A Little Bit of Everthing

I only eat at the lunch table here on the continuum care campus on Thursday, Friday and sometimes on Saturday. I love the lunch table. It sets 14 people and they come and go between 11:30 to 2:00 with some people staying the entire time and others eating and leaving for what we call the second shifters to take their places. l usually try to sit near the middle of the table so I can listen to and/or join in the conversations going on at either end of the table.

 Politics are rarely ever talked about at the lunch table but on Thursday I eavesdropped on five known MAGA supporters talk about Kennedy's confirmation to head the Department of Health and Human Services which includes oversight of the CDC and Food and Drugs. A well known vaccine skeptic, Mr. Kennedy has spread conspiracies theories about them to the point that my Liberal Ladies group (who eat together on Tuesday nights) is worried we're going to suffer another pandemic before 45/47 is out of office. Among the other things being cut by Executive Order is funding to any school with a Covid vaccine mandate for staff and students. These five MAGA fans were saying things like, "There really wasn't enough testing done on the Covid Vaccine" and "I won't be getting any more Covid vaccines until they prove they are safe." Thirteen billion dosages of the vaccine have been given to people world-wide! How much more 'testing' do they need?" 

They went on to talk about how Kennedy wants to get rid of all the additives in our foods and by then cynical me was thinking about how much the Republicans made fun of and had hissy-fits over Mrs. Obama's White House garden and her project to teach city people how to grow, cook and eat healthier foods. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an alternate world. It's certainly a tribal world. Ideas are only good if your team is pitching them.

One night I challenged myself to watch Fox News to see how they were covering the demonstrations across the country over firing all the people in USAID and they didn't even mention there was any push back in the courts or in the streets, in fact they were praising Musk for the fine job he was doing gutting USAID and other government agencies and "saving the tax payers trillions of dollars." If that were true why is 45/47 calling for the federal debt ceiling to be raised 4.5 Trillion dollars? Could it have anything to do with Musk getting 8 millions a DAY from federal contracts for his SpaceX project? We can't buy grain from U.S. farmers to send overseas to starving people because that's "wasteful USAID" but there's no oversight what so ever on how that eight million dollars a day to go to Mars is being spent. And what's the point of colonizing Mars---the goal of SpaceX---when we can't even agree on which groups of people here on earth are worthy of getting our tax money.

Another one of our hard core MAGA supporters died this week. He was such a nice, gentle guy. But a man with Pro-life and Trump bumper stickers on his car. Married 75 years. he lived a life devoted to his Church, his wife and large family. He held his wife's hand where ever they went and they never had a meal at the lunch table without praying (out loud) over their food. He was a one issue voter who could overlook all kinds of 45/47's sins in exchange for his promise to "save the babies." I try to remind myself of this couple when I'm about to I spout disrespect and hate towards all MAGA people. They are many things but most of them are not evil. 

Yes, it's very tempting to sit here and write a bitch session about everything that is annoying, wrong or downright scary going on in the country right now. The current administration's bull-in-china-shop approach to governing is destabilizing the entire world. And they are proud of that fact. If I was two years old I'd be that kid who'd be laying on the floor right about now, kicking my fat little legs up and down and crying while the adults do their best to ignore my temper tantrum. But I'm not two years old and in my eighty+ years of living I've learned enough to know that I'm the only person who can hop on the metaphorical white horse and save myself from what ails me. Unfortunately my armor is not shining at the moment from falling off the damn horse too often because I worry too much about things beyond my control.

But I can save myself from my continued weight gain which is  pretty much what my doctor told me last week that I have to do. He did look up a medication that he thought would be safe for me to take, but it requires a daily shot in the belly and he stated Medicare wouldn't cover it. So he asked me what has worked in the past and I made the mistake of being honest, confessing that lots of time spent exercising worked better than anything. He was what I predicted he'd be: sympathetic about how much I hate being fat and I hate exercise but he told me none the less to start walking three miles a day on the treadmill. It's been three days since I saw him and I've been to the gym three times since but I've yet to make it the full three miles. 

He also gave me a prescription for some liquid iron for my blood and a nasal spray for a persistent cough I've had all winter. My blood work showed that my Stage 3 Kidney Disease has not progressed---good news. But something I answered on the Medicare Wellness questionnaire must have triggered an automatic reply because a few days after my appointment I got a list on my patient portal for places seniors can get help with food or housing insecurities or mental health issues. I do not need a list like that but sadly for those who might, many of those services listed probably will get cut by President Musk. ©

