Currently, I can touch with my tongue seven open sores inside my mouth. Not too bad. I've had more. Once upon a time in my innocence I tried herbal rinses, sage tea, mint concoctions. Now I go straight for the hospital size tube of chlorhexidine forte and lather it on, reeking like a dental clinic.

Things have been rough recently. Don't ask. Winter. Cold air. The News. My aching hands and feet and shoulders and that whole chaotic mess of a compromised body. The exhaustion. Feeling too sorry for myself. The medications. Always that. I am a bunch of  walking side effects. Sometimes it's a bit much. I know it could be worse, don't fucking tell me how to cope. Don't even start.

I am working, I carefully design my days so that I can spend four to five hours at work. My golden hours, my smiling face. Two cups of coffee before I leave home to keep myself upright until I force myself to walk up the stairs of the multi storey staff car park and drive home with the radio keeping me awake. My friends in HR calculated that I have 461 working days left before retirement. At night, I do the numbers, substracting leave entitlements and overtime and public holidays. Like counting sheep.

The news. I read. I watch. I listen.
The Syrian nurse (he really is a fully trained surgeon but has no papers to prove it) who works a floor above me laughs into my face, I am going insane, does it show? Nine years of war and nobody cares.
There is a scene in For Sama (this important documentary is free online) on endless repeat in my head, the scene where the pregnant woman is brought to the underground hospital where the blood runs along the floors and the doctors deliver her baby by emergency cesarian while she is unconscious. The rough way they rub and slap that newborn until it finally finally draws a breath and screams. Life and death in war on earth. This is where we are stuck.

Last week we saw the first bold attempt of the fascist right wing party to uproot our democracy here. They failed.  But, history, people, history.

After breakfast I watch my grandchild climbing stairs with concentration. I will not allow myself any speculations about this child's future. In the evening, R rubs arnica ointment into my shoulders, hands and back and we both believe for a while that it helps.

"Most people want to believe in the idea of a just world. They want to believe that the consent of the governed still matters, so they try to give it in retrospect. Because for most people, these are crimes so enormous they undermine our sense of safety, crimes so big they can’t be allowed to be crimes at all. And that’s a kind of innocence we can no longer afford. It’s happening all over the world, wherever swollen strongmen swindle their way into power. It’s happening in India, in Britain, in Brazil. And wherever it’s happening, the center ground, people who believe in the “decency” of the system, are clinging to the swinging basket of institutional checks and balances, holding their breath as the ground disappears and the air gets thinner, wondering if it’s too late to let go."

Laurie Penny

Today is Valentine's day, that sticky commercial ritual that arrived here in Europe along with coca cola and fast food. Everything is sugar coated if we let it. But remember. Sugar is bad for you.