I don’t write about my daily life as much as I used to. In the early days of blogging, while I never authored one of those “a day in the life” blogs — the “online diary” style — I did include more about by day-to-day doings. Nowadays I don’t do that as much, for a lot of reasons. The online environment, and the political environment generally, is a lot harsher, there are other outlets like Facebook and Instagram to share what little I share (mostly occasional travel, meal, and gym pics), and, I dunno, I just don’t think I’m that interesting.

But what I’m doing nowadays when I’m not online or teaching is often caregiving. I help look after my mother, who’s 85, and my wife Helen. Both are fully competent adults, but there’s still stuff to do.

For my mother, it’s mostly providing company, along with helping with household chores that are hard to do when you’re 85 and arthritic. She gets around pretty well, still drives herself places (though not long distances anymore) and does all her own cooking, housekeeping, shopping, etc. But there are things that are too heavy for her to move, and her ability to deal with technology isn’t what it used to be.

As a school librarian she maintained her own computer LAN, kept up the cataloging and circulation software, and dealt with all the Audio/Video equipment. Now she seems to have trouble with basic things. I installed a printer for her last weekend, and it was super-easy, despite slight trepidation on my part: She still uses Windows, and the last Windows version I was fully conversant with was Windows XP.