was the 20th. The same day the murdering cop was convicted, so I let it pass. But now I can say, it was a great birthday. My youngest sent me chocolate-covered mammoth strawberries, my oldest called me from New Mexico and we had a long and funny chat, my friend Tess brought me a little cheesecake, and my friend Beth called to say she was stopping by. She lives more than an hour away. Stopping by? I have great friends. She brought me flowers from her garden, wine, Ferrero Rocher, and homemade scones and really, really good homemade pea soup. It was a beautiful, warm and sunny, windows open day. I really enjoyed it. Some birthdays are not so great, but even then, Tess usually brings a tiny cake from the grocery and we share it. Last year, no sharing of course. We did this year, because she had already been in when she took me for my first vaccination, and we wore masks except when actually eating, and sat across the room from one another. Beth and I had a long chat with her in the hallway.
Yeah, don’t know why this is sideways or how to fix it. 🙂Flowers from Beth’s garden with Gertude checking them out.Close up. They smelled heavenly, too.
Second shot Sunday, then two weeks and back to sort-of-normal. Oh, god, I will be able to have someone in to clean. I cannot wait. Will still wear a mask and distance some, but won’t feel the need to be quite as cautious as I have been for the past 13 months. I don’t think this is ever going to be over especially since there are so many morons refusing masks and vaccine, but it will be a little better, I hope.
The flowering pears had a gorgeous, gorgeous bloom this year, and now the leaves are starting to pop out. Weirdly enough, the petals don’t drop anymore. They just sort of vanish as the leaves come out. They used to drop all over the sidewalk and street, but have not for the past couple of years. I have no idea why this has changed.
Anyway, I am even older than older than dirt now, but still having fun every day and enjoying my life, isolation and all. Stay safe, everyone, and please listen to science, not Fox News or the orange disgrace. Use your brains, that’s what they are for.
Seriously. What? I have been practically immobile for some time now. Broken, broken, broken executive function. Want to do something, just cannot. Tonight, I cleaned the tub, then the rest of the bathroom, then I vacuumed the bathroom, then I vacuumed the kitchen, then I vacuumed the worst part of the living room. Just imagine a rest break between each sentence there, please. I don’t know what changed, but happy Jean is happy. Tomorrow I will probably not be able to move AND MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS STUCK BUT I WILL NO DOUBT JUST COUCH AND MOAN AND GROAN. BUT i got stuff done. Now it’s unstuck. ?????
So it is possible to hire my homemaker myself and whoever paid the agency will pay me to pay her. Have to discuss this with her, though. Or she can get a job at the agency that took over and I can still have her. She cooked before the virus, and she is a really good cook, and someone else could do the other stuff. We’ll see how that works out.
Reading a familiar blog, and it now tells me how long it will take to read the post. Seriously? Is time so short for everyone that we need to know how much of it we will spend reading something? There are posts and groups and whatever to compare your reading to other people’s, to keep track of how much time you spend, to make reading a chore and not a joy. I don’t understand why everything is a competition or something that needs tracking or whatever. Way to take the fun out of life, people.
I am currently making a giant pot of coffee in my new electric percolator. I usually do two cups. and doing about ten now, which is really only five mugs. I only have mugs. I like mugs. Can keep it in the frig and nuke a cup or have iced coffee. Yum. For someone with as many getting things done issues as I have, put the coffee and water in the pot and plug it in works for me. A light comes on when it’s ready and it stays hot til I unplug it. No waiting for the lukewarm drip, or stirring and waiting and pressing or adjust the stove burner to get the right perk time. I have used every type of pot including vacuum, only excepting the greek one, Moka is it?, and this electric makes good coffee that is doable even on a foggy, foggy morning, which every one of them is, lately. Found this online: nonbrainery. Yep, that’s me. Actually, setting it up the night before works even better. Plug it in, OR I could plug it into a timer so it would be ready when I get up. That works for me. Think I have a timer somewhere, too. I have an oven-ready pot roast with veg to cook, too, from my favorite grocery store after Trader Joe’s. God, do I miss Trader Joe’s. Soon as I am fully vaccinated, Tess and I are heading up to Foxboro. Had to drive right by Joe’s to get to Gillette Stadium for the vaccine. We waved. LOL
I think I am going to set up an appointment with the rheumatologist who took over from prednisone disaster guy, and see if there is anything that can be done for all this pain. It is really hard to do anything when you can only stand up for very brief amounts of time, and then only by hanging onto something like a door handle or the counter or whatever. Fun, fun, fun. Something needs to change, and I am the one who needs to pursue the means.
