Author: Gradmama2011

Well, I have been dealing with Life, as it is called, for several weeks. A lot has happened.

Son Scott hopped a ride to the hospital in an ambulance…his first such trip. He had a stent inserted to his heart, which repaired a 99% blockage. For months he had pains off and on, usually put down as indigestion or muscle strain. He had no signs of having a heart attack, but when they did miscellaneous tests they discovered the blockage. He came home in just a couple of days and has had physical restrictions lifted. He is 59. He is fine now, says he feels better than he has for ages.

On another situation, my computer died. Really, and while it was doing that it managed to wipe out an old laptop that was about eight years old. The poor thing tried to reboot, but after Microsoft kindly installed those years of updates … from Windows 7 the poor baby advanced to Windows 10. This isn’t the first time I had a crash, but this one lasted longer than just a few days,

So I bought a refurbished Dell from Walmart Refurbs and it is a beauty! I paid around $300 for it, a tower and a really nice keyboard, and mouse. I think I have had 10 computers since 1983, when I bought my first computer, not counting tablets and other devices.

The new Dell requires a LOT of attention, installing and activating apps and programs that need to be put in. I hate to say it, but my brain is getting to the point where some of that old information in the dusty old filing cabinets of my brain …virtual as they are…will need to be jettisoned to make room for new.

It is so annoying when I find that I have to reload and restablish fonts of facts and tid bits of conjecture. Some how I have been laboring under the delusion that my notebooks with passwords and passphrases, codes, and completely foreign symbols and caricatures were still viable keys to the myriad of facts. Some times I suspect that ET has added characters and marks to my notes as I sleep.

Let’s see. Oh, I know… three days ago I noticed the little early daffodils marching across my back yard had begun to pop out in all their yellow glory. The next day it rained all day. Yesterday it snowed…and overnight it snowed even more and piled three or four inches of snow on top of the yellow flowers. Yeah, I know, no biggies really…it actually prolongs the life of daffodils. I have seen daffodils literally crawling out of a snow drift.

On that note I’m going to see if we can find a movie on TV. Good luck wih that 🙂

I have a dream. Literally, a recurring dream that has haunted me forever. I suppose it is, in some ways altruistic—like the Sandra Bullock flick where she is an FBI agent undercover at a beauty pageant, and some of the other contestants actually do say that they wish for “world peace and a puppy for everyone.”

No, my dream doesn’t involve puppies…but it does involve World Peace for everyone and their puppies.

In this morning’s dream, I have accidentally invented a substance that can be concentrated and distributed to the poor. The substance reminds me of trail mix: unidentified chunks of fruit and assorted nuts and seeds loose in a bag or smushed into a “power bar.” In my dream the benefits and value are evident, but once the alarm cut through my sleep and dream it faded.

I do remember thinking (in the dream) of a distribution strategy, in which the mixture would be sealed into a little packet like the ones that come in a box with turkey stuffing mix, or sprinkles for a cake-mix topping.

(…to be continued)

Looking backward in my lifetime, I have always been only vaguely informed about Vaccines and even the terrible diseases that once ravaged the population…such as Polio…75-odd years ago, but fortunately have been almost eliminated throughout the world. But now…it appears to me…those killer/maimers are peeking out of the holes they once disappeared into.

The last day or so we are finding that Omicron, the latest strain of the Corona-virus to threaten mankind….which may be more hideous because it attacks our children. Oh No! How will the Anti-Vaxxers spin that development.?

They are saying the new strain causes new threat to children in the form of what the first reports described as the “croup.” Then the parenthetical word— “pertussis” sounding the nature of the new wave of horror… begging the question: What is “pertussis”? … whooping cough. A terrible affliction that fortunately was more or less wiped out before I was born in 1934. They called it the “croup,” and whenever one of us kids had even a hint of a cough, Mom would start to worry.

