Sick Day, w Tamarind Sauce & Astronauts

Getting Strong Now (or Later)

It was inspiring to meet with trainer Ben at the gym yesterday--though my hurt knee limited what I could do. I trust it will get better, and I'll work to get stronger again--and protect myself from injuries like this (from overuse at work, not an accident).

Ben & I were talking about Duluth--his sister lives there and, for now, so does Marz. (Today is the first day of her second semester.)
I said my goal is to be strong enough to hike a section of the Superior Hiking Trail. The SHT runs through the city of Duluth--I've walked 5-mile segments--but the entire thing is a 260-mile rugged footpath along a ridgeline overlooking Lake Superior, from Duluth almost to the Canadian border.
No amenities: you have to backpack everything in and out.

The SHT website cautions, "You should carefully consider whether you’re in good condition and prepared before setting out" [unsaid: so we don't have to send the Rope Team (a real thing) to rescue your dumb ass].
I wouldn't want to hike-through the entire trail, but I'd like to be able to. And then just go for a day hike. (There are mosquitoes.) (And bears.)

So that was good, but today I feel a little down.
You know how it is to be set back and immobilized.
Very much not like Rocky running up the steps.

(He does start out a lazy, out-of-shape slob, but he's also thirty years old... Regaining strength at my age looks different. Still, I love that movie--maybe it'd cheer me up to rewatch it again.)

I took the day off work to rest my knee. I have 48 hours till I go back on Friday--hopefully it'll be much better by then. If not, I can do some seated work––looking up prices––but the job is of course mostly physical. I didn't do myself any favors, taking 8 months off, physically. (Psychologically, though, it was entirely a win.)

It's good for me to have this motivation to keep strong for work. I am lazy and would never do it otherwise.
This is a good place for me to be.
________________

Sauce It Up

After the gym, I went to Everett's on the next block––a family-owned butcher and grocery where I used to go when I lived in that direction. They're an old-fashioned mom-and-pop outfit, selling classics like pork chops and iceberg lettuce, but they carry some newer-to-town foods too.

Like this Somali tamarind and date sauce made by a local company, Hoyo (means mother, and also home). Its sweetness is from dates alone. (I'd decided dates are okay.)
It's like a relative of ketchup--the first ingredient is tomato.

(Hm, though the roots of ketchup are in fermented fish sauce, not tomatoes:
"By the early 1700s, the word was apparently understood --by the British--to mean a kind of spiced, savory condiment broadly known in South Asia and distinct from soy sauce. ")

Puck, above, right, is telling Penny Cooper how she showed her bionic leg to Ben. True. Ben was complimentary. I don't know what he feels about things--he's slightly remote--but I love how he just rolls with stuff. "Okay, here is a client who brings her doll."
And why not?

That's the book I'm reading--re-reading. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir who wrote The Martian (movie with Matt Damon. I hear Project HM has already been filmed w/ Ryan Gosling--to be released next year.)
Project is an even better story:
the reluctant astronaut––a junior-high school science teacher––meets an alien astronaut, and together they work to save the galaxy from a light-eating microbe.
It's funny and imaginative--and Weir does the math (literally and symbolically) to make it work. (All the work I don't want to do when I come up with a fun story idea.)

Anyway, I ate the tamarind sauce with baked chicken last night. It was good--zingy and sweetish, and not something I'd overeat, unlike sugary ketchup which I'd pour on like syrup.

I read something yesterday that touched on my question, If you take  semaglutide drugs that remove appetite, what happens to psychological needs that used to be met by (over)eating?
A therapist said that a client who used to overeat started a weight-loss drug and then began to pick their skin off instead.

It is not known:
Do the drugs adversely affect mental health, or, do they reveal underlying issues that over-eating was addressing?

I'm tinkering with how I eat, you know, and wondering about the way food and comfort and well-being are all interwoven.
But I'm not taking away the pleasure and comfort of eating, I'm replacing processed-sugars with other foods.

