I gotta tell you, Covid kinda spoiled me. Avoiding crowds, socially distancing, wearing masks in public – all that stuff shielded me from the usual seasonal crud. And so, when a perfectly normal and shrug-offable cold finally arrived, I turned into Audra Barkley from “The Big Valley,” where all I wanted was to lie in bed and have Barbara Stanwyck press wet washcloths to my brow, and maybe spoon-feed me some clear broth.
Which is to say, I woke up yesterday feeling po’ly and am not much better today, and I’m being a big wuss about it.
Taking a Covid test now. I sincerely doubt that’s what it is, but might as well check.
If I did have a mild case, it would serve me right. On Friday, I went to a THEATER and sat in a CROWD and watched CHELSEA HANDLER do her standup act. Not a huge Chelsea fan, but the tickets were spur-of-the-moment and free, so what the hell. Went with a friend. It was OK. Not tears-running-down-your-face funny, but perfectly fine, and a good example of long-form standup, which has to be hard as hell to pull off. The show was called “Little Big Bitch,” and was structured as Chelsea Tells Her Life Story. The problem with autobiographical shows like this is, you go in understanding there will be a lot of exaggeration and outright lying, because facts get in the way of a good story. But it was a good one, and I laughed a lot, and with that My Weekly Reader-style review, that’s it.
Covid timer went off. Negative. Still a Novid (I think).
The most interesting thing about Chelsea’s show was watching the crowd come in. Disproportionate numbers of 40something women with long blonde hair, holding go-cups of alcoholic smoothies, which is to say, women who look like her and drink like her. That, and gay men. So many that she made a point of calling them out and thanking them before she even got started, something of a land acknowledgement.
And that wasn’t my entire weekend, but it was definitely the highlight. It rained all damn weekend, as though November was getting something off its chest and it ran into December. Not feeling too Christmassy yet.
As for other feelings, I totally encourage Liz Cheney to run as a third-party candidate, as I’m certain she’d draw from the GOP side. She’s said that if she doesn’t, she’ll campaign for Biden, and I encourage that, too. This is so exhausting, worrying about the future of American democracy 24/7. Maybe that’s what my illness is: Trump Fatigue. Wouldn’t surprise me.
Oh, we also watched “May December,” which I loved, and if you have Netflix, get to it. I got a thing for Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore, that’s all I can say.
Let’s hope for better things later.
Sherri said on December 5, 2023 at 2:09 pm
If you want to distract yourself from the election with something else to worry about, read about how worthless cops are, even when they aren’t actively harming black and brown people.
“ A nationwide analysis by the news organizations shows states require far more training to prepare students and teachers for a mass shooting than they do for the police who are expected to protect them.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/uvalde-officer-student-trainings-mass-shootings
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LAMary said on December 5, 2023 at 5:24 pm
Feeling chewed and spit out here too. Diverticulitis: uncomfortable, sometimes painful and always disgusting
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Alan Stamm said on December 5, 2023 at 6:00 pm
“something of a land acknowledgement” is clever originality.
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Jeff Borden said on December 5, 2023 at 6:04 pm
My first beat at The Columbus Dispatch was night police reporter from 6 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Sunday through Thursday. I met a few clever homicide and robbery detectives, but even they said most of the criminals they caught were just dumb people. Clever crooks rarely had to worry about being apprehended.
(Remember Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh? He was arrested for driving a car lacking license plates. A real genius.)
Chicago police have one of the lowest crime clearance rates in the nation. It’s appalling and a major contributor to our ongoing crime problems.
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Sherri said on December 5, 2023 at 6:16 pm
I’m finally starting to feel normal again. I still haven’t done any really heavy lifting, but I’m past the “no more than 10 pounds” limitation I was on for weeks. Hoping to work my way back to normal weights by the end of the year. Cough is mostly gone, but not entirely.
During my sick time, when I didn’t feel like doing anything other than lying around and listening, I revisited the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in the original radio drama format. Like Elon Musk and other tech billionaires, I avidly consumed this back in the 80’s when local public radio stations were rebroadcasting the BBC radio drama. So I have fond memories of it, and I still enjoyed it on relisten.