Until Next Wednesday…

Goodwill Hunting, Senator Angus King and Ismo

On the way to the grocery store I dropped off a heavy-ass blender to Goodwill and decided to go inside on the off chance that they'd have a vintage mahjong set for pennies on the dollar. No such luck but I did notice they were selling sweaters for half off their normal price of $6.00. I have never bought clothing at Goodwill or The Salvation Army although I've shopped both places for collectibles off and on my entire adult life. But I've gained enough weight this winter that I'm running out of clothes that fit so I looked through the sweaters. The first and only thing I picked off the rack was a Ralph Lauren, shawl collared sweater with leather trim. With the help of Google's Reverse Image Search I found the same sweater for sale at vintage clothing stores for prices ranging from $180 to $60. I snatched that sweater up and headed toward the puzzles and game department but found an unlocked dressing room along the way. The sweater fit! I had intended to take it home and if it didn't fit I'd just donate it back. For less than a cup of coffee I could do that. Isn't that amazing! The only regret I had in buying it is I got so excited I forgot to read the care tag and at home I learned it couldn't go in the dryer. It tied up my kitchen table for twelve hours while it air dried over a large towel and garbage bags. That's a sweater that won't be moving to assisted living with me, where they turn every special care garment into Barbie doll clothes. Not that I'm planning that move any time soon. But one can never plan too far ahead...that's been a life-long motto that doesn't work as well now that I'm older than television and silly-putty.

My old blender was glass and nearly impossible for me to lift with my right hand and arm which is bothering more and more to the point I'm dropping stuff and a few months ago I had purchased a Ninji, Fitness blender for $59 which only makes single serving size blended drink. Smoothies are all I need a blender for these days. Still, I was reluctant to give up my bigger better, bad-ass blender but my days of trying to make fresh cranberry sauce and forgetting to put the top on the blender thus blasting the ceiling with red berries bits are over. It sounds stupid, I know, but it was a hard decision to close that door of my life even though that blender was just another reminder that I'm getting old and I have to make concessions for my decline in physical dexterity and strength. Boo-hoo. I am not bad-ass anymore. 

In case you haven't figured it out by now the word I'm enamored with today is "ass." There was a comedian from Finland in Facebook Short Reels yesterday named Ismo and he was making fun of how many ways Americans used the word 'ass.' Dumb-ass, badass, lazy ass, grown ass man, move your ass, half ass and a piece of ass. He joked that you can add 'ass' to anything to make it sound cooler. So expect a few more 'asses' in this post.

Another uplifting thing I saw in the Shorts was a speech given by a Senator from Maine, named Angus King. I would call it a profile in courage and I hope it's the beginning of more people in government pushing back. He stool before the senate and asked the Republicans if there are no red lines that they won't cross. It's a long speech about protecting the constitution and how Elon Musk is at odds with how the constitution is supposed to work. If you get a chance to listen to this speech it will make you feel hopeful. Like hearing the opening solo in what you assume will be an opera of epic proportions as other voices join in.

“We’re experiencing in real Time exactly what the framers most feared,” King said.“The framers were so fearful of concentrated power that they designed a system that would be hard to operate. And the heart of it was the separation of power between various parts of the government. The whole idea, the whole idea was that no part of the government, no one person, no one institution had or could ever have a monopoly on power, Why? Because it's dangerous," King explained. "History and human nature tells us that. This division of power as annoying and inefficient as it can be, particularly to the executive, I know because I used to be a governor, is an essential feature of the system, not a bug. It's an essential, basic feature of the system, designed to protect our freedoms. Now, this contrasts with the normal structure of a private business, where authority is purposefully concentrated, allowing swift and sometimes arbitrary action. But a private business does not have the army, and the President of the United States is not the CEO of America.” 

I have a busy week ahead with something going every day starting with a super bowl party tomorrow. (I write on Saturdays for my upcoming Wednesday posts.) I don't care a flying fig about the super bowl but our social committee here at the CCC has ordered a meal from a great Italian restaurant in town so I'll go with my little tray of lemon curd tarts to add to the desert table. It's my go-to, always-have-the-ingredients-on-hand dish to pass. I've also got two appointments off campus this week that I'm dreading. 

One of those appointments is with my primary doctor. He never talks about the elephant in the room---my weight. In the twenty years plus I've been going to him he's seen me loss and gain back the same 50 pounds several times over. I want to talk about it this time but at my age and with other medical complications I predict he won't give me anything to help other than sympathy. He's as skinny as the proverbial rail and can't gain weight..."Can't change our genes." I feel quite hopeless on the topic. Stay tuned. I'll let you know in a coming post if my fat ass has a chance of dropping a few pounds. ©

Until Next Wednesday. 

Tell me About Yourself

I start my mornings drinking coffee in front of my computer monitor. First I check my two email accounts---one is for what I call 'better mail' and the other is for sites that send me newsletters: CNN's Five Good Things, historian Heather Cox Richardson, a few political groups like Red, Wine & Blue. Then I check my blog for comments and I end up on Facebook where my feed shows me a mixture of family posts, video posts from the cast of Saturday Night Live and late night hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert plus posts from the five Mahjong sites I follow. If I have an hour to kill---which I usually do---I'll watch Facebook 'Short Reels' where I'm liable to see just about anything related to kittens/cats, puppies/dogs, furniture flipping, people saving wild animals in dangerous situations and science solving environmental issues like they do in Poland using clams that monitor the quality of city water. A city in the USA uses mussels, too. You could compare them to canaries in a coal mines only the mussels don't die when the water is bad, they just close up and set off alarms attached to their shells.

