#low grade

Ryou being cheeky, with his birthday cake vodka in a champagne glass.

“FEW TOPICS IN CLASSICAL NUMISMATICS provoke more ferocious argument than the grading of ancient coins.”

“Among collectors of classic American coins the 70-point “Sheldon Scale” is universally accepted as a standard. Machine-made modern coins in the highest grades have literally, never been touched by human hands. Ancient coins, made by hand, and mostly buried in dirt for centuries, can hardly be judged by the same standards.”

“Ancient gold coins spent most of their working lives stashed uneventfully in vaults or strong boxes, while ancient silver and copper alloy coins circulated vigorously for decades or even centuries, accumulating wear and tear in the process. Complex chemical reactions in soil (or within ceramic pots where so many ancients were buried) develop stable – or unstable – surface layers on the metal (called “patina” by numismatists) that greatly influence the appearance, and hence the value, of a coin. “Split grading” is often appropriate, because obverse and reverse sides of an ancient coin may have been struck with dies in different states of wear and experienced quite different conditions of preservation.”

It's been a few days, so I thought I would say that---yeah, I am still here, and gosh it has been hard.  It isn't really dynamic, crush your chest and leave you gasping--but it has been a constant, low-grade level of pressure and symptoms that have been making it hard to do much of everything.  Easily getting out of breath doing simple things, coughing off and on, chest giving a light pressure all the time with an occasional squeeze to remind me what it means.  I have been taking my emergency at least 3-5 times every day since the last post, and mostly moving carefully while trying to encourage myself to do very light exercises and vocal warm ups (no singing yet).

And then, yesterday, there was a sudden clearing of the clouds.  The symptoms mostly went away and I found I could get some cleaning done.  I overdid it (as usual) but was able to mostly recover.  The only result was being out of breath.  Before someone says that it must be me being out of shape--that is not how my body works.  I did yoga earlier that day, and was fine until I started using one of those sticky rollers to clean up the dog hair before washing all the mats and blankets he uses.  THAT did me in (and no, I don't have dog allergies).  Just to give you an idea--if this was the summer time, I could have immediately jumped into this and not become out of breath or anything.  That is one way I mark my fitness level--I compare it to how I can do in the summer because the variable of asthma is mostly removed.

You see, round about May-June-ish, the weather warms up really nicely and the humidity starts to rise.  I always start out lightly with things, and find that I can sky rocket into almost normal levels quickly.  WITHOUT getting out of breath or showing most symptoms.  It is only in winter time that I really truly struggle.  Well, winter and the transitional seasons of Autumn and Spring right up until the cusp of going into/out of summer.

In some ways, knowing this makes winter time even more frustrating.  I KNOW I can do it, but suddenly I can't.  Makes me want to scream sometimes.