I have very little to say about this week. There was rain- apparently a Nor-easter. On Sunday Eversource called us in the morning suggesting we check our emergency supplies and where the closest Red Cross Shelter was, because there would probably be outages. Sure enough about five past eleven, we lost power, but as we were already turned in, didn’t worry about it much.
Part of this was because I seem to have caught the cold Kat had last week. Ah well, you deal with it. Usually a cold is life telling you you need to take it easy for a while, so I got out my knitting and settled in to do little but watch the courtroom dramas I’d ordered from the library. After six decades, I know what to expect, there’s a day of sneezing, and a day of coughing, and a day when the phlegm collects in the chest, and then things gradually get better. Today I’m in the only coughing occasionally- but my stomach muscles are so sore that they feel bruised. I am possiblty too worried that I might cough myself another hernia again, but you know, once it’s happened, you never feel secure again. Get your hankies and wait it out. It was, perhaps, inconvenient to have this happening in the week leading up to Changing Times, but one doesn’t get to schedule colds. At least I’m not the one doing the last minute charging around. I ordered the badge ribbons and they’re ready to go, and I’m hoping to get whatever is on the recorders uploaded into my computer tonight after the podcast- after the last planning meeting- unless I crash and burn early. Having gone to bed at 9 for the last several days my sleep cycle is shifting.
I think this is going to be the last podcast- unless I can find another venue. Last week the sound quality was awful, and when the power came back on I found a pile of “listen to my show” announcements for other LiveParanormal’s shows on my fb page. They’ve screwed their algorithm up somehow. I had been vaguely bothered by it as I deleted them as they showed up, but since I was gone, they were the only thing one my page, and the accumulation was irritating. I frankly would feel worse to give up posting holidays on Holidays that Might get Overlooked, because I still find holidays fascinating.
I will praise my kindle- I was able to read for an hour each evening (in the dark, since it’s one that lights up) and it lasted until today! ( I still had 9%) The phone discharges very quickly- I think it’s because it spends a lot of energy looking for a signal, and there isn’t one here. I tried to use it to let people on fb know we were among the powerless, but it wouldn’t send from here. I do have to wonder if anyone noticed my absence. Lot’s of others were also without power, and many of them are not as well set up to deal with it as we are. We hung our propane lamps in the kitchen, cooked on the gas stove, heated water from the cistern downstairs on the woodstove, used greywater to flush, and were pretty much OK.
I felt sad that we had no one come to our house on Halloween. We put up a lot of candles (as there was still no power) so people would know we were “open for treating”, but I really think that there are just no children in our area any more. Willow helped Avi get her kids ready for going out. Aparently the little man went as a gravestone- made from one of those yard decoration gravestones. His sister was a spooky cemetary bride- and quite cross at the addition of reflective tape to her amazing spookiness! They were lucky I wasn’t there to regale them with the sad stories of cool costumes muffled under rain-gear and snowsuits! Kat came up with a great idea: “Why don’t costume shops sell long underwear?” When you think about it, there would be a great market for things to keep you warm that you could wear under your costume. Someone has really missed an opportunity there!
DID anything happen this week? Did I tell you last week about my desk chair biting the dust? It would no longer hold the position you wanted it to be in. Well, a few days ago I was sitting in my chair at the kitchen table and the legs simply slid out from under the chair, I think the two front legs were attached by a brace, and they sort of folded outward, with the result that I sank relatively gracefully down to the floor. It was quite funny, since no one was hurt and the chair was salvaged anyway. I guess it’s just a bad time for chairs right now. And if that’s the big news of the week, that’ll tell you how little happened!
Liz got an adorable little dog who she has named Rascal. He’s an Aussiedoodle if I remember correctly. She says he’s about the size of a cat. SUCH a face! I want a dog!Our freinds Sarah and Ekke got hit hard by the nor’easter. They are remodling an old house with all the joy of archeologists, and have been posting pictures of the old stuff they’ve been finding in the foundations and well, etc.; it is very 
much a fixer upper. Apparently having been stripped for retrofitting, the roof wasn’t as attached as it needed to be and slid off the walls! They are taking it as a challenge- the way they do everything,
much a fixer upper. Apparently having been stripped for retrofitting, the roof wasn’t as attached as it needed to be and slid off the walls! They are taking it as a challenge- the way they do everything,Brian isn’t coming to CTCW this year, he’s fighting in Crown Tournament. Linda and Dennis are in Florence again (or maybe Venice, I’m not quite sure.) I am living vicariously through my friends. (Except for Julia, who’s husband Dino died last week. I only met him a few times, but I love her so much, I cry for her loss.) One thing social media does is it keeps us in touch.
One evening Willow made me some cough syrup “Nail in your Coughin’ ” when she couldn’t deal with watching me cough and say “ow” any more. (I’d run out of my home-made cough syrup.) As usual she did her instinctive selection of what would go in, and I’d check my herbal book and see that it was something that was good. She thought that Anise was the same as Star Anise, and used the Star Anise- and while it’s not the it’s antiviral, (contains the medication in Tamiflu), anti bacterial, antifungal, antioxidant, and it’s an expectorant, and anti-spasmodic so it’s good for the immune system. She also put in rose hips (which I do too) and catnip, which I wouldn’t have thought about, but turns out to be antispasmodic.