A quick Search of Google tells me that the DPT combination vaccine (against diptheria, pertussin, and tetanus) was developed in the 1930s by a pediatrician names Leila Denmark. I’m not sure when I was given the DPT vaccine. I do recall the Smallpox vaccine when I was about six years old, possibly given me after I had started school. I still have the scar from the bifurcated needle, a single needle which contained multiple small needles.

My first memories of the DPT vaccine was when my oldest child was a baby, in 1957. I believe when the next baby arrived in 1961, that the recently-new Polio vaccine had been added in or with the DPT. Incidentally, I note that when the oldest was six, she became very ill with the hard Measles. The boys were very young, and there was as yet no vaccine against Measles.

My personal vaccine history included a battery of shots before I went to Germany in 1955. Those included vaccination against Malaria, and boosters for anything I had had previously. I also had the series of Polio vaccinations, the Sabin, Salk, and the one given on a sugar-cube.

These images are of different photo-times. The top shots are recent a month ago; the bottom right shows a branch of berries starting to ripen. upper last shot is of what we call the “stud holly.” A few years ago our hollies won’t doing much in the way of making berries, so we adopted an appropriate plant…which has proven very successful. The last photo was taken of the big holly before the berry-making began. Some of the upper branches were broken in the severe storm we had in September when the over-hanging Japanese Plum tree branches broke and fell on the holly below. (I think the lower shot shows the plant in its blossom stage. (all photos ©Sometimes2021)

Here I am in one of my happiest hats. Frosty can do all sorts of tricks that Gradmama2011 would never do! Frosty lives on forever! (in my Sometimes blog, anyhow.)

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND ALL OTHER HOLIDAYS AND SPECIAL OCCASIONS TO EVERYONE!

The first thing this morning (ok, so it was eleven o’clock,) there was a threatening message in my yahoo queue from one of my credit card companies, informing me that my payment had been declined.

What? Oh HECK NO! It was just Monday that we straightened that issue out when I agreed to make a payment and then, out of the goodness of my heart, I noted that the bank account information they had on file was outdated. My bank had changed information—again—this time including all of my account numbers in addition to the name of the bank; the accounts remained the same except they had completely different routing and account numbers.

I duly began a search to find the culprit in this case, and discovered—after being bounced off the company site three times, being cut off once by a reboot of my mainframe which involved a long wait for the internet signal to reset and watching the infernal little whirling circle for what seemed like ages before the Microsoft Sign-In thing appeared on the Desktop, and dealing with the flashing red bar warning me that my account was in count-down to oblivion—eventually—that the agent that noted my bank information on Monday had entered my phone number instead of the new bank number.

Now, IF I can reach the account settings page, I will go in there and enter the correct information. But those automatic forms do not offer a provision for customers to graciously accept that the agent had made an error, and gee whiz, errors happen… NO, there is no one to yell at and be appropriately remorseful.

I admit that I am no stranger to getting threats from bill collecting credit cards, and have reached the conclusion that if they are nice to me…I will be nice to them. Sometimes they are in error, sometimes I am wrong. But they didn’t even try to be nice with their threatening email this time…and it wasn’t even MY fault the rep guy couldn’t fill in the blanks correctly. THAT hurt my feelings… ;-(

Son-in-law Mike broke his ankle in three places Sunday night when he took his old dog Mickey out for his mid-night (1:30 A.M.) constitutional. Mickey, a Boston Bull Terrior, is blind, so he must be escorted outside. Mike slipped on the fresh ice and slid down the steps onto the sidewalk. The rescue squad arrived soon after, bundled the patient up, and took off for the hospital, which is about 15 miles from home.

The hospital Emergency Room was swamped with patients, about 70 waiting at one time. Entry into the treatment room is of course expedited when brought into the bay by ambulance, but in this instance the treatment rooms were  occupied, and adjascent hallways were filled with waiting patients. 

All previously scheduled elective surgical procedures had been cancelled, or postponed, because of the influx of patients with COVID-19  symptoms.   So Mike’s surgery was scheduled for today, and as of this writing has been successfully completed and he will be home in a few hours.