I sat quietly this morning, after Attila left for work, staring out the living room window, occasionally sipping my coffee, comfortable in my new easy chair. The light came slowly, blushing before revealing itself completely. Morning is my favourite time of day.
When Princess Diana died, I felt that the world had turned a corner, and not in a good way. Her passing was significant to me, and to many others. At that time, in September of 1997, I taped television coverage of her funeral. That was when I first perceived that the world was turning to darker times. I think that back then the tragedy of technology for the human race was only beginning to be felt, and has escalated beyond anything I could have imagined in 1997. Like any weapon, its use depends on who is wielding it.
Watching some of these old VHS tapes I am noticing how many of the programs in the 1990s displayed car chases as the epitome of excitement and daring. How different things are now, when entertainment is so saturated with extreme violence, graphic gore, and death… those are things I do not find entertaining in the least.
I spent several hours on Saturday researching bread recipes, in particular salt-free bread recipes. I have decided to try a recipe that includes oatmeal, and have my fingers crossed that it turns out reasonably well. Finding the recipe is only the beginning however, I need to actually bake the bread, and will hopefully break my state of inertia this week and do so.
This week I need to get our car in for a Drive Clean inspection. Owning a car is a necessity in holding down most jobs in areas without public transportation, and it is an expensive necessity!
The weather today was lovely, sunny and mild, 12C. I hung my laundry out to dry, and managed to get out for a walk. When Attila arrived home from work he felt like going for a walk on this glorious day, so out we went. The summer was hot, dry, and horrid, but our autumn has been something to write home about!
 |
Worldly Distractions
Weather
11°C
Date: 11:00 AM EST Monday 14 November 2016
Condition: Mainly Sunny
Pressure: 101.5 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 11.2°C
Dew point: 2.0°C
Humidity: 53%
Wind: SW 13 km/h
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, a blessing money can’t buy.”
Izaak Walton
1593 – 1683
DH and I go to movies periodically as a kind of date night. I’ve noticed recently that almost all the movies out there currently revolve around something going wrong in the government harming many, and the protagonist tries to remove the bad. I watch the movies and think to myself, if this sort of thing really were happening I think we’d notice. Who can ignore bridges blown up and collateral lives of innocent bystanders lost? If it were happening, it’s simply too much to cover up. And so, what we are seeing is truly fiction (though things like this might happen in a small and very hidden scale). The only thing is that people are acting as though the fiction is all real and the entire world and governments are acting like this, overtly. They’ve lost perspective, not telling fact from fiction. That’s part of the conspiracy theories that some parties and some media have been spoon-feeding. They just drink it all in and their view of the world is modified, sometimes to a very dangerous and frightening degree. And, unfortunately, the ones making these changes to points of view may not be able to disengage the paranoia they’ve created.
Yes, we’ve had a lovely long autumn. It’s nice to see. Sometimes winter comes too quickly.
You make an excellent point about having white coat syndrome even when you’re the one taking your blood pressure, and having to take multiple readings to allow yourself to get use to taking your blood pressure. I have problems with white coat syndrome, too – and a fear of the cuff, ever since I had an automatic store blood pressure unit get stuck and not let go of my arm for many minutes.
I use to take my own blood pressure at home some years ago. It was amazing, the difference between the readings I’d get at home and what I’d get at the doctor’s office. Of course, if the doctor didn’t have you suddenly hop up on the table and then immediately take your pressure it might show a bit lower, too.
Teri, I agree, I don’t think that level of violence is really happening, not in North America. But it is happening in parts of the world, and often in parts where our military is involved in some way, both Canadian and USA. I find it interesting too, that a lot of the British drama is crime related, murder mysteries, and if it were anything like real life, the countryside there would be depopulated, particularly the very affluent, who kills each other off in droves in these programs. I wonder if all this violent programming (and video gaming) is to keep bloodlust alive and well in our couch potato culture.