But Elon and the techbros who claim to be influenced by it rather spectacularly miss the entire point of the show. They listen to it, and thought “wouldn’t it be cool if the products of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation existed, like Eddie the Shipboard Computer and Marvin the Paranoid Android, and sentient elevators and doors, all with Genuine People Personalities!” They ignored the fact that the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation were the first against the wall when the revolution came.
Douglas Adams was making fun of people like them, and they never saw it.
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David C said on December 5, 2023 at 8:04 pm
I never heard the radio version of Hitchhiker’s Guide. I’ve seen the BBC TV version many times and notices anyone they’re smacking down, the police, the Golgafrinchims, etc. they always have American accents.
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tajalli said on December 5, 2023 at 8:12 pm
Recovering from 5-6 days of 101-102° fever of unknown cause – thank dog no respiratory symptoms. I’ve been watching Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. A bit of serendipity. I read the Hitchhiker’s Guide, so everyone had American accents, even the dolphins.
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basset said on December 5, 2023 at 9:54 pm
Never have seen/heard any of the above, sure do miss National Lampoon Radio Hour though.
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tajalli said on December 5, 2023 at 10:40 pm
Anyone remember Fireside Theatre? Parlez vous Canadian?
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Sherri said on December 6, 2023 at 12:42 am
You can get the radio drama on CD or on Audible. Look for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Primary Phase, as opposed to just the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is Stephen Fry reading the book.
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A. Riley said on December 6, 2023 at 12:43 am
So someone upthread mentioned Chicago’s dysfunctional governance, and I have to holler about the incompetent, in-way-over-his-head, and (did I say this already?) incompetent person inhabiting the office of mayor lately. He’s screwing up the city’s response to the arrival of thousands of Venezuelan asylum seekers (thank you, Texas) by proposing to build a giant winterized tent on an industrial brownfield. A tent. In a Chicago winter. These poor people have been sleeping on the floors in the police stations, and this is the best solution he can come up with? The question that comes to my mind is (of course) qui bono. Well, Gov. Pritzker is having none of it.
https://news.yahoo.com/illinois-gov-j-b-pritzker-201200418.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
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Dexter Friend said on December 6, 2023 at 5:04 am
Firesign Theater? I heard all the old LP albums because my friend loved them, but I was not a fan.
My step-daughter from Port St. Lucie came to Ohio to spend time with family and got socked immediately with Covid19 and is holed up in a Port Clinton hotel after she just became too sick to drive her rental from CLE. She has had it multiple times, once a bad time with long-Covid.
Mike Johnson is ordering blurred faces for insurrectionists to prevent DOJ from persecuting them. This extreme MAGA Trump sycophant must go!
So now Trumper repugg head of FL party is also an alleged rapist, and his religion hardcore lifestyle is blown to smithereens with 3-ways documented in a slimeball affair. Do what you want, slimeballs, just don’t shove your phony high-hat opinions on us. Oh, sorry…it was “just once”. And every DUI or OVI starts with, “but offisher sir…I only had 2 beeeerz…”
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Deborah said on December 6, 2023 at 9:53 am
I remember Firesign Theater, that was a long, long time ago.
Almost every street corner around our place in Chicago has a Venezuelan mother with a couple of small children bundled in blankets selling candy, with cardboard signs asking for help. There’s an old hotel about a half mile or so away that is housing them temporarily. Also a lot of NIMBYism being expressed about the situation. It’s heartbreaking.
I hope Liz Cheney runs as long as no Democrats vote for her or any other third party candidate. As much as I disagree with her, she is unabashedly anti-Trump and that makes her a hero.
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Dorothy said on December 6, 2023 at 10:36 am
I can’t understand why Mike Johnson wants to blur faces. The DOJ already HAS all the video from that day – JFC it’s almost 3 years since it happened! Does Mikey think maybe he has access to stuff the DOJ does not?! What a dumbass!