Aside from some sadness at first (no–ice-cream felt like a loss), and some confusion from changing habits (what do I do now?), giving up sugar hasn't hurt my mood--maybe because I can still overeat. That's even been funny! Like, the day after the election, I binge-ate an entire baked butternut squash. Aside from being very high in potassium (hard on kidneys), butternut squash is a big health plus, even in excess. 😄

After three months of not-eating added-sugars, I feel more level, emotionally--and physically. That's a nice thing.
I thought I'd really, really miss candy and ice cream, because I ate it every day. I'm surprised I don't. Giving myself permission---encouragement, in fact--to eat anything else helps a lot. Food with natural sugar, like butternut squash, keeps cravings away, and flavorful food provides satisfaction. It's still sometimes a drag to have to make decisions to feed myself (instead of the easier option of Just Eat Sugar), but it's doable.

Food in Childhood

If you have an easy, happy relationship with food, this is maybe all obvious. I've never had that.
Well... that's not true. When I was a little kid in the 1960s, I didn't have much choice, and my family ate pretty well.
My mother cooked pretty much every meal, even after she went back to work part-time as a secretary at the University.
Oatmeal or eggs for weekday breakfast. Oh, and corn flakes with strawberries. That was our junk cereal.

We walked home for lunch. What did we eat...?
Geez, I don't remember. It must be in my data bank somewhere--I'll put in a request and see what gets returned.
I remember saying I was hungry but turning down the only snack on offer--an apple.

Dinner was classic mid-century meat (baked chicken, some cut of beef, pork chops); bread/ brown rice/potatoes; and green salad with olive-oil dressing.
Did we even have dessert? My mother baked, for sure. But was it every night?  She also loved ice-cream with "goop": Smuckers chocolate and butterscotch topping in a jar.
She would go on weird diets where she ate nothing by Saltine crackers and Coca-cola. (Not diet.)

Junk food was a rarity--sometimes my father got Fritos corn chips and bean dip (in a can) for Sunday football games, and we could have a few.
Once in a blue moon we went to McDonald's, which was a HUGE treat.

Anyway, as I've said, this all went haywire when she left the family in 1974, the same time fast- junk foods and super-sizes were just starting to rise to their ascendancy.
I'm repeating myself here, I know, but I keep re-viewing it:
What happened? To the country, the world, to us, to you and to me?

STORY IDEA:

You know stories like the 1978 movie Heaven Can Wait where someone dies and they go to Heaven and lodge a complaint–– "I wasn't supposed to die" (Warren Beatty says to heavenly agent Buck Henry)--and it turns out they're right:
someone made a mistake, and Heaven tries to rectify it?

Okay, so this is just the same, but in reverse--thinking about reincarnation and also  about how people sometimes feel they shouldn't be here, they don't belong.
What if there's a mistake sometimes and people are incarnated into the wrong life?
According to the swami I'm listening to sometimes, that's not possible. "You can never be somewhere you're not supposed to be."
But, what if there's a mistake?

Like, you should be surrounded by people you share karma with,
But you're not? "You were never my mother!"
Hm, is that possible, if everyone's been everything to everybody?
I don't know.
Maybe they get incarnated on the wrong planet?
"This is not my solar system!"
Just an idea to kick around...

It could be comforting in a weird, reverse way. "Sorry, you're right! We'll send in some support, but you're just going to have to bumble through this lifetime."
Sure can FEEL like that!

"Life goes on"

I love it when Sally says in Peanuts that her life philosophy is, "Life goes on," "Who cares?" and "How should I know?":

[High schoolers I worked with last spring did not know who Charlie Brown was. "Why is he bald?" one girl asked. "Does he have cancer?"]

 But I don't love Sally's philosophy in public leaders...

[Explanation for me in the future, when this ^ might not be obvious.
L to R: At the same time LA caught fire, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta (Facebook & Instagram) announced Meta would drop fact-checking, aligning with the desires of incoming US president Trump and his billionaire handler/minion?, Elon Musk, owner of Twitter/X.]

