I didn’t write yesterday but I’m writing before I eat today. I’ll take my successes where I can find them. Tuesday night I went to the Knick game. I had it enough together to make dinner before I left. That’s not much an accomplishment as I heated up leftover pork loin. I think I’m going to switch back to buying tenderloin, the loin is tough. Maybe it’s the way I cook it. It tastes great.

Madison Square Garden lifted their mask and vaccine mandates. I’m fine with lifting the mask mandate when rates are low but not the vaccine. I have become far more willing to go unmasked since the infection rates have gotten so low but in a room with over 19,000 people, I thought it wise to wear one. Wearing a mask is not a big deal but I’d still rather not wear one.

As for the game, once again the Knicks blew a double-digit lead. Coach Tom Thibodeau won coach of the year last year, but I had issues with him even then. Now I just want him gone ASAP. He has zero flexibility and doesn’t prioritize developing the young players the Knicks have on their roster. He feels most comfortable with veterans and with his starters. He plays his favorites more minutes than any other coach and guess what, they have a history for his entire career of failing in the post season and late in games when they are most liable to be tired. The Knicks haven’t had a coach I like since Mike D’Antoni.

Yesterday I went on a grocery shopping expedition to Stop & Shop. The lure was Oscar Meyer Bacon for $3.99 per pound. That was with a sale and a digital coupon. Their coupon system is ridiculous. You have to “clip” the coupon on their app more than 15 minutes before the purchase. It took me three trips to the store to get this right. Now that I know what to do, I will have to go through their coupons each week before I shop.

I checked the weather before I left and saw that it was 47º. I proceeded to dress like it was 57º. Why? I’m an idiot. I should have gone back and changed but I was afraid I’d never get myself out of the house if I went back in, so I put up with the cold. I suspect most people put up with cold more than I do. I dress with great precision for the temperature. I told myself that I’d take the bus home, but I didn’t. I toughened up and wanted the exercise. I walked 4.38 miles. I have not been doing that every day. I’m averaging only 2.39 miles a day for the past week. It’s raining today so I won’t get my quota of 3.2 miles in.

When I got home, I called someone I hadn’t talk to in ages. That’s part of my therapy homework. He’s having his own depression issues. I have found that helping someone else deal with depression helps my depression more than somebody else helping me. I’m good at it, I should be, I understand. I’m even good with mental health issues I don’t have. Sometimes it comes down to understanding that I don’t understand what’s going on in their heads and accepting that.

Understanding that some things are more complicated than you can understand is the beginning of wisdom. Inflation is complex enough that nobody understands what’s going on now. When faced with this people’s reaction is to blame whoever is president. When things go wrong people blame it on either the incompetence or the malignancy of those in charge. I heard someone in the supermarket say, “Biden doesn’t want us to have enough money for food.” I’ve seen people online say, “If we import only 5% of our gas from Russia why would that make our prices go up?” In Ukraine Biden and other Western leaders are walking a tightrope. They understandably don’t want to risk nuclear war with Russia. I didn’t know what the problem was with letting Poland send fighters to Ukraine. That didn’t mean that I thought Biden was being weak or stupid. It meant I didn’t know what he knows. I’ve seen read that the deciding factor on what arms are given to Ukraine is if they could be used to help in an invasion of Russia. We might think that is not a danger, but the Russians do. There are few things as complicated as war, but people don’t want to accept that their simple solutions are naïve. People want to make decisions that aren’t dependent on the situation, they use rules like “never look weak” or “there’s never a justification for the use of force.” I had a friend in the latter camp until she heard of the suffering of people in Syria at the hands of their government and is unhappy that we are doing nothing to help them. There are always countless things that need to be taken into account. That guarantees that those in charge will make mistakes. That doesn’t mean we should never criticize them. Putin shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine and Bush should not have invaded Iraq. But even in Bush’s case it doesn’t mean there were nefarious reasons. Follow the example of Socrates, “I seem, then, in just this little thing to be wiser than this man at any rate, that what I do not know I do not think I know either.”