The only reason I’d be happy that Liz Cheney might run as a third party candidate is to potentially take away votes from the dirtbag himself. This could line up like RFK Jr. running and it taking votes away from Biden. Liz is heroic in one sense, but still staunchly conservative and I’m sure she’s realistic enough to realize she can’t possibly beat anyone else. But if she’s a fly in the ointment, a bug up his ass, a smelly turd dropped in the middle of the election just to upset the Dumpy apple cart, more power to her.
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Julie Robinson said on December 6, 2023 at 10:59 am
Liz Cheney was impressive in the hearings, and according to Cassidy Hutchinson’s book she’s the person who kept pushing to make them happen. I love how she gets under Trump’s skin. Apparently she has said she is considering campaigning for Biden if she doesn’t run herself.
Still, and this cannot be emphasized enough, her stances on every other issue are abhorrent, and she continues to fly the toxic Republican flag.
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FDChief said on December 6, 2023 at 11:58 am
The whole point of the House GQP is performative bullshit to validate nonsensical MAGAt gibberish. Once you get that all their performative bullshit – from “impeachment inquiry” to the J6 blurring claptrap – makes a perverted sort of sense.
They know perfectly well that the J6 traitors were just that. They just LIKE that treason, know that in general “treason is bad”, hence the need to pretend that the traitors were just “peaceful protesters” unlike the BLM mobsters.
But what I see as the big problem this all exposes is that there’s no real “Both Sides”.
On the Right you’ve got a huge, well-funded, widespread propaganda machine that works like free drinks; the Wingnut Wurlitzer pumps out the stories that power the MAGAt horde and their Congresscritters.
On the Left?
Crickets. What do we have? Maddow? Colbert? Where’s the drumbeat of stories about Speaker Johnson’s looney God-pestering? Tubby’s criming? Every morning’s wingnut fervor for defunding Medicare and jacking up retail prices with immigration scams and goofy tax gimmicks?
Propaganda works. And it’s working for the ‘nuts. And, since they’re working to end the New Deal Republic we’ve grown up in, it’s working against the country. Which unless we can stop it will take that country from the rest of us.
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Jeff Borden said on December 6, 2023 at 12:40 pm
Plans for the next tRump reign include efforts to completely eliminate immigration, which may be the stupidest fucking idea they’ve ever come up with since we need those people. In 2000, the average age of an American was 30. Just 20 years later, it rose to 38-years-old. It’s undoubtedly still climbing as our birthrates fall. Sealing the borders would be slow motion national suicide, but the morons who loathe “the other” have no understanding of demographics.
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David C said on December 6, 2023 at 1:08 pm
They have a plan for that too, Jeff. That’s more babies. The recent op-ed about young women not wanting to marry because too many young men are crazy AF MAGAts is their jumping off point. If you want young women to marry you turn the clock back to the 50s, their halcyon days. No birth control, no credit without a husband’s consent, etc. Your basic barefoot and pregnant strategy. Make it nearly impossible for a single woman to make it in the world on her own. They’d do it in a heartbeat.
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Jeff said on December 6, 2023 at 7:48 pm
Honk, honk: why it’s Wobbles the Goose.
(Hat tip Basset)
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Deborah said on December 6, 2023 at 9:37 pm
So I watched May December and found it unsettling, another example how dysfunctional families can be, this one is the epitome of that. I love Julianne Moore, she did a great job of portraying her immensely conflicted character. The actor who played her regretful husband seemed less so until I read some of the reviews about how he changed his voice and mannerisms to convey his character’s complex arrested development as an adult with a compromised identity as he was manipulated during his exploitive relationship with his predator and eventual wife. Natalie Portman’s ability to convey her character was less successful, to me. The director Todd Haynes has done some interesting films over the years, they’re often unsettling.
edit: I forgot to mention that I found the musical score jarring and inappropriate which was maybe the point, to reinforce the inappropriate nature of the relationship of the main couple.
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basset said on December 7, 2023 at 2:11 am
Thanks, Jeff, had forgotten about Wobbles.
