Drat this working for a living all to heck.

 Are we never going to get to actual Black Friday?

The ads have been going on for three weeks - even in Canada.

Stop stop stop.  I don't believe in the power of sales anymore.  I haven't believed in Santa Sale for ages.


The news is always trying to make me feel sorry for retail because they can only break even with their transactions at the end of the year.  Every strike is described as the act of retail heretics - steeling their hearts against the plight of the poor little shopkeeper.  Bah.  It has nothing to do with international corporate convenience, of course not.  Hah.

I am here to share that Comet, my kitchen sink cleanser of choice, is made by The Spic and Span Company, which makes me more happy than I can explain.

I was trying to get some more, and my delivery grocery store didn't appear to carry it, so I was putting in a special request with as much information as possible.  Pursuit of this product revealed that, in Salmon Arm at least, the only place that carries Comet is Canadian Tire.

I don't want other companies' nasty little pastes, I want a nice powder that I can pastify myself.

 So.  I fell in the tub a month ago.  I was brightly bruised but not hurt, but I have been too freaked out to write about it until now.

I wouldn't have been having a shower except that someone was coming to the house, but it is a good thing someone was coming to the house because no one could hear me from inside the house.  Once the person arrived, I called for help and they brought over my neighbours.  Even though people outside could hear me call "help", I couldn't hear anything anyone said.

They called the police, who kicked in the door[1] [3], and then the ambulance people arrived and used a pneumatic lifting device to get me out of the tub.

I am never getting in the tub again.  I fell because my left knee just sometimes stops working and dumps me.  A walk-in tub wouldn't have prevented that, nor would one of those tub cuts.

I'm doing sponge baths, and they are okay, but not as pleasant as a shower of water.

I am carrying my cell phone with me everywhere and keeping it charged.[2]    And I have given my neighbours keys.

So.

One of the things I have feared the most has happened, and it wasn't nice.  If I had hurt myself, it could have been much worse (if I had gone unconscious, I don't know how long it would have been before someone checked on me - brrr).  However, I survived it with not too bad costs, and I would like to ask you to learn from my experience, and give your neighours/friends keys, and keep your phone close.

[1] - the weak spot is the door jamb
[2] - not that I can actually place a phone call inside my metal box of a prefab home, but texting works most times.
[3] - my new door has arrived and will be replaced on Tuesday[4]
[4] - $1800.00 CAD estimate[5]
[5] - I have the funds; all is good

 Can I just say that aged pixie dream granny isn't really worth duplicating?

I started watching Elspeth because it is highly stylized, and because the high profile guest star is always the murderer, and because we always get to see the murder straight away, so watching the unravelling is interesting.  I have strong reservations about the "New York Police Detectives are Dolts" trope because they darned well wouldn't be, and if Elspeth goes into its second season with this trope intact I will lose interest pretty darned quickly.  Carrie Preston is appealing in the role, but I don't think the quirkiness has the potential mileage of, "oh, and just one more thing" of Columbo.  I think they had a fun first season, but I also think they've got an uphill battle to transform into a series instead of a one season novelty.

Matlock and a cute but cunning old lady doesn't fill me with hope.

A high energy high IQ "single Mom" helping the local Police Detectives Who Are Dolts fills me with dread.  There are already ANTICS in the commercials.  No hope here either.

Here is the study that found the connection:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/ATVBAHA.124.321019

Well.  It will be interesting to see which fake sweet falls next.  Check your ingredients list - fake sweets are found in the damnedest places.  (I have to watch for sugar alcohols because yikes that stuff is taking the high speed train outta town.  Argh.)

 So.  My family has modest woo-woo events, mostly from dreams.  Examples: my mother and grandmother both had a dream on the same night where my Mom came and sat on Grama's hope chest at the foot of the bed and told her she was pregnant (with me).  Mom was living in Calgary and Grama in Midway BC, and this was before the highways and it was a 24 hour bus ride between the two places.  While courting, Mom woke up with a pain in her knee and had reached the point of going to the doctor with it, when she received a letter from Dad that he had put an axe in his knee, starting on the day she woke with the pain.  (He was ultimately fine.)

