I choose not to mention the Alamo because my brain is at the czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Yo, shalom and hi-de-ho from the nerve center of Howdygram headquarters! It’s a pleasant Sunday morning here in north Texas, although I wouldn’t know anything whatsoever about the weather, the temperature, the humidity, or when we’re expecting our next rainfall … because I never leave this room (or this house), and if I want to know any pedestrian weather statistics I’ll simply have to rely on The Weather Channel. Therefore ...

TODAY’S WEATHER: The high today at Howdygram headquarters will be 97° with 62% humidity, and our next shot at rain will be Thursday with a 60% chance of thunderstorms. There’s also a 50% chance on Friday. This being Texas, of course, I fully expect both “chances” to dematerialize completely as the week progresses. (We’re having a major drought here. It never rains!) Thank you.

When Sam wakes up from his first nap of the day, which has been successfully underway for an hour and 15 minutes, I believe he’ll probably be ready to make his “scouting” trip to The Villages of Lake Highlands in Dallas, the nursing home I’ll visit for five days in September while Sam is in California for a five-day “caregiver’s respite” visiting his family and friends. Sam has two siblings in California (Steve and Tammy). There’s also one in Scottsdale, Arizona (David), and all of them will be together when Sam’s in town next month … particularly for the corned beef on rye at the 2018 Marks Family Reunion Hoo-Hah at Brent’s Deli in Northridge. Sam sets it up every year, but the invitees never change.

In the meantime … it’s still a quiet Sunday in Texas, and for therapy I’m watching The Sting (1973) starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Oy.

Bless his heart … he did it! Sam just got back from a drive to The Villages of Lake Highlands, and he said it’s lovely, like a resort with five-star amenities. And he even took photos of today’s food service menu so I could see what kind of dining options are available. I’m impressed. And if I don’t like what’s on the menu, they’ll even cook something to order for me!

Mind if I do a little whining? I’m not doing very well today. I got up around 1 p.m. to sit at my iMac workstation, but as soon as I stood up from the chaise lounge I doubled over with a hideous “bladder burn,” that wretched sensation I get from a urinary tract infection. Problem is, I’ve been taking medication for a UTI for a whole week already … this damn burning should’ve been over by now! Tomorrow I’ll call the hospice to tell them my current round of antibiotics isn’t working and I need something else ASAP. But wait … there’s more! While I was sitting on the bench working at my computer this afternoon I was having severe pain on the back of both thighs. Seriously severe, and bad enough to jump up so Sam could use a high-beam flashlight to look for the spots I was talking about. He couldn’t find anything except two small “red areas,” which probably means that problems are brewing … most likely a couple of new pressure sores. But they made me so miserable I had to get back to the chaise fast. This is the first time I can ever remember being too uncomfortable to sit at my iMac, especially since there were a couple of projects I wanted to work on. So tomorrow I’ll ask Sam to shmear me with some anesthetic barrier cream before I go back to the bench.

---

The Manhattan orangutan is at it again. Scared that Don Junior could be trapped in a legal quagmire from planning and participating in that stupid Trump Tower meeting two years ago, our Illegitimate President’s latest idiotic public statements are making his lawyers cringe. Here’s what he tweeted this morning:

The problem is, planning (and participating in) a meeting like this with representatives of an adversarial foreign power — to rig an election campaign — is absolutely ILLEGAL. It doesn’t matter that “it went nowhere” … it’s still conspiracy, and it’s still ILLEGAL. Everybody in attendance at that meeting — Don Junior, Jared, Paul Manafort, and on and on — is looking at prison time. And even if the Manhattan orangutan didn’t personally attend, he’s fucked, too. Donald, it’s not the news that’s fake … it’s you! (You can pretend you’re innocent if you want to, but the rest of us know the truth.)

---

It’s 9:54 p.m. and I need food again. Therefore I should immediately give a great deal of thought to what I want for dinner, because when I wake Sam to tell him I’m hungry, that’s the first thing he’ll ask me. Since it’s usually impossible to remember at any given time what’s in the pantry or the refrigerator — and this is pure genius! — I jog my memory by going online to look at my last few orders from Wal-Mart. Clever, no?

Tonight’s dinner was ultimately a master class in bizarre flavor combinations. I had cans of Chef Boyardee Mac & Cheese and Read’s Three Bean Salad — green beans, wax beans and kidney beans in a sweet vinegar dressing — followed by a large volume of Braum’s No Sugar Added Chocolate Malt Frozen Yogurt with a ladle. (Somebody please remind me to ask for sugar-free Hershey Syrup next time. We’ve got some in the pantry.)

It was after 11 p.m. by the time I finished eating (a slow process when you’re lying on a chaise lounge) but I still had time to request my favorite bedtime snacks … two Popsicles and a Luigi’s Italian Ice. Tonight’s flavor was Lemon! Afterwards I followed up with my bedtime meds (Gabapentin, Coumadin, Amitriptyline, Trazodone, Metoprolol and an antibiotic tablet). I won’t be able to inject 70 units of my overnight insulin because I ran out last night and forgot to ask Sam for another insulin pen. (Insulin has to be stored in the refrigerator.)

---

While I wait for Sam to wake up this morning (usually around 2:30 a.m.) I’ll enjoy one of my favorite “sleeping movies” … Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) starring Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman, the story of the last czar of Russia featuring breathtaking costumes, breathtaking fake jewelry, a lot of breathtaking Romanovs and a breathtaking family massacre against the backdrop of the 1917 Russian Revolution. (A point of interest that rarely makes it into any description of this story: Nicholas and Alexandra were first cousins, which explains why their son was born with hemophilia. Eww.)

Michael Jayston and Janet Suzman in “Nicholas and Alexandra.”

---

It’s awfully late, and I suppose I should shut down my MacBook now and consider getting some sleep. This is definitely a practical idea, as I keep nodding off in small increments (10 or 15 minutes at a time), there’s nothing left to eat on my tray table, no emails to answer and nobody to talk to. Thank you, therefore, for reading this. I choose not to mention anything about the Alamo right now because my brain is at the czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia.