Altitude

Here we are at about 8000 feet above sea level. I must admit that I don't feel very well every day. Seems to come and go randomly. One thing I read about the effects of high altitude was "excessive flatulence", sorry to say, this seems to be the case. Also, breathlessness.
A few days ago, possibly a week, I fell down. I put it down to Overindulgence (I'd had a few drinks) felt dizzy, went to the sofa to lie down but before I'd quite reached there, passed out and fell sideways, bounced off the ottoman and fell...somehow I hurt my left side below and behind my shoulder, my bosom, and ribs. Refrained from drinking since then and haven't had another dizzy spell but have had to take a lot of ibuprofens to relieve the stiffness and pain breathing. I think I must have pulled muscles which I didn't even know I had. The disadvantage of aging...it takes so much longer now to recover from silly injuries of this kind.
The weather seems to be a new surprise every day. 40 degrees one morning and 70 another. Sun, rain, thunderstorms. The hummingbirds all vanished suddenly. The flies remain. One day it was horse flies, gigantic, ugly, buzzing, biting monsters...then they were gone. The ordinary flies are still a torment though. 
M. and I both have runny noses this week; a minor annoyance, but it hurts my ribs to sniff and sneezes are too painful so I've been suppressing those!

The end of August already. Time has been so fluid. Days go by gently and slowly and then suddenly are over. The moon rose and set, waxed and waned. Now there are only nine days till the ArtOCade. I have been painting on the car trying to get certain areas done enough to look consistent and it looks all right but I still feel pressured all of a sudden.
I will have to make decisions, soon. Where to live, what to do. I'm so glad for this holiday and I don't want to go home. It's hard to be living in somebody else's space, though, and I wish that i could wave the old magic wand and transport my Things from Texas to wherever my new home will be, without having to drive that thousand miles back...to say nothing of packing and transporting it all. Good thing my possessions are few.

Other things. While M. was away I was almost alone here. In fact, M. has a husband and that situation is not simple. The husband lives in a separate house on the same property and there is little interaction between them. While M. was gone I hardly saw him at all, he seems to be an indoors type. I was free to wander about at night, admire the night sky and sleep or not as whim dictated. Now that she's home it's a little less blissful. She turns the TV on in the morning and she goes to bed with it playing, falls asleep and wakes later to turn it off. Ther are many lights; the control box to the cable TV, a digital clock th e power lights to all the machinery, I have resorted to putting clothes over them many nights just to make it dark. M. favors night lights, I prefer darkness. I think it is easier to see in the dark because one's eyes get used to it whereas lights make shadows and also blind spots in your eyes. This home is very open-plan so there is no escape from sound and light. The bathroom is in her bedroom, too. She moved my car painting from the porch to a shed which is neither far away nor inconvenient, but it is out of my sight, so it seems harder to get to work. She is social by nature and speaks often on the phone to family and friends, and, when we are painting at the shed, she plays music. I have discovered the joys of an ipod (yeah, I know I'm catching up a decade late) and have been exposed to a lot of good musicians I'd never even heard of before. But I am also a fan of silence and the noise from morning till into the night is tiring. In addition, I am painfully aware of making noise myself (she sleeps later than I) There are luxuries to living alone. M. would build more structures here to house visitors...if it were me, I'd build barriers to keep them out!