My machine give the same first reading as the doctor’s office, I check it against the readings the doctor takes after I get home after each appointment, and four times it has emulated the doctor’s results. The averages are lower.
Winter does come too quickly! I have a video of myself, taken on November 7 at the country house. Outside the window there is snow several feet deep, and a blizzard is in progress. I do not look thrilled in the video!! This is the third November I have spent here at Mist Cottage, and November is a lovely month here, cold, crisp, sometimes wet with rain, occasionally visited by short-lived snow. I haven’t had cabin fever for two years!
I just bought an inexpensive ($9.99 !!!) scale. The old fashioned kind, without batteries, just the wheel inside with numbers. I haven’t used a scale in many years.
I stood on it today. No comments from me about it if/when things start to go downward. Suffice it to say I am at a starting point with no promises of anything. I just wanted to know the hard truth.
Watching Obama talking at a Greek press conference with the Greek PM is soothing. I am so going to miss this man, our President. I can’t even fathom what a T.Rump would do in this case… I wonder if he would even visit there. Life is going to change so drastically here south of the border… and not for the better! Any good thoughts you in Canada can send us will be appreciated.
I haven’t been on a scale in years Bex! When the nurse asked my my weight at the Heart Clinic, I had to tell her I didn’t know. She asked because they adjust the dosage of the radioactive shot based on body weight. Then she tried asking me my bra size, drew a blank there too, I don’t wear those torture chambers anymore, I wear camisoles, so much more comfortable for those of us with very little to tempt gravity. Eventually she estimated, I don’t know what her estimate was, but it was good enough so that everything worked as it should.
At first I watched the debacle that you faced south of the border, but it was so disturbing, so viscious, so mean spirited, that I stopped. I don’t think about it, but I know that my friends south of the border will be running the front line on what is to come, and that no one in the world is likely to escape the consequences of the democratic decision that was made. Since we have lived to see “interesting times”, we must be brave and face them with hope and quiet determination, just as Obama seems to be doing.
It is so great to read the chronicles of your peaceful life, Maggie! You are right to limit the intake of the vicious campaign that has been dominating the news cycles for so many months in the US. It has been very disturbing, and quite frightening. But it’s post-election now, and we need to adjust. So I’m trying to move on. Like you, Maggie, I’m in Canada, but the effects of this political madness will affect us too, and the world. Take care.
“I wonder if all this violent programming (and video gaming) is to keep bloodlust alive and well in our couch potato culture.”
My reading on it has been that it’s a way to express fears of other things in the lives of the culture, right now. Fears of terrorism, fears of not gaining in salary though we work harder, fears of changes in our social demographics, and fears of changes coming due to technological advances.
And a toast to your not having cabin fever. May cabin fever become only a dim memory for you, Maggie!
Diane, I remember my Granny, who lived through the first world war, the depression, and the second world war, did not allow the radio or television to be turned on in her house. As a young teen it seemed harsh, not to be able to listen to popular music, but now that I am older I appreciate that she just wasn’t going to let a stranger into her home to sensationalize reality, a reality that was bad enough as it was, it didn’t need any help from media presentation. I rely on Attila alerting me to news I need to pay attention to, and there isn’t really very much of that.
Teri, you could be right, about the fear. Certainly we live in an increasingly fear based culture. I don’t really have a feel for how people could use fascination with harming others as a way of dealing with their own fear, humans are the great mystery.
Thanks for the good wishes re cabin fever, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
” I don’t really have a feel for how people could use fascination with harming others as a way of dealing with their own fear, humans are the great mystery.”
I remember years back in psych classes we studied how if you put 2 rats in a maze and then used a discordant sound to upset them the rats would turn on each other. In the absence of being able to attack an object of discord, the “animal” attacks whatever presents itself in hopes of ending what is hurting it.
Teri, if that analogy is relevant to human social systems it would explain a lot of what is going on in the world. The thing is, the rats at the top aren’t suffering, they would just have found out how to use the trait to their own advantage.