‘How should I know?’ is not a great approach to personal physical health & finances either, but it's been mine. Just ignore it, and it will go away--can be true for money & health!

Every so often, however, I make a big push to GET IT TOGETHER.
Which I spent the morning doing.
I am reapplying for health insurance from the State. (MN's coverage for povvos is great--basically it pays for whatever you need).
Since I quit the public schools 4.5 months ago, I've been without health care. Luckily, I didn't need it. I didn't bother to apply until now--the day before the deadline.

Aaaand... today I start 1:1 training again with Ben, the owner of a small strength-training gym in an old gas station where I worked out during 2020.
His gym's motto is Empathy | Resilience | Community.

It was such an upsetting time, I used to lie on the ground and stretch... and talk (wearing a mask). It was as much emotional centering as strength-training.
One day after the murder of G Floyd--the gym is a mile away-- I was walking home and truckloads of the National Guard rolled past me down the city street. I was so upset, I stopped at the gym and cried.
Ben was chill.

He is also entirely chill with people setting their own fitness/body goals. "Some people just want me to walk around the block with them." He says one reason he works to be strong is so he can help other people.
This is Ben:

This decision to work out again rolls on from my experience this fall of not being able to run-shuffle up a slight incline at Gooseberry Falls State Park. I started walking, but being back at the store, lifting and carrying, I can tell I've lost strength. I want to rebuild that--and maybe go beyond?
But for now, I'm coming from behind--I twisted my knee yesterday and am hobbling along.

 S  l  o  w  l  y  does it.

Also, you know, I keep thinking about the new weight-loss drugs, like ozempic. They are the opposite of what I want for myself, Being a Carbon-Based Life Form with Consciousness.
I am not a go-getter, I am not Pursuing Enlightenment with vigor. 
I just want to putz along in my small life;
but I want to be awake for it. You know?
I don't want to turn it over to the Medical Establishment.

Especially because I KNOW I started overeating because I felt empty and abandoned as a teen. The response I want isn't to knock it back with drugs, but to . . .
to wrap my arms around the whole shebang--emptiness and delight--and take it in.
Which I've been doing for years, and intend to continue.
Low and slow.

[I always want to add, if someone’s life is threatened by obesity, these drugs look to be miraculous! 

And also, of course everyone wants to do and can do different things.]
__________________

 Recently someone told me that a "shamanic practitioner" who lives nearby (in the neighborhood going away from the thrift store, not toward it) is offering New Year readings.
I was dubious but curious, so I looked closer.
He charges $70 for a half-hour reading, so, no...
But worse in my eyes, he offers these only on Zoom.

I asked Penny Cooper. Can spirits come through Zoom?
She said they could... If they want.
But she went on to say they often don't want to, because the tubes are so small. Further, some of them are naughty and stuff popcorn in the tubes, so then the readings "might be wrong."

(I suppose spirits can do whatever they want, but that's her take, and I like it.)
__________________
Time to go to the gym!

Here's the latest morph of the end-cap at work that started as a Hannukah display; then became solid colors; now––Suitable for Pasta:

Wriggle out of it

Ha, again. Not a triumphant "ha" this time though.
I'd been feeling groovy lately--practically congratulating myself on my imperturbability--and then I went to an art-making afternoon led by my hardest kind of person:
someone who doesn't ask, doesn't listen, but tells you how you feel, what you think, and what you should do.

"We're all having a hard time now," she trumpeted. (Are we? ) "We need to make art!" (Do we?) And on and on, in the most prescriptive, prepackaged terms.

I was feeling fine until then. Afterward, I thought of Ram Dass saying that if you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family.

This sort of person reminds me of being a child not-listened to, dictated to. You'd almost think the Universe dropped me there yesterday: "Deal with it."

