my spirit/soul/mental essence wants to claw its way out of my body and float somewhere else, like, oh, I don’t know…. Florida?

Trust me. Those episodes are not pleasant, either physically or emotionally. They don’t last long – maybe they linger for one or two minutes, then fade away – but they always leave me feeling tired, sad, and more than a bit scared.

I am taking Vitamin D supplements – per Patti’s suggestion, I’d ordered some Amazon Basics fruit-flavored gummies with the side effects of the darkness that sets in around 4 PM – to help me stave off the worst effects of the long winter nights. I don’t know if they’re doing any good since I only started taking them during my last days in Lithia, but I am chewing two gummies every morning before breakfast. I hope they work, cos my state of mind…it ain’t so good, y’know?

I’d like to think that once both of my rooms are “put together” and I am surrounded by my “stuff” from Miami and Tampa (minus the items I left behind because I couldn’t bring them), I will feel better. But, honestly, even though Christmas Eve is less than four days away, I’m not full of good cheer right now.

I already began the process of charging my Amazon Fire 10 HD tablet, and I just retrieved the package with its matching case from the front porch – thank goodness I’m wearing my new Big Chill winter jacket! – so I’m hoping that once my new tablet is up and running, my mood will improve.

And on that note, I will close for now. I don’t have anything else to report, and my hands are getting a bit cold – mostly from that brief moment on the front porch sans gloves – so, until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and count your blessings.