Month: December 2022

I’ve got a problem

Published on by Grace9 Comments

I have always prided myself on my phenomenal memory – just a shade off of being eidetic. Lately my memory is playing tricks on me – just today I mis-remembered the date of my husband’s last physical. I insisted it was in August. I was wrong. It was in February.  There is a reason I got this wrong, not going to explain it but it troubles me that I did it.

Anyway –

Last night, I dreamt about writing a blog post about language and words and became semi-conscious and was about to get up to research the topic when I fell back to sleep. I also dreamt about writing about the essential self and in the light of day I can’t remember whether I was in a deep sleep or semiconscious – also, my father was in my dreams last night but I don’t think he was my father – just someone who looked like my father…I was very confused this morning.

It’s always interesting to note how the brain makes connections. I was making lunch today and opened a new bottle of BBQ sauce. I used the sauce, put the bottle in the fridge and then I thought “Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce – sounds like that song Sweet Baby James by that guy I don’t like who was married to Carly Simon who I don’t like either. Isn’t it funny what things can remind you of others things, and that they are things you don’t like”

Then something made me pause – and I thought “Wait, the bbq sauce isn’t called Sweet Baby Ray’s, is it?” So I checked the bottle – nope, the bbq sauce is just Ray’s. No sweet, no baby. Just Ray’s. But – under the name was “no sugar added”.

Here’s the thing tho – there IS a bbq sauce called Sweet Baby Ray’s– what I have is the sugar free version of that bbq sauce called simply Ray’s ’cause it’s NOT sweet.

You get old enough and there is just too much shit in your head and everything runs together and sometimes it feels like it all just happened yesterday and every day is Sunday.

Whadda ya call it…

Published on by Grace6 Comments

I’ve been on a cavatelli kick. For those of you who don’t know the different types of macaroni it looks like this:

We only ever ate this one way – with ricotta and gravy ie: spaghetti sauce/red sauce/meat sauce – however you want to call it. It seems cavatelli and broccoli is a classic – I’ve never had it. You can look up the recipe if you are curious. Cavatelli and any kind of vegetable seems to be a thing. Who knew? Not me.

Anyway, we called cavatelli bullets, probably because they look like bullets. Cavatelli was almost always fresh made at home and the trick to getting that shape was rolling the dough into a rope shape and then using your thumb you just flicked off a piece dough.

As I was making this for lunch today it crossed my mind how we called the dishes we used. While calling cavatelli bullets, makes some sort of sense, referring to different types of tableware “flat” and “round” makes no sense at all.

When told to set the table for dinner we would often ask “Flat dishes or round dishes?”  In our house a flat dish was –

and a round dish was –

Now quite obviously both dishes are round. The first plate is just a dinner plate. The second dish I suppose could be called a soup dish(?)  To my mind a soup dish is smaller and deeper but this is what I own but I don’t eat soup from it.  And since I am the only person who deals with the dishes in my house it doesn’t really need a name. Tho in a pinch I guess I would refer to it as the glass dish.

I don’t know where that absurd designation for the dishes came from but I do remember that the terminology later became “flat dish” and “deep dish” which makes more sense I suppose.

What do you call these two different types of dishes?

Words…

Published on by Grace13 Comments

Say the word ‘sleep’ and my brain automatically responds “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,” MacBeth, Act 2, Scene 2 – Wm. Shakespeare.

But I’m not writing about sleep, I’m exploring the world of words, particularly words that are misused but which misuse is accepted as correct because it has been a part of the language for so long (such as irregardless. Using the prefix ir does not change the meaning of the word regardless.)

Speakers of the English language seem to think that if you attach the prefix ‘un’ to a word it creates an opposite. But that’s not always true.  There are actually words whose ‘opposite’ means the same.

The other day I happened across a writing that used the words “ravel” and “unravel” in the same sentence. I’m sure the author experienced those two words as opposites in meaning. They are wrong, strictly speaking, but in common usage no one would take them to task.

Except me. And why I would even know that – too much Shakespeare? Too much reading of dictionaries including the OED?

And why, while writing this, could I not remember the word prefix? I did eventually but only minutes later I can’t remember whether the remembering was spontaneous or resulted from research.

On to another inconsequential subject –

When I first took up blogging one of the first little tricks of the trade I learned was to have clickable links open in a new tab.  I do believe you had to add the code yourself but that was easy enough to do. By making clickable links open in a new tab you make it easy for your readers to access the linked site WITHOUT leaving your site.