Back to the present for yet another sign of the times: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/catholic-health-system-removes-all-crucifixes.html
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susan said on December 7, 2023 at 10:10 am
bassett- sheesh. Just reading the headline on that article I thought, well, it’s about time those twits removed crucifixes from hospitals that care for the public, because most people are NOT Catholics. I sure found those things obnoxious when, years ago, the only local hospital had one in every damned room. Remnants from it previous incarnation run by some branch of the Catholic church.
But no, this article is about “Hospital Sisters Health System” removing metal and wooden crucifixes because they could be used as weapons (how appropriate). They will install safer replacements.
Gah.
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Mark P said on December 7, 2023 at 10:28 am
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe rubber crosses are appropriate, like the rubber concrete blocks they use in movies.
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alex said on December 7, 2023 at 1:12 pm
That decision is a response to “the changing healthcare landscape and the general increase in healthcare workers experiencing workplace violence,” according to a Nov. 21 statement the health system shared with Becker’s.
So people are beating healthcare workers with crucifixes ripped from the walls?
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David C said on December 7, 2023 at 1:33 pm
People are pretty damned creative when it comes to beating the shit out of each other. If crucifixes aren’t available, hospitals are full of alternatives.
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Jeff Borden said on December 7, 2023 at 1:58 pm
Anyone watch the QOP debate? Ron DeathSantis described the robes worn by many Middle Eastern men as “man dresses.” I’m so happy to see that greasy little fascist getting creamed in the polls, hopefully ensuring his political demise. What an asshole.
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jcburns said on December 7, 2023 at 3:10 pm
Maybe we should just start building all-rubber hospitals?
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Suzanne said on December 7, 2023 at 3:31 pm
I was always super nice to the staff when I was in the hospital last year, and I was there a lot. I mean, they were keeping me alive! But apparently I was an anomaly. One day, I heard a guy down the hallway cursing & yelling. I said something to the nurse when she came into my room about how awful that was and she smiled and said, “You have no idea what people will say and do.” I felt bad for all of them. Those nurses kept me going so many times when I wasn’t sure I could. Angels, every one of them.
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Deborah said on December 7, 2023 at 3:32 pm
What is the deal with people getting violent in hospitals now? When did this particular atrocious behavior start becoming a thing? Was it during the pandemic? I recall that there were some angry assholes refusing to wear masks and get vaccinated then, did it expand out from that? Apparently violence is everywhere now so I guess hospitals are in just as much danger as everywhere else. What is wrong with people? Devolution is happening apace.
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Julie Robinson said on December 7, 2023 at 3:47 pm
Back in 1997, when hospitals had double rooms, my roommate was apparently detoxing, given the number of times she asked for pain meds. She didn’t get them, but I had the feeling the nurses were keeping a close watch on her.
However, they didn’t think to remove a pair of medical scissors that were clipped up on the wall by her bed. At one point I woke up to her standing over me, scissors in hand, telling me she was going to stab me.
Medical scissors, while having a blunt end, could still do some damage. Thus I am eternally grateful for the quick intervention when I hit the call button!
She was in the hospital for a head wound caused by falling on the concrete floor at a bar. And she really wanted me to touch it to tell her how much it was seeping. AS.IF.
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Dave said on December 7, 2023 at 4:46 pm
One mass shooting, another mass shooting, within a handful of days, there will be yet another and our politicians worry about what? Woke? Foolishness out of the mouths of the majority of them, it seems. Be as scummy as you can be and get re-elected in a gerrymandered district for as long as you want.
Not to change the subject but Basset, you’re the biggest Beatles fan here, I think I know a lot but you have the unabridged Lewisohn book, so I bow to you. There’s a new biography out of Mal Evans that I saw just today and leafed through a bit. I didn’t realize or had forgotten that Mal’s life ended suddenly and sadly during a domestic dispute or how much his allegiance to The Beatles cost him personally.
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Sherri said on December 7, 2023 at 5:22 pm
Of course the man who wears high heels (and probably lifts as well) makes a crack about man dresses. It’s always projection.