I left halfway through--always a good option when you can't stop seething––but I did collage a nice card for the coming Year of the Snake (Jan 29, 2025).

"The window of the parlor which she used to occupy was open, and"

The snake is a symbol of transformation––shedding the old––and its year invites wisdom, transformation, calmness, and creativity.
Okay, then.
The window is open.

"A mythic life is not a banking transaction."

"A mythic life is not a banking transaction."
I hear people judging their lives as if they were a retail exchange--like, it should be equitable. We make an effort and we should get a good return.
Or as if our lives were like a skin-care regime:
we should be able to show good results.

Even some spiritual teachers imply (or say) that you should be able to recognize if someone is (you are) 'enlightened'.
But can you?
I think it's far weirder than that.

I told Mr Furniture once that he was a genius artist.
"Then why am I here?" he said (meaning working for minimum wage in the armpit of the city).

I was surprised that this outlaw took worldly judgement as any kind of valid reflection of himself.
"You KNOW the world doesn't judge fairly!" I said.

What if we look at our lives in mythic terms?
What if they aren't measurable, but magical?
In fairy stories, things are often disguised, maybe the opposite of what they appear.
Good skin is not the marker.

I'd been talking with a friend about feeling older & wiser, and the friend was saying they weren't sure they were---that they'd done some things that maybe "set back their personal growth".

I got thinking, there's a vocabulary of judgment and worth in common use that sounds more like financial investment terms than terms that could best describe a human life.
I've complained about terms such as "self-care" before--they sound as if our souls just need a bubble bath.

But that's not the only vocabulary we have.
In myths and fairy tales and religions, a soul might find itself in a muddy swamp or a desolate desert, turned into a frog, or fed by crows, and required to perform an impossible task or to recognize a tempting offer as a trick.
_____
Myth full of pain and failure reassure me, but not when it gets happified into refrigerator magnets and marketing schemes.

 I like this Frida Kahlo mural on a business near the thrift store.
But look--she's almost Disneyfied.
She's smiling, for instance, which she never is in her self-portraits, and they leave off her mustache, which she proudly included. She looks almost plump and healthy, which she certainly wasn't.

I'm not objecting to this mural. I have a carrying bag with Vincent van Gogh's sunflowers. I'm just saying human lives don't need to be a constantly rising line on a graph of improvement.
It's weirder than that.

Pom-pom

LA is on fire.
That sounds like a story prompt for a futuristic short story, but it is real, and now. Trump is blaming California water policies “to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt”.
Um. No.
(I know you know. "This is how tipping points happen: The LA wildfires are climate disasters compounded"--from the Guardian.)

Orange Crate Art has posted 4 live links to help LA.

May we wake up.
I deleted my Facebook account this morning. I kept Instagram, so that's mostly pointless, but my act is to remind ME of what matters:
FB was mostly people I could write letters to.
Do that.
________

I am to be given a pom-pom for my hat! Not frivolous: humans connecting.

At coffee yesterday morning, I'd mentioned to chocolatier Tracy that you could tell it was seriously cold outside (near zero F) because 23 of the 26 people on the city bus were wearing hats. (Minnesotans almost never wear hats.) Only TWO of the hats had pom-poms on top, however, and I was sorry mine wasn't one of them.

She, crafter extraordinaire, said she would make me a pom-pom!
BELOW: Me, left, in pom-pomless hat knit by Auntie Vi, and Chocotrace. If you're in southern Wisconsin, visit her Sjolinds Chocolate House.

At work, I spiffed up the Valentines section with more non-Valentine frivolities:
a pair of little lamps with bases of frilly, Dresden-type figures in pastels; a packet of women socks with pink flamingos; a decorative box of beginner's calligraphy pens and nibs; more books and DVDs.
Can I keep this up for the month until V Day?
Probably not, but it's funner for me, and hopefully for shoppers. Manageress complimented me too.