I smell coffee. Delightful.
Hope everyone out there is safe and well and wearing a mask and social distancing. We do what we must to keep ourselves and our loved ones and friends and neighbors safe, right? That’s what makes us good people. ‘I don’t need no f-ing mask’ screamers are not good people. Sorry, they just aren’t. Selfish and entitled. The dregs of humanity. Don’t be one of those. Please don’t.
Because I really don’t care if anyone dies because of my selfishness.
Guess where the company is located? That bastion of good people, like Mike Gaetz, Florida. Why am I not surprised?
I am getting a new homemaker, because the agency went out of business. Did not tell anybody, caseworkers, homemakers, clients. They’ve been in business a long time, too. I’ve had homemakers from there for nearly the entire 18 years I’ve had homemakers. Why would you not tell your employees they will need to find new jobs. Just ‘hi, here’s your paycheck’ one day, and ‘bye, we are over’ the next.
It is gray and windy and chilly and I am in pain, and bored and depressed and slept pretty much all night and then all day after feeding Gertrude at 10 am. I miss having a life, even if I missed having a life while I was having it. I miss my real life, the one when I had a husband and a garden and friends and a car, and wasn’t in constant pain and blah, blah, blah. Oh lord, I need coffee and it almost 4pm, as I just said to my friend Tess in an email. A ranting email. My homemaker had just called to say how sorry she was and that no one told her she was going to be out of a job until after I had found out. Great company. Really great. Okay. Rant over. For now. 🙂
Maybe all those milk ads about happy cows are true. Researchers monitored cows and found that those that were the best treated and doted on by their handlers produced the most milk.
Why are we always surprised that animals respond to being treated well? I once saw a PBS thing wherein a guy said that after spending time with his cattle and getting to know each one, he stopped thinking of them as ‘product’ and realized that they had feelings and personalities and whatever. Surprise. Seriously? Animals aren’t things put their for our convenience, in spite of what we are taught. They are sentient creatures who care about each other and their children. The arrogance of thinking that we are everything, and everything is just there for us to use as we see fit. Okay.
So far no side effects from the vaccine. Just the usual body aches from walking and using the cane and all. Those always happen, so was prepared for that. Recovery day. Swan about on the couch and read. It’s another gorgeous, cloud-free sunny day, too. Still too cool to open the windows, but beautiful, and the buds on the flowering pears across the street are really started to swell. Flowers soon?
in the arm. First covid vaccine. Moderna Have to go back in a month for the second. Nice day out. Vaccines were at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. My friend Tess took me, then we went to Wendy’s and ate lunch in the car, then she came in a we chatted for awhile. First time anyone has been in since March 2020. If I get sick and die it will not have been worth it, but otherwise, it was fantastic to do something sort of normal. It’s been a loooong year. Shot did not hurt at all by the way.
My birthday month. Spring. New starts. New beginnings. Same thing, I know. More daylight. More sunshine. More sweet peas, my birth flower. My gramma grew them and she always called me her Sweet Pea. 🙂 Here is one of my favorite songs from childhood. Guess why. Not by this guy, though. He wasn’t even born when I was a child.
So I decided to keep a note of things I find that interest me. For this blog. Because I can. It’s my blog. 🙂
“Do You Really Need To Throw Out Your Underwear After 6 Months? An OB/GYN Weighs In” Headline. Seriously? Seriously? Just throw your clothes away, because we are all made of money. Seriously?
An article about a Reading Accountability group. Taking all the fun out of life. Reading is fun and relaxing and informative and fun. I said that already. But there are tons of things online about keeping track, competing, accountability? Come on. Life has enough stresses without ruining reading, too. Can’t we just read because we like reading? Does it have to be a ‘thing’?
