2] Don’t cross the streams

I didn’t bother to turn on the light in the bathroom. The one and only window faced east so there was plenty of light coming in through the dusty curtains, even with the blinds down. It was more than bright enough that if I turned on the lights, the sunlight combined with the single working sixty Watt light bulb in the ceiling fixture would show me how much I needed to clean up in here.

I’d get to it. Later this spring. Or summer. Definetly before next winter.

Fumbling down my tighty whiteys... What? They had been on sale. With my drawers down, I cut loose with a rare steady stream of the typical dark yellow morning piss.

With little black flecks in it. “Ahh!” I jumped a litte.

Damn. I guess I might need to mop up in here sooner than I planned.

I guessed the cancerous growths had to come out somehow, so I hoped I wasn’t too surprised when I had my next bowel movement. It had been a few days, so I was due.

A high fiber diet does that to you.

Looking up at the painting of a woman slipping off her robe and facing out a garden window that hung over the toilet, I let out another “Ahh!” as the gray square came back.

I ignored it until I could hear the sound of the stream hitting the water again. Definitely going to need a mop in here, as well as some damp paper towels.

[ Resuming Harvester Class briefing ]

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead if I can’t talk you out of it.” I guess I should humor this… whatever it was. I still had one... level of Cancer? As well as all the other problems. If it could fix me, why not?

Well, I had been ready for death for the last ten, fifteen, or so years. Twenty year old me had never expected, or planned, to live this long. To get this old, tired, and constantly feeling like death warmed over. Did I really want to be fixed, to keep going?

Old, alone, and living in filth in the middle of a, as the boxes put it, desolation wilderness.

If I had to answer? It would be a coin flip.

[ The Hermit Class receives a bonus to all attribute scores equal to their level ]

[ But only while in a dungeon without being a member of a group with other Harvesters ]

[ Hermits receive an enhancement to all tasks related to wilderness survival based on their level ]

[ All Classes receive an additional innate Talent every 5 levels ]

[ Your starting innate Talent is - Life Talent - ]

[ You may channel background Primordial Essence to repair and bolster living things ]

The sputtering stream died out before the message stopped, and I ended up standing there with my undies around my ankles and one hand occupied with aiming as I stood there waiting for more.

Boxes, or pissing. I wasn’t going anywhere until I was sure both of them were done.

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“Well. Ain’t that the shit.”

Pulling up the undies, slowly since bending over made my back hurt even more, I adjusted myself and then washed my hands. For once, I really needed to.

Not that I skipped it normally. Even with Beryl gone these last twenty or so years I still keep to the habits she had insisted on before she decided we were getting married.

She had been the only person I had ever met who I could stand to be around half the time, and she left me the hell alone the other half of the time. The perfect woman.

At least for me.

Back in the bedroom, I picked up yesterday's, really last Thursday's, sweatpants and hoodie. Then pulled on my slippers. I would dig out some clean clothes after my shower, but I had stuff to do before I bothered to get cleaned up.

Flipping on the computer in the office, I let it boot up while I slipped on my glasses and dug out the Diabetic stuff. Looking at all the red dots that were still healing on my fingers from the last week’s worth of poking myself with a needle, I decided to go with finger number three to get the blood from.

The blood sugar was a little high. I had been a little woozy last night around midnight and had a slice of toast with a big spoonful of the only unsweetened peanut butter I could find around here, even though I had to mix it back up every time I opened the jar.

Still tasted good.

Since it was my birthday, I decided to have another slice of the same with my eggs, a half hour after I got done jabbing myself with a syringe in the gut to take the full dose of insulin that the doctor suggested.

Actually, I'm not sure if an Endocrinologist is an actual Doctor, but the little Arab girl I had gotten assigned to by my insurance could write prescriptions and seemed to know what she was talking about, at least when she took the time to answer my questions instead of rushing me out of her office.

My clothes were always clean when I went there, and I always showered just before I left the house, so I knew that old man smell wasn't it. I think she's just over scheduled.

I checked the Fox News site, but there was nothing about the messages loaded up yet, so I guess I might just be going mad. Then, to kill some more time before I could eat, I switched to playing some browser games that my old desktop could handle without burning out the video card.

They were enough of a distraction it was almost an hour before I shuffled into the kitchen and scrambled up two eggs. I put a little black currant preserves on the toast with the peanut butter as well for a treat.

“Happy Birthday to me.”

Damn, that came out a little more bitter than I thought it would. "What's the matter old man, unhappy with your life. This is what you choose, remember. Staying alone so no one else has to suffer dealing with you.”

The plate was pretty clean after I collected all of the crumbs on my finger, and licked up the remaining smear of egg and ketchup left on it. That left is looking clean enough that I set it next to the sink to reuse for dinner.

It saves on water. I've got bills and a fixed income. Don't judge me.

“So check for an update on the news, to check on your sanity. Or get something done before you get lost online all day again.”

I thought it over as I drank down a second glass of water. I actually felt only half dead this morning, which literally wasn’t half bad. I guess clearing out eighty percent of the toxic cancerous growths in my body took a bit of the edge off.

So I put on some socks, work boots, and my oversized padded flannel coat, and headed outside.

It was sunny out, there was no more snow left on the ground, and I wanted to start preparing the gardens for spring. It would be a little less work to do later on so I could get other things done.

Today, I was mainly collecting sticks that had fallen from my trees during the last snowstorm. No real branches, but some stuff was big enough that I had to drag it behind the shed to break up later.

The pile was starting to get pretty big since I decided letting it age would make it easier to break, and it had been more than a few years of aging for a lot of it.

Mostly I was collecting small stuff for starting up fires in the wood burning furnace inside the old fireplace.

A good fire heated up my house well enough that the gas furnace didn’t go on until a few hours after I had gone to bed. With the city recycling center only a few blocks away, along with the yard waste dumping spot off to the one side, firewood was pretty easy for me to collect. At least the smaller logs I could manage to cut up on my own with my electric chain saw.

Battery powered. Which had been pretty handy when some punk kids tried to give me a hard time on my way home that one time. Even with only an eight inch saw it had been intimidating enough that driving it into one of the logs in my wheelbarrow had scared them enough to get them to back off.

Chasing them down the street while waving the running saw over my head and laughing like a loon had got them running.

Damn, that had been years ago wasn’t it, they must be out of high school by now. If they bothered to stay in that long.

After clearing out my backyard, I was surprised to find out I felt up to doing the front yard as well…

Oh. Whatever Health was, I had another four points of it. “How does that measure up?”

[ Harold Wallace Bright ]

[ Hermit 1 ]

[ Might 11 { 7 due to Conditions }]

[ Health 17 { 13 due to Conditions}]

[ Agility 10 {6 due to Conditions}]

[ Insight 10 { 8 due to Conditions}]

[ Grace 7 ]

I Stared. "Well fuck me very much. What's Grace and why is it so low without even being affected by Conditions?"

[ Grace is a measurement of a person’s ability to relate, manipulate, and cooperate with others ]

I made a sort of “Snrk.” sound out of amusement, and disdain. “I guess that’s fair.”

It just confirmed that I always had been a miserable son of a bitch.