And I made my coworkers lunch in a crock pot entirely from donated canned food:
kidney beans, black beans, green beans, collard greens, carrots, fire-roasted tomatoes, pasta sauce, and chicken. Meat in cans kinda grosses me out, but there it was--free protein.

I see at work how people are "nutrition poor". Usually there's something to eat, but often it's cold carbs. My coworkers are generally happy to have hot food.

I ate it too. Too much sodium, but not much added sugar (just the pasta sauce). I'm trying to avoid processed foods, but in reality I just don't have the oomph to do all my own cooking from all-fresh foods.
When it's too cold to bike, shopping for freshies is an extra trip on the bus and I often skip it.
And that's totally okay. I'm not going for purity. That way lies madness. (You can see it on social media--some truly crazy food obsessions.)
______________
Where the Store Lives

I don't blog much about the social setting of the store anymore, so for anyone new to my blog, let me note:
the store is located in one the first neighborhoods on "areas of the city to avoid" lists.
It's a mile from where the police murdered George Floyd, which was entirely in keeping with the Way It Is. I was shocked, but my coworkers were, like, "That almost happened to my cousin."

The nest of dealers across the street from the store have moved on (for now), so it's not quite so in-your-face, but poverty and all its cruel companions are on display daily.

People have told me they're afraid to come to the store, and I don't blame them. I hope you can see here that it's lots of kindness and fun too. And fun stuff! Once I figured out that I AM NOT THE SAVIOR, I've been good there.
Lots of good and interesting stuff nearby too--like mercados:
(me w/ my earlier self-cut hair)

It's my day off--I'm going downtown to mail a vintage Stanley "built for life" thermos to Marz, so she can take hot lunch to school. She'd wanted one, and on Tuesday one came into the thrift store. It's like a magic river: eventually (almost) everything comes by.
Probably pom-poms too, but I'd rather have a friend-made one.

After the PO, I'm going to a coffee shop to write a letter. Oh, yes, and I'll get ingredients for this miso soup.

Take care out there!

TY, Scrapper

 Leaving in a few minutes to have coffee with Chocolatracy before she leaves town this morning, so just a quick Photo Toss.

I set up a display of bright solid colors--I love the scrappy cat cup and this vintage hippo candle. TY for thank you.

I rounded up a few old LPs and some love stories books & DVDs for the Valentine's display:

I've been surprised that I continue to lose about half a pound a week, when I'm eating a lot of everything but sugar. Yesterday morning at work, the break room table was full of leftover Xmas chocolates--Sees, Lindt, chocolate peanuts, "chocolate" pretzels... as well as the usual bakery, and it was a visual clue to why:
NO WONDER.
Last year I'd have eaten a lot (a lot!) of that chocolate, all day long.

As it was, a scruffy young woman was half-sleeping in a chair in the furniture room. I asked her if she needed some water? A donut?
"Thank you, I haven't eaten today."
I gave her that box of Danish, and she immediately ate three.
Luckily we also had some donated, frozen prepared meals, from the food-shelf , and she took some with her.
Humans must eat.

Give it a try...

Ha. Victory is mine.
I may have mentioned that I have a slightly fraught relationship with Art Volunteer who prices the store's donated art?
While generous in his intention to help, he's finicky and rigid, with a bit of sandpaper to him.

Last week he reached to grab a sterling silver cream-and-sugar set out of my hands---though he quickly caught himself and pulled back
saying, "I wouldn't do that, but it's your call."

The 'wrong' thing I was doing was pricing the set to put in the glass display case.
What he wanted to do was add the pieces to his precious-metal stash that he takes to a buyer who pays $/pound. Every so often he gets several hundred dollars for the store that way. Which is generally a good thing.

BUT, those buyers melt the precious metals down, and, as I told Art, it'd be a shame to destroy this attractive and unusual set. (I wish I'd photographed it.)

"But they'd give us $100," Art said. "We'll never get that here."

"You never know," I said. "Just give me a month. If it hasn't sold by February, I'll give it back to you."

