It's a lot of work watching television, or at least you can lose a lot of time that you could be doing something "productive". I have been watching a series that ran 5 seasons, mowing down a season a week, staying up late lying on a couch banging episode after episode... in some ways it beats wasting time on the internet and perhaps some down time is what i could use. It's sort of why i don't watch TV... I just have this obsessive way about things. On one hand i watch it on "my terms", meaning no commercials and not waiting week to week for an episode... the beauty of technology. But are My terms really watching TV all weekend? Doesn't sound like the kind of terms i would naturally subscribe to if we were like talking philosophy if you know what i mean.

It's been a strange week. On Monday i got a call from my sister telling me my Mother was in the hospital because she happened to be walking into a grocery store in the middle of a robbery and some dude ran out and bumped her out of the way, breaking her wrist and pelvis. My Mother is my fathers caregiver so you can do the math on that disaster, but it looks like things are being sorted accordingly.

It's the "incident" that some of us in the family have been worried about for some time. I have been trying to get my parents to scale back and get into a place more suited to their "changing lifestyle". I'm not meaning ship them into a "home" but rather find a place that's not a 3 level house with bedrooms and laundry and kitchen all on different floors. My parents, being resistant to change have laid out excuse after excuse and in the end i think the greatest respect one has to give somebody else is the right to live their life as they choose. So it was always "what if this happens?", with the logic following then "you won't have the choice", on the better to choose your destination. Still i do a lot of things i perhaps shouldn't (some might think), and i surly appreciate a stubborn self preservation attitude... it's what keeps people moving. I mean i probably wouldn't have made all of those records (or CD's) if people believed in me... i had to prove them wrong and the power to prove people wrong can be a mighty ally indeed.

where am i going with this?

i think it was a story in the book of Rumi where a farmer and his son live on a plot of land and some wild horses come onto the property and the neighbour says "that's good news" to which the man replies "we'll see", and then next day while trying to train the horses, the son is bucked off a horse and breaks his leg and the neighbour comes by and says "that bad news" and the man says "we'll see" and then the next day the king's men come around to collect all of the able bodied men to fight in a war in some far away land and the son can't go because he is lame and the neighbour says "that's good news"... you get the point.

Apparently my Mothers pelvis is actually fractured in a good place (for full recovery), so i guess I'm trying to put the best spin on this possible (with all of this philosophy talk). I am a man of faith although i have no use for religion personally, so from thousands of miles away i am trying to help my family find their way. Mom and i laugh on the phone, that's what I'm good for and in between chuckles i try to slide in some good options for the future.

One thing that pisses me off is going on to websites of "retirement" communities... may of them offer you a free gift to join in. To me that smells like shit. You are talking about your life and the most basic part of it your home, and no "free gift" will ever make that right. Then you start thinking about "management companies" and i recall my brief stint as Strata Council president "working" with the "Management company"... and in the end i ended up just cutting the fucking grass myself because it was just too damn stupid and expensive to get somebody else to tell somebody else to tell some pecker-head to cut the damn grass.

The crime aspect is weird and hard to swallow, but you can't change the past. Oddly enough years ago i was beaten on the streets for some reason I'll never know but it did give me a "timeout" and a chance to re-think the direction of my life and i look back at that as a positive moment. I remember they sent me to a psychiatrist to talk about it (being a victim of crime and all) and i laid that on him and he told me i was remarkable well adjusted.

here's hoping.