February 8, 2013

I got up full of good intentions including the one of going to the Zumba class across the street. After drinking my coffee, I felt so lightheaded that I texted Laira to let her know not to expect me for the class. I was still highly congested and found it difficult to breathe normally. She called me later on to recommend a clinic nearby whose staff spoke English. I said I’d consider it, but knew all they could do for me would be to prescribe antibiotics and wanted nothing to do with taking those.

I spent the rest of the day working on several project including the presentation for Saturday morning for which I needed to label the pictures I’d be using and come with captions for some others.

I took a late afternoon siesta until a noisy family came up the steps and disrupted my sleep. It must have been a handyman of some sort for shortly after that, the hammering started and continued for quite some time.

Willoughby called and offered to come earlier to the library to help set up the tables for the session tomorrow. She also wanted to invite me to the ballet on Sunday afternoon, but I told her I needed to see how I felt by then.

In the evening, I got to enjoy a couple of documentaries about a new phenomenon that had passed me by: permaculture or cultivation of the soil on a permanent basis with only organic fertilizers and pesticides. It was mind blowing to find out that many countries, including Cuba, had turned to this way of growing food when they could no longer afford the cost of transporting the food from the countryside to the city much less the oil-based fertilizers and pesticides.

I definitely want to know more about this field of self-sustainable agriculture and will endeavor to read upon it once my obligations here subside.