The silver set sold yesterday.
The cashier said the buyer was in antiques. It's possible they judged that they could earn more re-selling it to a melter (we don't have a scale to weigh sterling)---but maybe not. It was a unique set.
At any rate, we got the hundred.
And I had the satisfaction (petty, but satisfying) of telling Art.

"It's good it won't be melted down," he said--as if he'd cared about that.

In fact, he probably did care--he likes fine things--but he gets locked into his plans. You may know the type. He never seems to see that he is creating resistance--he always think The Other Person is refusing to see reason.
But he does grant that I know what I'm doing--usually.

And, honestly, I like him. He's just--like all of us--at the mercy of his personality.
It helps so much if a person (if I!) can stand outside personality and SEE what we're doing. Sometimes there's a work-around.
And Art had backed off,  even if implying that I was crazy, and acknowledged I had a right to try selling it.

Which is my Thrift Store philosophy:
TRY selling the good stuff in the store first, before re-selling it.
It's not just about money but about making the store a fun place to visit, even if you don't buy.
And often nice, expensive stuff does sell. To resellers sometimes, but also to regular people who happen love it.

(I used to resent resellers, but now I see them as part of a healthy ecosystem, like worms turning garden soil. I mean, shoppers enjoy seeing unique stuff even if they don't buy it.)

I'd mentioned finding a 1930s Mexican blanket, with the maker's tag, that my predecessor had stashed to buy cheap and resell himself.
It was tattered and holey, but with beautiful muted colors, not the bright synthetics of modern weavings.
I'd priced it $52 and it sold on a sale day for $39.

So, I'd say things are going well.
(I'm curious to see sales figures. Big Boss sometimes shares them--I must ask.)

Yesterday I set up a Valentine's Day section, with the predictable red-heart donations we save through the year.
I asked Amina to add romantic books in the coming days, and volunteer Jeff who sorts our media to add old phono-albums with cheesey covers, like those 1960s "Music for Lovers" string compilations.

I hope that will be fun and corny. Stand by for an AFTER photo.
This is the boring BEFORE section:

We got a box of old 'Better Homes & Gardens' magazines yesterday--I saved a few for a friend, Z, who uses them in collages. He won't care that one is Christmas.

I used to work with Z at the art college library. He is a Vietnam Vet who makes amazing collages that I believe he just stores away, sometimes showing friends. He certainly isn't part of any Art Scene.
I know several people like that---I guess I am one too.
Makers-of-visual-things who do it for themselves and a small circle (like you who enjoy the girlettes).

I was talking with my Chocolate-maker friend and her husband--he's another. Though he is frustrated with the lack of an art scene where he can bump into other ideas. I do think that's helpful.

I find it mostly online. Sometimes I reject the ideas (I don't want to do Barbie fashions), but even then, they can inspire and give ideas.
Like the man, Jian Yang (his IG) who makes high-fashion Barbie clothes from waste paper.
One of his toilet paper wedding dresses:

Must dash! Everyone, have a day of your own!

I ate a tomato!

My Story-Idea /Prompt: Based on your 10 last credit-card purchases, write a memoir or story.
Say, for a detective story: you're missing, and someone is trying to find you by following the trail of your credit card use.
Or, write a personal reflection: What does this trail show you?

I'm going to try this. I don't usually save my receipts, but I'm going to for the next ten purchases. 
(Wouldn't have to be credit card purchases for personal reflection-- they're what's most traceable for a detective or AI or something.)

Darn, I have to go already! It's another singe-digit day, so I'm catching the bus + walking a mile. At least it's above zero, and sunny.
Temps are due to warm up into the 20s this week, so I can bike again.

Later today I'm meeting up with my friend who I met when I was nineteen and we both worked at the collectively run, whole-foods restaurant.
She now has a business making her own chocolate, from raw bean to smooth bar!
This is what I'd want sweets to be: excellent and special.