I just read recently that when DeSantis was sworn in as governor of Florida the first time, he didn’t even own a Bible to be sworn in on, didn’t care what Bible he was sworn in on, so staffers ordered a KJV from Amazon for the supposedly devout Catholic to be sworn in on.
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Julie Robinson said on December 7, 2023 at 10:42 pm
Sherri, I mentioned this to my (pastor) daughter and she said the old-time hard core Catholics don’t have Bibles in their homes for a very simples reason: because they DON’T READ THE BIBLE. (Emphasis mine.) Former Catholics here, and I know we have many, may wish to chime in on this.
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Sherri said on December 7, 2023 at 11:53 pm
Yes, I know Catholics often don’t have Bibles, but I would think that by the time DeSantis was elected governor, having already served in the House and already courting that sweet, sweet evangelical vote, he would have scrounged up a Bible from somewhere with a story of how it was personally meaningful to him. Just another indication of why he’ll never be president.
In Southern Baptist churches like the ones I grew up in, everybody brought a Bible with them to church, and when the preacher said what the text was that he was preaching from, everyone looked it up. In lectionary churches like the Episcopal churches I have attended, nobody brings a Bible with them, because all of the readings are printed in the bulletin. Baptist churches are big on scripture and reading the Bible, but there are chunks that are seldom or never encountered, whereas the lectionary takes you through much more over a three year period. Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and some others use the Revised Common Lectionary.
So, it’s not quite true that Catholics don’t read the Bible; it’s read to them in mass every week.
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A. Riley said on December 8, 2023 at 12:05 am
Julie, not an old-time hardcore Catholic here, but Bible reading isn’t so much a Catholic thing. It’s just not. Never has been. Catholics can’t give you chapter and verse, because they’re not taught that way. They might know the stories, but they don’t study the text, the book itself. You don’t commonly find Bibles in the pews in a Catholic church either.
Catholic spirituality is (in my experience) much more about the mass, or the sacraments, or service to the poor. Why’s that? I think it’s because the tradition (meaning the catholic way of life) is older than the printing press, older than widespread literacy, and certainly older than worship in English.
That said: Giving deSantis a King James Bible is at its most innocuous pure ignorance and at its least innocuous a nasty little insult to him and a sop to his evangelical voters. That’s not a Catholic Bible in the least–the KJV is English Reformation through and through. If they’d wanted to give him something more Catholic, they’d have chosen a different English-language translation, maybe the NRSV.
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susan said on December 8, 2023 at 12:19 am
Deathsantis could steal a Giddeon buybull from any motel, if he really needed one. He doesn’t want one.
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jerry said on December 8, 2023 at 2:50 am
A few years ago I was doing some work in a hospital and was talking about aggression with a group of hospital porters. They said a major issue with violence was alcohol. Some drunk who was hurt in some way, quite possibly self-inflicted, would arrive at A&E for treatment accompanied by their drunk friends. It was the friends who were usually the problem demanding immediate treatment for their friend ahead of more serious cases.
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FDChief said on December 8, 2023 at 9:54 am
The whole “read the Bible” schism is, I believe, related to the difference in doctrine between the Roman church and Protestantism in general.
The RC position is that the Bible says what the Holy Mother Church says it does. So a good Catholic needs to know their catechism and their papal encyclicals as read by their parish priest, just as a good Roman needed to know the law and the imperial rescripts rather than come up with their own gloss on whatever was going on in the empire.
Luther’s whole objection was that his reading of Scripture didn’t match what he saw the HMC doing. The chaos of Protestant denominations stems from that; if the Way, the Truth, and the Life is dependent on my individual reading of the Book of Matthew? Schism is nearly inevitable.
What’s the ultimate irony is that the most out-there Prot sects – the fundie churches – have taken to commanding their zombie hordes to believe things that are no more written in Scripture (such as “being anti-abortion is a cardinal principle of faith”) than is the doctrine of transubstantiation. Same-same with the ultramontane tradCath gomers. They’ve become “more Catholic than the Pope”…
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Mark P said on December 8, 2023 at 10:18 am
I once dated a very religious girl. She told me she didn’t really know what was in the Bible, only what her preacher told them.
