When a weak heart yelps.

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While I and my doctors, in our own ways, doubt the depth or truth of the weakness of my heart, when I push past both test and then real limits I find myself being humbled by the truth.  How far I can push past the limits is amazing.  The price is a little unnerving.  My heart will begin sticking at what seems like a mouse's pace.  I don't know that it is truly beating faster, but there is a sense that something is working too fast or hard and that it is stuck there.  Slowing down, or even stopping outright, at that point, does nothing to alter the thing.  Only time, days, of rest and some other things seem to eventually help.  I've only had faint hints of it, so far, today, but enough to know to STOP.  After having gone through several longer and harder episodes in the last week, I won't be pushing things one inch further.  My heart is 'sore' today, tired.  I can feel it grumbling.  No, not the symptoms of a heart attack, merely the organ letting me know to back things down.  Two trips to town yesterday was at least one, and possibly two, trips too many.

My home is pretty much in order.  Dishes are done, counters clean, the table is a bit messy with three projects on the books littering the surface.  I may slowly, lightly, sort that table today.  The drill and bits that I set there while figuring to install hanging planters can go back to the laundry room to join that original project, some cans can be put up, and some other tools may be stored.  I had considered figuring out how to crawl into the crawlspace above the ceilings in order to find a joist and mark it in a minor way (with finishing nails on either side), using the drilled holes as a rough guide as to which joist to use.  That would take a serious series of minor efforts, starting with unloading my closet and bringing in the multi-ladder, though twisting my giant form to fit into then through a small ceiling trap, at a weird angle, mostly in the dark, with a low ceiling to navigate as well, would certainly add to the effort.  No extreme effort sum total would be needed and I don't dare.  I have been keeping up on the girls, barf and all now that I have a better understanding of that and more tools and a spray for that.  Food prep and medicine, reading, and resting, but no sleeping. Oddly, sleeping is usually no help, and can hurt no matter how alluring it might seem at times, at least until I have used up 'enough energy'(tm).  Today will need to be a slow day.  I won't even be gaming.  Believe it or else, but my games can stress me, more so after I have stressed myself physically.

Since I have gumption but no "go", today might be a good day to begin reading again.  While I really enjoy Chesterton, being that his material was written long ago and requires an historical and linguistic form of translation, as with many of my philosophy, economic, and political tomes, I will probably forgo his and the others works for now, and instead hit up one of the C.S. Lewis books I collected.  The Screwtape Letters or Mere Christianity are the ones I have heard most discussed, the former being much more commonly discussed by those in my various circles.  Having come from Protestantism, and having rejected it, and more recently, for specific reasons, I do not worry about "being lead astray".  Further, I know other Catholics who are strong in their faith who have recommended this book.  It won't be difficult for me to translate or note differences, for the most part.  The reading might call for some clarifications, definition research, and such.  That is what scratch pads are for.  Plus, I am quite curious.  After hearing about this book since I was a child, just never quite finding this particular book in my hands at a moment where it could be read, it is about time.  How odd, fate, reality, and the workings and doings of when and where something desired does come to pass, perhaps even after it's prime due, isn't it?

Yes, my heart hurts.  As well, it weakens me down to a very humble station in life.  I don't even mind that.  In some ways being humbled is a great gift.  It allows me to see, without doubt, that God is in command of all things.  I live, now, at the mercy of a very harsh world.  Not that I am toothless, only that I could neither flee nor fight for long.  And, yet, here I am.  I have always liked the notion of coming to God as a child.  We do in any case, but some reject even that certainty.  No, I mean for our part.  I reject that we should follow those who would lead us as children though, people are not capable of leading others who have blinded themselves.  No, I mean first learning what it means to be a responsible adult, living that way, then learning what parts of that are not necessary and yielding those to the will of God.  This illness helps me... practice that.  More some times than others, albeit.  It is a gift, if a hard one, at times.  Urhm, and for an ogre, the notion can be somewhere between cute and funny, even evincing a gutteral chuckle or laugh to be lauded in it's sincerity, depth, and perhaps infectious nature!  This is true, at least for one with a lighthearted but true sense of gallows humor to boot.  Heh!

So, a day down.  Monday will be as soon as I can get my vehicle in to check the dummy light.  Until then I really need to rest.  I fear being "stuck" reading though.  Maybe it won't be as bad as it sounds.  I stopped reading when focus and memory began to... become difficult.  Those have improved.  Maybe I could love to read again?  Who knows.  I do know there are probably a million books out there, mostly old ones, which I have longed to delve.  There are things to be known, or at least pondered.  If too there is no true gain, save... the hunger for thought being sated and perhaps an angle or two left to be considered for even practical purposes, but just as many angles of many sorts to be... analyzed.

Ah.  Never mind.  Good day.