I don’t know about you but if I am reading anything and a link takes me off the original site and then to go back to the original article I have to use the back arrow and wait for the page to load again – well, hell no. I’m just moving on.

The thing is, nowadays, you don’t have to insert the code yourself, the ‘link’ tool does it for you –

See that box under “Link Text”?  Just click it!

Any clickable link you see in anything I post on-line will always open in a new tab. You’re welcome.

Ask me if I care aka

Published on by Grace6 Comments

I’m all out of give-a-shits.

I’ve been fighting the coffee wars for the past week – seems coffee availability is at a premium. So are the prices. I’m not going to go into a big convoluted story about my problems obtaining drinkable coffee – it’s tedious, boring and I just don’t give a shit about it anymore.

My husband has COPD and I’ve been nagging him to quit smoking for years. His health has taken a precipitous decline in the last 6 weeks which has finally convinced him to quit smoking. At 75 years of age. Oh yes, and I smoke too. Never as much as he has and I’ve quit smoking for years at a time since taking up the nasty habit in my mid-20’s.  It’s been hard for me to quit when he wouldn’t. Having cigarettes available, even when you really don’t want one but habit says it’s time to light up – big problem for me.

Anyway, we have both been smoke free for a little over a month. The nicotine is out of our systems. But here’s the thing – smoking is NOT about the nicotine. It is about the habit. The comfort from the habit. Even an oral fixation. It is the “hand-mouth-kick back and relax”  routine that is hard to break/get over.  It is about wanting, not needing.

I have what could be called an e-cigarette. No nicotine, vegetable glycol, tobacco flavor. Not much help. One because it does not feel like a cigarette in my hand or mouth, two, because it is not finite. Somehow part of the whole cigarette smoking thing is that it is finite – there are only so many puffs in one cigarette then it’s over, done: crush it out, move on, the whole activity/experience is complete.

Smoking has jack-all to do with nicotine is what I’m saying.  My husband and I both agree on that.

I’m tired. Mentally and emotionally tired. Physically too but that doesn’t bother me as much as the mental/emotional tiredness. I’m really not cut out to be responsible for/in-charge of everything. There are folks who would say differently. They think they know me. They don’t. They only see me BE in charge, they don’t know the why of it.  They don’t know that in the early years of my marriage, when I wasn’t in-charge of everything, nothing got done. Bills didn’t paid, debt piled up. And other stuff. Some of these people, who like to judge, meaning my husband’s family, knew he was always somewhat irresponsible; one sister having spent years bailing him out financially and practically (the man has NO common sense).

But even my husband’s doctors probably think I am some kind of overbearing bully – my husband’s pulmonologist refers to me as “the boss”.

I am the boss because someone has to be; someone has to be responsible. Someone has to be practical. My husband never was. His whole life people did for him. His first wife didn’t, but I sure did.

OK, so being a caretaker seems to be my innate personality. But it’s not. It’s the personality I developed in response to my childhood. I was forced to be a responsible adult at a young age and it became hard-wired into my personality.  Every personal relationship I’ve had had me in the caretaker role; every job I’ve ever had had me in the caretaker role.

And I have resented every single relationship and job. I am angry with myself for putting myself in these situations. Because I know it is MY fault. These situations are MY choices. There have been times, going into them, early on, that I recognized the situation as being unhealthy for me, but all to often it took too long for me to get out.  I recognize the pattern, too late. And then I just keep on repeating it.

And I’m tired.  I want out.

~~~~~~~~
It’s not like this is a new whine – I just discovered this post from 2020. Same song and dance re: caretaker mode. I’m nothing if not consistent. And boring.

Fun with Fotos

Published on by Grace11 Comments

This is just so fun –

I walked into my “office” and noticed the light, actually the whole room reflected in the window – so odd, so cool – so I snapped some photos – 

What I am seeing in front of me is really behind me. If you look in the lower right corner you will tree branches and a bright light – that is a lighted entry door to the building and they are all outside the window. But what about the curtains? Are they a reflection or the real thing?

I’m not sure. I took another photo and captured the ‘actual’ inside and the reflection – right to left – actual curtains – window – reflection of curtains.

I spent some time making some size adjustments and then walked away from my desk. About a half hour later I came back into the room and there were more cool reflections, naturally I took another photo –

So many layers – On the left the ‘actual’ curtains, then their reflection then my reflection, then the room behind me, then on the extreme right, reflection of the curtains. But wait! What’s that in the upper left? The balconies on the 3rd, 4th and 5th floors!

These photos show the inside and the outside at the same time.  Behind me and in front of me – at the same time!  So cool!