Weather forecast was wrong. Was meant to be warm overnight and warm today. When I woke up, it was in the 40’s. Time to close the window.
Quite enjoying morning email and newsletters once I have deleted the bad news and petitions unread. I have started just deleting newsy emails. I don’t even want to know anymore. The ship is unstuck, what else do I have to worry about? Not that I was worried about that. The memes were kind of fun, though. LOL
A thing I read that I need to think more on. This writer seems to be a little off to me, but what do I know?
“One thing I did in the research for this book was to go back and read all of the doomsayers at the time of the TV revolution who said that raising a generation glued to their screens was going to scramble their brains and make them stupid. These were people who were dismissed at the time as snobs and doomsayers, people who just were not hip to what the kids were thinking. And at the time, there was no way to check their predictions. The only thing these doomsayers could do was to say “Wait and see.” Well, we’ve had several decades to wait and see the consequences of the rise of visual media and the decline of print and everything that flowed out of the TV revolution. And I think most of their dire predictions have been vindicated.”
I agree that tv is not a good influence. For one thing, it made obnoxious, rude, precocious, disobedient children seem normal. Parenting is hard enough without being made to believe that these are acceptable behaviors for your children. And that one commercial where it made stealing okay. I see something I like in your grocery bag, I take it. It’s okay. Really, it is. Well no, really, it isn’t. This is what you want your kids to learn?
Interesting take on college:
“Yes, because it’s a massive waste of money that does not confer actual benefits to the people who pay for it. What a college degree represents today could be, and not so long ago was, taught in high schools, so we are wasting people’s time, valuable years of their lives, prolonging adolescence.”
I didn’t go to college. No way we could afford college. I don’t think I’ve missed out on anything worthwhile because of it. And no one I know who went to college seems any better informed than I am, either. Read. Read everything. That’s my advice.
What she says about Aaron Sorkin and the West Wing. Sheesh! I’d rather have fake idealism than no idealism. I loved the West Wing and recently did a rewatch, and it was still just as good. Fake idealism? It shows things the way I wish they could be. I see enough of how things really are online every day. I want some idealism, I want some happy endings. I want people who care and who get along and who try to make things better for everyone, not just themselves. I see nothing wrong with idealism, fake or not. Better than cynicism, which is everywhere today. I am the poster girl for cynicism. I probably should stop saying ‘sheesh’, too, but oh well.
I am doing better. Had a couple of blah days, but today back to attempting to get things done. Although I tried to vacuum and did about ten square inches before I had to come sit down due to pain, pain, pain. How am I supposed to function if I can barely stand up for any length of time? Frustrated. I want to do things, I am in the right frame of mind, I have enough energy to last several minutes, and then ow! Bah! Also, humbug. I was invited to a friend’s home for my birthday, but I had to say no because I have not been vaccinated yet, and even when I am, it’s a month before it’s really taken effect. My birthday is the 20th, so not enough time even if I got the shot today. Well, darn!
Which reminds me. (sheesh, you know) There are things I say all the time. Things I do, like, is it Spoonerisms when you transpose the first letters of words? I do this constantly. Of course I cannot think of one instance now that I need it. So it occurs to me, maybe this is part of the spectrum issues. I have mentioned to Tess many times that it’s like I have brain glitches. Maybe it’s that. Asperger’s. I have lots of things that fit. I have a tendency to fixate on something. Example: in high school I had a mad crush on a boy who lived down a street we passed every day on the way to school and the grocery store and the park. Every day I looked down that street. Every single time we passed it. But then I realized what I was doing and was able to force myself to not look. I find similar things happen even now, but I am able to be aware and change my behavior. I have also done stimming most of my life without realizing what it was. Lots of thing I’ve done I thought was just because I was weird, and never knew they were actually things, and that other people did them too. I only ever learned recently about stimming from things I read on Tumblr. I love Tumblr. 🙂 Life is weird, don’t you think? Anyway, that’s my big whatever for today. Happy April, everyone.
strangely peculiar 