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Heather said on December 8, 2023 at 10:21 am
Ah yes, Middle Eastern male clothing is surely akin to man dresses. And as we all know, Jesus only wore cargo pants.
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Dave said on December 8, 2023 at 12:25 pm
Heather made me laugh, I nominate her for thread win.
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Julie Robinson said on December 8, 2023 at 12:45 pm
As a good Lutheran girl going through confirmation class, we were told that Luther wanted to put Bibles in the hands of everyone, and Gutenberg came along at just the right time. Of course, most people were illiterate in those days, but it was all part of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod indoctrination, because we were the only ones who were going to heaven. I’m not a good Lutheran girl anymore and my views are much more nuanced.
Apparently liking NRSV is a Bible snob thing, and many churches use the dumbed-down NIV instead.
The King James Version? Represents the finest Biblical scholarship as of 1611, and its sponsor was a flaming queer.
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ROGirl said on December 8, 2023 at 1:39 pm
Happy Hannukah, y’all.
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Deborah said on December 8, 2023 at 5:32 pm
I had to read the bible from end to end when I went to a Lutheran college. One semester I had Old Testament and the next semester New Testament, it was required of all students back then. The thing that I found disconcerting was learning about how the canon was determined, which books were accepted as truth and which ones were left out. It seemed like chaos to me, and very political within the church bodies. I don’t really remember any of the details, I only remember my own doubts about the process.
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Jeff said on December 9, 2023 at 10:14 am
Test?
Edit: huh. I’ve been locked out a few days here. Just a note to say at 1 am Tuesday I had to call the squad on my father-in-law; he’s in the hospital still and probably moving to hospice next week. Thank you for the kind words and messages and comments. The endgame is hard, and could still be a while. His mind is gone, but the heart and kidneys are still perking along, better than mine.
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Suzanne said on December 9, 2023 at 12:18 pm
My best to you Jeff. It’s a hard time you & your father-in-law are going through and there is no way to sugarcoat it.
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Julie Robinson said on December 9, 2023 at 1:17 pm
Jeff, I’m so sorry, and for your wife too. The long goodbye is a hard slog. Since you would be the first to say grace and peace to any of us, I’ll say it back to you.
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FDChief said on December 9, 2023 at 2:04 pm
Crushing on the KJV is a thing, and one I’ve never really “got”. Sure, a lot of the Shakespearean language is pretty, and it was the standard English version for centuries. But the hardcore Bible-banging trope is how it’s “more literal”/accurate than any other version, which is sorta “WTF”?
We have no idea what the “original” versions contained, given that a significant chunk of the Hebrew Scriptures are thought to have been composed centuries before the oldest manuscript copies from Qumran.
Even the New Testament provides no autograph versions; the closest is a fragment of St. John dating from around 125CE, probably 20-50 years after the original.
And the KJV committee says flat out in their preface that they preferred a text that flowed over literal translation, so the “word of God” ended up being the tl:dr version in some places.
The whole argument seems bizarre to me, but I’m not the target demographic, so…
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MarkH said on December 9, 2023 at 5:35 pm
To our good friend Jeff – What Julie said. Thinking of you and the family today. Peace, Grace and strength to you on this journey.
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Julie Robinson said on December 9, 2023 at 6:31 pm
So, parents with adult children…son and DIL mention how much fun they had decorating sugar cookies last year, could we do it again? And could two of their friends come along also? Daughter excited too.
Interim, they mention they just want to decorate, not cut out and bake, and son puts in special request for the peanut butter and Kiss cookies. Buy two bags of Kisses, $8. Notice we’re almost out of sprinkles and end up going three places to find *just* the right ones, $30.
Spend Friday mixing, then baking cookies, Saturday morning make huge batch of icing. Son stops by, announces DIL is sick, one friend’s husband needs emergency med delivery, other friend is no-show. Daughter comes home from church and collapses into deep sleep. Hubby and son discover IU basketball game on TV!
Feel very alone icing and decorating 5000 cookies. Game finishes, son decorates four cookies and announces he has to go home. Husband gamely finishes with me. Daughter comes out from room and says why did you decorate without me?