I am going to try eating dates as a sweet option. I don't think I'd binge on dates, and they don't spike your sugar, and they have lots of nutrients. So they might be a good option.
Meanwhile, I ATE A TOMATO!
I saw a big ripe one at the store, brought it home and dressed it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and it was sooooo goood, I ate the whole thing.

This feels like a triumph! That I intuitively chose a food (NOT to any plan), that I then took pleasure in eating it, for its flavor.
That may seem obvious to a lot of people, but after years of eating for the chemical comfort, it's kind of a big deal for me: 

I can trust myself!

And while I wish I could wave a magic wand and make food troubles disappear, I don't want DESIRE, pleasure & comfort re food to disappear (ozempic):
I want to get in right, LOVING relationship with it!

The Profundity of Crumbling/Bananas

I watched two-and-a-half episodes of the mini-series Chernobyl this week. Too much dragged on--men in protective gear going into dangerous buildings--but the scenes of empty homes were gripping--maybe re-creations, I bet (without bothering to look it up) of photos by David McMillan.

Excerpts from his book Growth and Decay: Pripyat and the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (2019):

I didn't mean to disparage the bland, clean look of Home Goods in my last post--I do see why people would love them, given how rough it is to live with the Law of Entropy:
"Look, with smooth white pottery, we have created an illusion of space outside the law!"

But the look of decay--entropy at work--is more to my taste.
"Antique" or "vintage" are more attractive words than decay, but it's all about the visual effects of time.
Crumbling is beautiful.
[Exception: dead things when they still smell.]
_______________________

I had a bit of a meltdown myself yesterday--the predictable post-holiday, January-cold mood plunge.
I left work early and for the first time in a couple months was really, reeeeally tempted to stop on the way home and buy ice cream. "Maybe I could make an exception..."

Ha. I KNOW how that plays out.
No.
I stopped and bought BANANAS instead and had a minor binge with them + peanut butter on olive-oil crackers...
Pretty satisfying too--crunchy and creamy textures. Bananas are sweet, but with about 1/10th of the sugar in ice-cream.
The emotions are the same, but the nutrition is way different.
I used my porcelain Soviet tea saucer that was probably made around the time of Chernobyl.

I wonder how emotional eating works if you're on Ozempic. You don't physically want to eat, but the emotions remain... The author of Magic Pill talked about feeling flat because he couldn't turn to food for comfort. A woman (who looked great) who'd had bariatric surgery talked about how depressed she was without the pleasure of food.

Of course ideally we learn other kinds of comfort and pleasure.
But it's ludicrous to think we'll just switch-on to train for a marathon; call our [nonexistent] trusted family and friends.
Write a short story...

MAYBE IN OUR NEXT LIVES....
_______________

Idea for a story in Time [more of a thought experiment]

Since time is not linear, if you (your soul) re-incarnates, there's no reason that your "next" life will be in the "future". Souls could live and live again anytime.
What if all the people on earth at one time are reincarnations of the same soul---yours?
What if, once in a while anyway, Everyone Is You?

I can't think how to turn it into a story though, since if it were true, it wouldn't make any difference!
(Since we don't remember our other lives.)
I suppose a character could become aware?
Have I rediscovered the Buddha?
What would a buddha do in 2025?
____________________

I don't record a lot of books I read, I guess partly because a lot of books are barely worth recording.
Another disappointment: No One Is Talking About This (2021), by Patricia Lockwood. (In photo above, behind banana.)

Yes, and why did I think I would like this when I had disliked Lockwood's memoir Priestdaddy (2017)? (She's was born to a father who was a Lutheran minister who later became a Catholic priest--a rare instance of a priest who's a married man with children.)

At first No One Is... amused me, but eventually I remembered... I don't particularly like this person. But she's great at catching the voice of social media!

