Do Nothing Shabbos

A day of rest, but really set aside Biblically as a day to do different things without distraction from usual things.  No commerce but appointment for worship.  No writing but listening to Rabbi's sermon scribbling the misstatements with mental red ink.  Planned dinner and lunch.  Be with different people that day.

In part because Covid closed in-person worship, in part because having done that I've established a clear preference for lounging at home than sitting and rising for two hours for a reward of 15 ml of Jack Daniels at kiddush when it's over, I allocated the day to the creature comfort of sloth, supplemented with some time to expand my imagination which has taken a bit of a battering in retirement.  Good Coffee.  See what's on TV but not watch.  Look at what I have and haven't done since my last planning session the Sunday before.  Imagine what I might do with better accomplishment at the next week's review.  Look at the six-month project titles on the whiteboard in My Space.  Admire what went well, is making satisfactory progress, and what needs either change in direction or better commitment.

I took a shower, a restful one, setting out clean lounging clothing to wear after drying off.  And then came the day's snafu.  While retrieving a bar of soap that had fallen to the wet tile floor, on arising I struck the very top of my head on the built-in porcelain soap dish.  A quick stun, quick neurological checklist OK.  Finished the shower as the hematoma followed its physiological response to injury.

For the last few shabbos afternoons, my treat into twilight has come with chemical assistance.  After lunch, I chew a rather tasty, sweet tablet containing 1.5 mg of melatonin.  In about an hour or so, reclining on the lounge chair in My Space, oblivion sets in for the next few hours.  No hunger, no desire to get up.  Not sleep exactly, but a pleasant stare with my mind sorting out what it wants to sort out until suppertime arrives.  Feeling refreshed with this not quite nap but mental distancing, maybe even reset, it's off to some light nutrition, then more lounge chair until shabbos ends marking the resumption of  cell phone's FOMO.

Head injury preempted that weekly chemical drift.  The weekly news included a celebrity just a few years my junior who died suddenly, thought to be an acute MI until it was determined that he had a head injury not that different from mine.  A lethal intracranial hemorrhage did him in.  Not a good idea for me to alter my own mind from its natural state following my injury.  Melatonin twilight got postponed.