Guess who will not be baking sugar cookies next year?
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Dorothy said on December 9, 2023 at 7:23 pm
Jeff I’m thinking of you and your family and sending much love and a hope for strength to get through these trying days
Julie my heart goes out to you too. That’s just … wrong! Also I’m not able to make cut out sugar cookies. Never have been. And now I have even more incentive to never try them ever again!
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brian stouder said on December 9, 2023 at 8:21 pm
Sarcasm mode:Maximum. Julie, I’m torn between ‘well, that’s how the cookie crumbles’. And ‘that was a crummy thing for them to do’…….
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Julie Robinson said on December 9, 2023 at 8:59 pm
It’s life; people get sick, young families are often chaotic, overworked pastors who spend six hours building living nativities are tired. Some families cut down their trees together; our tradition was cookies. That said, in the future we’ll go to Gordon’s for their frozen, ready to bake and already cut-out sugar cookies.
Oh, and I forgot to mention! The top coil of our oven died 3/4 of the way through. We’ve already replaced it once and are planning a kitchen remodel in the next year. Unfortunately it’s a wall oven and we’ll be getting a range instead, so we can’t just pull one out and put a new one in. A Christmas ham has already been purchased and it will not fit in the air fryer. I believe these are what we call first world problems.
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Deborah said on December 9, 2023 at 9:17 pm
In a weak moment I ordered a fancy cake/cookie icing decorating kit, the kind with bags for squeezing and various tips to make different shapes, even a lazy susan type stand for rotating the cake while decorating. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while but now that I’ve received it in the mail from Amazon I’m balking. I think I’m going to get some store bought canned icing and simple boxed cake batter for cupcakes to practice on, starting with no fuss might give me more confidence. My shaky hands are not going to make this easy.
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alex said on December 10, 2023 at 9:27 am
Yesterday I came across a Washington Post recipe for a simplified chicken paprikash. I decided to go all out and make it the traditional way with sour cream (not yogurt) and homemade galuska noodles (instead of egg noodles out of a bag) and tons more paprika than overly cautious food writers ever recommend. The family loved it. My dad and my brother, who seldom eat a second serving of anything, gorged themselves and then passed out on my sofa.
Today hubby and I are taking Catholic MIL to see a Handel’s Messiah matinee and go out for dinner afterward. It’s about as close as she ever gets to dragging us to church, and it’s a concession I don’t mind making.
SNL had a great sendup of the House Antisemitism hearings: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/snl-skewers-congress-antisemitism-hearing-rep-elise-stefanik-1234922397/
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4dbirds said on December 10, 2023 at 9:59 am
Jeff, I am so sorry for what you are going through. Wishing you peace.
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Jeff said on December 10, 2023 at 2:16 pm
We’re now on a telesitter in the room with him. Hello, the future. A few blocks away, a person has twelve screens, with the ability to activate a speaker and say “hey, Buck, you can’t get out of bed” or “you need to stop pulling at that” and if he doesn’t stop, the telesitter can directly ping the floor nurse. So really not a great deal less than the low wage, changing every four hours sitter in the room. But it smacks of self-checkout . . . anyhow, he’s absorbing Haldol in his IV and still agitated and restless and not sleeping much, eating less.
Hat tip to the nurse who put a printed sticker of a Busch can on the side of his white foam cup with a straw. It didn’t fool him entirely, but force of habit — he sipped more today than all week. After he had chastised and abused me for the betrayer I am, he said “and get me a beer!” So I left the room and ordered another round of electrolyte with a Busch sticker.
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Deborah said on December 10, 2023 at 4:53 pm
That’s genius Jeff G, when uncle Jake was going through his slow decline we used a tiny bit of white wine in an empty wine bottle, topped it up with water, poured it in a wine glass and he had no clue. We actually probably could have used only water. We thought we were so clever. Later when he was mostly gone and we couldn’t get him to drink water, the hospice people gave us these sponge like things on a stick that we dipped in water and he would suck on them a bit.
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