One of the Shorts I saw today was posted by a guy who was a former Stanford University Admissions Director. What he said gave me an idea for blog fodder and God knows I needed something to inspire me today or I'd go off on another tangent about how our post-election country is on the crazy train to hell.

Mr. Interviewer said one of the first questions they ask is one of the most important and they ask it in an off-handed manner that you don't think is more than just chi-chat. The question is: "Tell me about yourself." The answers come in many forms and often in a rambling way---kind of like I write---and that doesn't rate the students very high. He said the correct way to reply is to say, "There are three things you should know about me." Typical of Facebook Shorts you had to find your way to part two to learn what kinds of things you should list and typical of me I couldn't find part two.

But, still the video got me to thinking about how would I answer that question. How does anyone pick out just three things about ourselves that's going to make an impression on someone you just met? It's a given that your answer would depend on whose doing the asking. A college admissions interview is going to be different from a job interviewer or a stranger at a party saying, "Tell me about yourself." In the deep, dusty corners of my mind I recall asking that very question in social settings. It was probably in the late '60s when I was on a search for a significant other and I read a lot of self-help books. Back then I might have answered that question something like, "Oh, my! I love to laugh. I have a passion for art and I take a lot of night classes." 

Can you believe it, I was in the work force from 1958 to 2001 and I only had three job interviews in my entire life. One was for the telephone company and---dub!---dyslexic me failed the test involving looking up numbers. Those where the days when you could call an operator by dialing zero and the operator was expected to know how to sound out the spelling of surnames. Another interview was for a wholesale floral company and the interviewer tried to put his hands up my sweater. I ran out of that place, too shocked and scared to look back. 

The third interview I must have had but I don't remember it. It's enough to say I got the job of selling clothes in the boys department in a large, upscale department store. I stayed there a year while I built up my own floral design business enough to quit. I left on good terms and the store's owner frequently bought flowers from me because he liked to support, "new businesses." He was a great employer who appreciated his workers where my former employer thought floral designers "were a dime a dozen." He got that idea from silly women who'd tour our greenhouses, retail shop and design rooms and would say things like, "I'd work here for free." Ya, they'd have loved the 12-14 hour days we put in around all the holidays. They'd have loved a boss who paid women a third less than the guys doing the exact, same jobs because "they had families to feed." It was the sixties and I'm shamed of our country right now because we're going to have to fight the same Civil Rights and Woman's Rights battles all over again or we'll find ourselves living in a chapter of The Handmaiden Tale. 

And don't get me started on tariffs. 45/47 said Denmark is getting one too, "until they cede control of Greenland." Sometimes watching him speak it's hard to tell if it's really him or one of the cast members of Saturday Night Live---the words coming out of him mouth are so ridiculous. Like him saying the terrible plane/helicopter crash last week was caused by Diversity, Equity and Inclusion hires, which was his way of drawing attention away from the fact that on his second day back in office (at Elon Musk's direction) he dismantled the Federal Aviation Administration and put a freeze on hiring more air traffic controllers at a time when they are known to be understaffed. Rich boys playing tit-for-tat and this 'tit' came because the FAA fined poor little Elon's SpaceX twice for failing to follow licensing protocols when he did his rocket launches. And now Musk and his band of young tech nerds---one isn't even out of his teens yet!---has unlimited access to the U.S. Department of Treasury's payment system! One of the ways we need to fight back on 45/47's Shock-and-Awe or Wrecking Ball approach to 'governing' is to support/subscribe to a trusted news source or two because 45/47 is now going after the free press and public broadcasting with a vengeance. And once they're gone we're doomed.

Back on topic: How would I answer the 'three-things' question today? If you couldn't tell by the paragraph above, I've been stalling because I really don't know. But let's assume I'm not being asked because I'm looking a job or going back to college in my old age. In a social situation, after all these years I could still naively list that I love to laugh and I still like art but it's no longer in the top five loves in my life. I still enjoy taking classes but I no longer drive at night…and I'm not crazy about daytime driving either. Any classes I take are here on campus or from YouTube. Still stalling…

It just dawned on me that answer to the 'three things' you should know about me came conventionally in a fortune cookie that I got at our celebration of the Chinese New Year buffet. It said: "Your mentality is alert, practical and analytical." Everyone at the table agreed that the fortune fit me. Of course, I also got to laugh too because one of my table mates made us all read our fortunes a second time adding "in bed" to the end. ©

Until Next Wednesday.