The Day is Done

He wakes up. Gets out of bed. To get out of bed he has to sit on the edge of it for about thirty seconds and then stand up straight on the balls of his feet as his physical therapist taught him. First stop the toilet a few feet away in the bathroom. Sits on it. Peed three to four times overnight. It's the same almost every night. Three to four. Four to five. Sometimes he doesn't have time to sit on the edge of the bed and concentrate on standing up straight on the balls of his feet. He pees on his legs before he gets to the toilet about once every three nights. His prostate. Enlarged. And he drinks too much wine too soon before he goes to bed. When he sits down on the toilet or gets up from it he always holds on to the grab bar his wife had installed for herself in their two bathrooms about fifteen years ago. Read in bed for about a half hour or so before he put the book on the night table on the other side of the bed and turned off the night table light on his side of the bed and fell asleep. Pees. Would like to have a bowel movement but that only happens so early in the morning before he's eaten or drunk something about every two weeks. Brushes his teeth and rinses his mouth out with an antiseptic mouthwash. Brushed his hair while he sat on the toilet: sides and back and the little on top. Feels his scalp for precancerous lesions that he gets burned off by his dermatologist every six months. Washes his hands, which he does about ten times a day, maybe more, and scrubs his nails with a nailbrush, about twice as long on the left hand as on the right. Sometime tomorrow morning he'll shave, which he does every other day. If he were meeting someone for lunch today or had some other appointment, he'd shave. Lies on his back on the bed and does stretches his physical therapist taught him. Then sits up on the side of the bed and does a few exercises with two ten-pound weights. Dresses: socks and short-sleeve T-shirt and pants. Boxer shorts he went to bed in. Brought them all the way up to the top of his thighs while he was on the toilet and smelled them. If they had smelled from pee even a little he would have put on a fresh pair and put the old pair into the washer when he went into the kitchen. Makes the bed and goes into the kitchen. The cat follows him. Cat slept or just stayed on the end of the bed in the same position all night. Does that almost every night. Maybe gets off the bed to use the kitty litter box in the other bathroom or drink or eat or do both from his water and kibble bowls in the kitchen, but he almost always gets back on the end of the bed. He puts on his sneakers and unlocks the kitchen door and lets the cat out. If it isn't raining the cat will go out and come in about ten times a day. Empties the cat's outside water bowl into a houseplant outside and refills it and puts it back on the ramp to the kitchen door. Takes his pills with a glass of water. Takes the bowl of granola, yogurt and half a sliced banana out of the refrigerator and a plastic container of sliced fruit and puts them on the placemat on the dining room table. Prepared the bowl and container sometime yesterday for today. The tablespoon and fork already on the cloth napkin on the placemat he put there before he went to bed last night. The napkin he put there two days ago and will use another day or two before he puts it into the washer and gets another cloth napkin. Does all this preparation to reduce the number of things he has to do before he sits down for breakfast with the newspaper and coffee. Coffee he makes fresh every morning. Cone over a mug with a filter paper and tablespoon of coffee grounds in it. Puts his baseball cap on to protect his scalp from the sun and goes outside to get the newspaper at the end of his driveway. Today he's walking okay. Most mornings his lower back hurts and he's slouched over and he has to walk more slowly and has trouble bending down to pick up the newspaper. Takes the newspaper out of its plastic bag and scans the front page as he walks back to the house. Takes out from the cabinet under the kitchen sink the plastic shopping bag filled with different kinds of used plastic bags and puts today's newspaper bag in it. When it's full and he's knotted it at the top he'll drop it in the next few days into the large drum of recyclable plastic bags outside one of the markets he shops at. Reads more of the front page while he has his breakfast. Also looks at the book review in the arts section of the paper and the opinion and editorial pages of the first section to see if there are any editorials and opinion pieces he might want to read later today while he has his one drink on the porch before dinner. The cat's probably at the kitchen door by now waiting to come in. He checks. The cat's there, stretched out on the doormat, position and place he's usually at while he waits, and he lets him in. Refills the cat's water bowl and adds kibble to his kibble bowl and puts the bowls back on the floor. Cleans the cat's food plate and gets the can of opened wet cat food out of the refrigerator and puts two plastic teaspoonfuls of it on the plate. Puts the plate on the floor next to the two bowls and the can of cat food with the spoon in it back into the refrigerator. Straightens the newspaper out and puts it on the dryer. Bag of recyclable plastic bags he puts back in the cabinet under the sink. Washes all this morning's tableware. Waits till the cat's finished eating and he lets him outside. Goes into his wife's former study