I've had non-personal woo-woo events: I was having a doze upstairs in an old house when I heard someone walking down the hall towards me.  They stopped in the doorway of the room I was in, and when i opened my eyes, there was no one there. Spooked me because there should have been someone there.  Later learned folklore was that the man who built the house always checked out new women in the house because his wife ran away with the coachman, and he was hoping that she had finally come back to him.  I have been working late in an office, which I did often without worry, and suddenly been so creeped out that I just had to leave, no peeing first, just gone baby gone, right now.

But, in general, I have not had much manifestation of woo-woo in my life, although I do trust my "gut feeling" about a lot of stuff, including offices suddenly feeling creepy, which can appear woo-woo to others.  I think some of the mechanism of woo-woo and gut feeling is that we have pattern-making brains, and that we are noticing details at a slightly less than conscious way.  We are automatically hoovering up the details and then our brain automatically tries to make sense out of the tidbits.  The more minimal and closer to useful meaning, the more woo-woo it feels.

About six months after Lorne's death I had some clothes hanging on the face of the door to the bedroom and I started to wake up in the night and see Lorne standing in the doorway.  I so wanted to see him, and at first I was comforted, but of course he didn't move or utter and ultimately I became upset and creeped out.  I moved the clothes so that the pattern couldn't form.  That experience of easily fooling myself because I wanted my delusion to be true gave my gut feelings the complete hairy monsters.

That was four years ago, and suddenly my atrophied woo-woo has really amped lately.  I've been sleeping with the TV on, tuned to one of the fireplace channels.  It has two sections that alternate, and one of them has enough random bits that my slowly waking brain is constantly trying like crazy to make sense of it.  I've seen Pennywise the Clown; an action figure of Indiana Jones, a gauntlet from a suit of armour, a miniature diorama of a gun placement on a sandy cliff, and two arms offering me brownies in each hand.  The brownies were the most recent.

I feel like I could have done a good job as a maiden perched over the gaseous abyss in the Delphic Oracle Temple; really super cryptic utterances.

 I stumbled across a report today that said that a study based on the PHDI (Planetary Health Diet Index) showed that people who followed its predominantly vegetable diet had less death than people who didn't (yes, that's my clumsy phrasing, sorry - people obviously die, but the vegetable eaters did it at an older age).[1]

So I sought out the Planetary Health Diet for their guidelines, and they are a super slick organization, funding studies and whatnot.  Their information is also predominantly videos and podcasts.  Ugh.

This is the best (huh: the best of a crummy selection is still best, even though also still crummy) print item is this:
https://eatforum.org/learn-and-discover/the-planetary-health-diet/

This is a request that if any of you find more print-based information to please share it with me.


[1] - yes, I have lost the story I first saw, but it is based on this published study:
https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(24)00389-7/abstract

 I have been experiencing mobility issues since before Christmas, and I am freaked out and furious.  I've been afraid to write about it because it makes it more real - and also: there is a limit to how interesting perpetual ranting can be: both to read - and to write.  Therefore, let's just pretend I have frothed myself to a stop and move on to my distraction methods.

To complicate things, the chair that I use at my desktop computer has finally absolutely died the no resurrection death.  It increases the mobility issues by pinching various Don't Do That nerves.  Argh.  The chair has been banished to the Next Dump Run pile, and I am using makeshifts that really are no better[2].  So I am using a laptop on my chest in the TV room while sitting in the big sleep chair with a heating pad on my knees[1].  Novel but not easy.

So.  I am watching a lot of TV.  Some of it has been improving, such as a subtitled three-part documentary about tea.  It was interesting in equal parts because of the information shared, and the style of documentary for something that is obviously as much mythical mystery of history and spirituality as it is factual physical agriculture.  I wish it had been longer.