She also made a wonderful stir fry one night with garlic, peppers, & onions, and rice noodles. That really cleared the sinuses! Another night she brought home a rotissarie chicken, and I made soup from the bones. (I’d already gone through all the broth from the turkey bones from when Mark came over last week.)
Since during the day I knit and read, I read The Julius House, and Dead over Heels, the next Aurora Teagarden mystery, and have started the next- a Fool and his Honey. Frankly, I liked the first (Real Murders) best, and don’t much care for her husband. I hate to think that people consider themselves happily married when the best they can say about their partner is that he allowes her to be herself. That’s good, but I would want more than that. (I know I was spoiled.)
I finished No apparent Distress: a Doctor’s coming-of-age on the front lines of American Medicine. The author is a doctor who’d thought to be a writer, and then became a doctor. The memoir is of her days as a med student, and how meeting and dealing with patients and seeing the variety of ways medicine treats them affected her. I guess the worst part was coming to grips with the fact that if you have insurance, you get care, and if you don’t have money / insurance, you suffer and die from things that she would be able to treat. That’s got to be hard. The “what happened to me” books, like this one and Black Man in a White Coat, are much easier reads than the “what happened” books like America’s Bitter Pill, and An American Sickness. Personal reactions are personal; there’s no requirement to take a position. When I look at the politics behind how the Medical Complex is run these days, I am angry and depressed. I don’t know how these people can make the choices that they do. I want to understand. On the one hand, I don’t think that we need to provide every possible treatment to everyone because they are hoping for a miracle, but surely we can afford a base level of care that doesn’t leave conditions that will get worse doing so because we seem to think it’s a sin to be poor. Today I got a phone call from a “pro-life” group, and I’m afraid I was too tired and achey to be polite and I hung up on the caller. I understand that these people feel that abortion is infanticide, and want to work against it. But if they really cared about children, they’d support birth control, and pre-natal care, and post natal care, and help the children as they were growing. The fact that they are willing to ignore everything except the fetus shows that they are not thinking of children and caring for them.
On the kindle I’m reading a Charles de Lint book The Wind in his Heart, and have also started a couple others The Bedlam Detective, and Faerie Fruit. I’m also in the middle of the latest Magnus Chase book The Ship of the Dead. I dont read too much non-fiction when I’ve got a cold, but I’ve started The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones. (as well as the bunch of medical books I’m working my way through, although to be honest, I haven’t done much with those since I’ve been sick.)
But the other group I am working on is the bunch of courtroom dramas I sent for from the library. Before we lost power I watched the Caine Mutiny. Wonderful drama. I agreed with the lawyer who indicated that there was fault in their not giving Queeg more support, he was clearly showing stress reactions. At the same time, as shown, it looked like the ship was going to capsize in the high seas if they didn’t adjust their course. I may have been sensitized by watching Paths of Glory just before that. THat was marred a bit for me by having all the French characters having very American accents, but one wouldn’t want them to have been doing “French Accents”, that would have been worse. It was a agonizing depiction of the system treating innocent men badly to serve the ambitions of the powerful. I don’t suppose you can come up with a sicker, more horrible system of warfare than the WWI trench warfare, but then I suppose every war is vile if looked at closely, and one doesn’t want it to be clean and easy. Inherit the Wind was wonderful, I loved how the lawyer really liked his opponent, but simply wanted to have religion be able to keep science from asking troubling questions. I’m halfway through A Civil Action, and have waiting by the player- The life of Emile Zola, A cry int he Dark, and a Man for all Seasons.
For Halloween I re-watched The Haunting, the original. I really wanted to watch the recent remake, but our copy is on VHS (phooey). I thought the ending was far more positive in the remake. John watched so many “Halloween” movies this past month, and what type of movie will he choose for this month?
Ah well, time to send this off. Tonight we are having our last on-line meeting about CTCW, and tomorrow we’ll pack our bags and the car, and get off to CTCW. I hope I’m as much improved tomorrow as I feel better today than yesterday.
Tchipakkan
Holidays Next week:
Wednesday 1 Calzone Day, Fried Clams Day, Stress Awareness, Author’s Day, Vinegar Day, Vegan Day
Thursday 2 Deviled Egg Day, Men Make Dinner, Plan your Epitaph, Practice being Psychic Day, World Stout Day
Friday 3 National Sandwich Day, Housewife Day, Cliche Day, Jersy Friday, Give Someone a Dollar Day
Saturday 4 National Candy Day, King Tut Day, Book lovers Day, Skeptics Day, Use your Common Sense Day
Sunday 5 National Doughnut Appreciation Day, Gunpowder Day, Love your Red Hair Day, Zero Tasking Day
Monday 6 National Nachos Day, National Saxephone Day, Basketball Day,
Tuesday 7 Election Day, National Bittersweet Chocolate with Almonds Day, Notary Public Day
Wednesday 8 Cappuccino Day, Abet and Aid Punsters Day, Cook something Bold and Pungent, Ample Time Day, Dunce Day
Faith is the innate knowledge of the fundamental rightness of all things, whether positive or negative.- Process Precept
Tchipakkan 