and sits in front of her computer there and turns it on. Checks for emails. Are none. If there were any that needed answering he'd answer them now. He checks for messages four to five times a day. Checks the New York Times website to see if there's any later news he'd be interested in than what's in the newspaper version of the Times he read while he had breakfast. Is none. Shuts off the computer and goes to his bedroom. Sits at his work table there, takes the dustcover off his typewriter and puts paper in. Makes corrections with a pen on the manuscript he's been working on the last few weeks and starts typing. Types for almost three hours, with two short breaks to sit on the toilet and a longer one to get a carrot out of the refrigerator, wash and dry it and eat it while he wrote. Puts the dustcover on the typewriter, straightens up his work table, turns off the table lamps on either side of the typewriter which he turned on when he first sat down at the table. Goes into the kitchen and lets the cat in. Gets the can of cat food out of the refrigerator, empties what's in it onto the cat's plate and puts the plate back on the floor. Washes the plastic spoon he used to dish out the can of cat food and puts it into the utensil holder in the dishrack. Lets the cat out. Dumps the cat food can into the trash can in the kitchen. Has half a toasted bagel with a little cream cheese on it and a mug of coffee. Drives to the Y and works out for about an hour. Takes a shower there. Read a book while he was on the recumbent bike. Stops at a market on the way home and does a little shopping. Takes his pills. Checks the answering machine in the bedroom for messages. Does a little weeding and clipping around the house. Puts the branches and twigs he clipped and weeds he gathered together with a rake into a lawn and leaf bag and brings the bag to the pickup spot on the street. Mows the grass on one side of the house. If it isn't raining tomorrow or hasn't rained hard all day, he'll do some more mowing on the other sides of the house. Takes the two lithium batteries out of the lawn mower and recharges them in the kitchen. Gets the mail. Writes a check for his credit card bill and another for a medical bill, sticks a stamp on the envelopes that came with the bills, puts the envelopes in his mailbox and raises the flag on the mailbox. Takes a nap on his bed. Puts the batteries back in the mower. Reads for a while in the living room the book he read on the recumbent bike and will probably read in bed tonight if he isn't too tired to. Speaks to his daughter on the phone. This time he called her. Most times she calls him around the same time at night. Prepares dinner, mostly out of prepared food he bought at the market today and which only needs heating up. Turns the oven on to 350 degrees and around twenty minutes later sticks the aluminum pan with his dinner in it into the oven. Has a drink while he reads the newspaper on the porch. Eats dinner in the study while he watches an old W.C. Fields movie on YouTube for about twenty minutes, same one he watched for about half an hour last night while he ate dinner and had started the night before that. Remembers the cat's still outside. Calls for him through the kitchen screen door and has to go outside and walk to the mailbox and halfway back calling for him before he jumps out of the bushes and follows him into the house. Feeds him. Got a can of cat food out of a kitchen cupboard, opened and spooned about a quarter of it onto the cat's plate. Empties and refills the cat's water bowl. Had a glass of wine while he had dinner and watched the movie. Washed his plate and silverware and glass and pan he heated up the food in and puts them in the dishrack to dry. Locks the porch and kitchen doors, turns off all the lights, goes to his bedroom and turns on the radio to the classical music station to see if it's playing something he wants to listen to. Turns off the radio. Undresses and brushes his teeth. Sits on the toilet for a couple of minutes and washes his hands. Usually when he calls out the cat's name through the kitchen door screen door at night and the cat hasn't been fed since the afternoon, he runs back to the house and all the way through it to the spare bedroom at the end of the house and then back to the kitchen where if his food isn't already there he waits to be fed. Gets in bed and reads some more of the book he's been reading for two weeks. Bio of a writer he likes and who he's read at least two other bios of the last ten years. Cat comes into the room, jumps onto the bed, turns completely around a couple of times before settling down at the end of the bed by his feet. Puts the bookmark on the page he stopped reading and closes the book. Did he remember to turn off the oven? He didn't a few times the past year and found out the next morning the oven had been on all night. Whenever he couldn't remember if he turned the oven off and he was already in bed, he had to get out of bed and go into the kitchen to check. He remembers he turned it off tonight. And the light right outside the kitchen door? Remembers he shut that off too. Forgot to take psyllium husks in half a glass of diluted orange juice this afternoon, but he can go one day without it. Puts the book on the other night table and folds up his eyeglasses and puts them on top of the book. Plumps up his pillows, turns off the night table light, pulls the covers up a little past his shoulders and finds a comfortable position to fall asleep in. "Goodnight, Louis.”