Some of it has been desperation.  I have been watching the several programs of Mary Berg.  I like her "Mary Makes it Easy" more than I like her newest "The Good Stuff with Mary Berg", partly, I think, because it is more evident that she is an early-thirties woman, deeply into make-up and clothes.  Which, hey, I was too at that age, so there is no doubt a big market for her focus.  She is also a very super positive being, which is strongly emphasized in this latest program.  I find being around that type of person a lot like being out in the full sun.  The sun is lovely and warm, and one opens up like a flower at first, but continuous exposure leads to exhaustion and crispy edges.  I need a Super Positivity Screen cream.  I think, like the sun, Super Positive People are valuable and necessary, but I need to treat them with respect and caution.

Another program I have started to watch is Hudson and Rex.  This is about my groove.  It is a police procedural set in St John's Newfoundland, where a detective with a canine partner investigates various murders.  It is a series in its seventh year, so I suspect that they have already investigated more murders than there are people in the city, but hey.  This is a cozy procedural because none of the regular cast will ever be in any kind of jeopardy, so one can relax into the puzzle.  This is also one of those shows where the tech sounds good, and they've made an effort to do more than just invoke handwavium, but the science is shallow.  But that's okay because I have documentaries for the science, yes/no?

The kicker is the canine partner, the "Rex" part.  It's not quite teddy bears and cotton candy, but it is definitely very The Littlest Hobo.  In fact, the whole series is The Littlest Hobo meets Midsomer Murders.

Because of the reminder of The Littlest Hobo, I found some reruns of the second iteration of that show.  I happen to like recurring human characters, so it was never a draw for me, but I would certainly watch it if nothing else was on.  It is a good show to do homework to.  It is a good show to write a dreamwidth post to.

The rest of my viewing is mostly low-key cooking shows.  How-to without competition.  I quite like Anna Olson:  her Sugar, and Baking with Anna Olson.  I am never ever not even once going to toy with croissant dough, but it is interesting to watch someone who is skilled and who loves what she is doing.

Okay.  So I'm back, as wordy as ever.

[1] - heat seems to improve the pain tolerance and flexibility of my knees.  My suspicion is that is is like heating up connective tissue in a slab of meat: when it is warm it is more flexible.  I dunno, but it definitely feels better.

[2] - I did buy a new office chair about a year ago (maybe longer?), and I bought one that was for heavier wider people.  However, the assumption is that heavier and wider also means taller, so the seat does not lower below 24 inches.  I need something 20 inches or lower.  I can't get into the chair.  I am delaying buying a second chair because even when one thinks one has thought of all the possible ways things can go awry, one is wrong.

By now you will have seen that very compelling video of the CDK dance troop's version of Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know. I am particularly in love the with misuse of the fashions of my youth - I'd like to wear them again, just like that.

Anyway - I want to share this version that I just found, which is from a dance competition, so no cuts or clever editing. I think it is just as compelling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sXCTnk0yfs

Just in case you haven't seen the one already burning down the internet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REPPgPcw4hk

I haven't watched a whole entire awards show for probably 40 years. I crashed out hard after Terms of Endearment took the Academy Award. I taped the Grammys because I am getting accustomed to zipping through commercials, and I admit that I misread the guide, and thought it was only 90 minutes instead of 180. However, the pacing was good, and the entertainment also good, so I stuck it right to the end.

Although I am very grateful for listening to Tracy Chapman do Fast Car, it was watching Luke Combs gaze at her with a mix of hero-worship and disbelief that he was on stage with her that made the tears leak out of my eyes. I suspect he was meant to be singing more often during their duet, and I also suspect that he was enjoying being in her presence while she sang. It is difficult for a man of his size and style to appear to be anything but patriarchal, and when they hugged at the end, it did look like he was presenting/cherishing a prized possession, but watching his face, I think the only "possessing" he was feeling was for his admiration/adoration of a hero.

I can't remember the order I saw these, but my eyes leaked when Annie Lennox sang for Sinead O'Connor; when Fantasia did Tina Turner (wow!); when Joni Mitchell's voice wouldn't do what it used to do, and her WILL alone forced it to be amazing.

And when Miley Cyrus won her first Grammy - her pleasure was lovely to watch, not the least of reasons being that you could tell that while she was delighted, she didn't feel it validates her or defines her or her work. And seriously: she was channeling the 80's so strong that I kept thinking Tina Turner. That dress (apparently Mackie) and that hair, and those moves. Yes.