"She was ovulating, and posted a photo of herself in a bikini with the disturbing caption, 'god's little dog treat.' Her mother called exactly fourteen minutes later. 'You're not an atheist, are you?' she asked. 'That's not what I meant,' she assured her, and explained that the post was actually kind of Christian. Her body was trying to knock itself up, the only way it knew how."

That's on page 107 (of 210), which I think is as far as I'm going to get.

There's a kind of writing I think I could do, but don't want to do:
to use a modern voice that talks about the ironic profundity of the emptiness of eating a hot dog at Dairy Queen alone on your birthday.

And another voice, one that writes with a super-sincere profundity of a man who gives you a reusable bag on the bus when your paper bag breaks.

THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME.
The bag, not the hot dog. My paper bag of bananas broke and I carried it in my arms onto the bus.
Where an old man pulled from his knapsack a big, new reusable bag from Marshalls, pink with butterflies, and gave it to me.
[*oh. just realized the 'old' man must have been around my age.]

This was a little unsettling because a week before Christmas,  I saw a man at the bus stop where I was waiting who appeared to be carrying all his possessions in a reusable Aldi bag, and he was trying to tie up that Aldi bag because its bottom seam had split.

He managed to get on the bus and go to the seats in the back with his stuff spilling over.
I sat down halfway back, emptied my backpack of the (luckily) few things I was carrying, took the bag back and offered it to him.
"It's not big enough, but you could put some of your stuff in it."

"Thank you so much, ma'am," he said.
[* if he told the story later, he probably said, 'an old lady gave me a bag'.]

I'd thought--in a very Patricia-Lockwood way (though I hadn't yet read No One Is... )--that if someone had recorded this on their phone, it would turn up in one of those "Strangers Are Angels" social media channels.
(I love those, actually. Total strangers happen to look up as babies tumble from balconies, and catch them!)

So, I felt unsettled when basically the same thing happened to me, like a ball returned. Who bounced it back? Unsettled, because this kind of Instant Karma has been happening to me recently.

I don't believe some Consciousness bounced the ball back.
I'm sure it's a cognitive bias on my part:
you notice the .1% of things that match other things, and discount the 99.9% of things that don't match at all.
Right?
Like, I watch Chernobyl and it seems amazing--possibly meaningful--that I have a Soviet tea cup from the same era.

BUT... not to dismiss serendipity! It is meaningful--because we see meaning in patterns. If we do nice things, and then we notice that other people do nice things for us...
That's nice!
Of course not-nice things bounce back too, and good deeds are not necessarily rewarded, not at all;
but all things being equal (which they're not), it's a good policy to make the effort to do good things.

It does take some effort, don't you think? to shove back against the law of entropy, or, anyway, to see beauty in the crumbling?

And on that note I shall sign off--I must get to the post office before its Saturday 1 p.m. closing to mail Marz some odds & ends she forgot. Thermal long johns! NEEDED FOR THE JOURNEY!

Home Truths

The best New Year's exhortation I've seen--maybe ever:

"Believe in yourself like visitors who believe they can pet a bison."

Unless you're already one of those people who believes they can pet a bison. Then, doubt yourself a little.

("Bison injure more people in Yellowstone than any other animal. Bison are unpredictable and can run 3x faster than humans."--NPS)
_________

THIS, below, is what Big Boss would like the thrift store to look like. He went and picked up a load of donated new (floor model) Home Goods. BB believes in the ministering /charitable side of the store, but he doesn't care about cool old stuff (thrift!).

I'm happy to have new stock to put out––and clean!––but could you get more boring?

My father's relatives, including Auntie Vi, liked decorative stuff like this. My father and his nine siblings had grown up in poverty, and they told stories about boiling water to kill cockroaches in an old house they moved into, wearing damp clothes because their one nice set hadn't dried after they washed it the night before.

Useless, generic objects symbolized resources and cleanliness to them as adults, I think. One auntie had white carpet, with plastic runners where people walked, to protect it. She never let a cake of soap get very washed away before she replaced it.

Some went the other way though. My father was a cheapskate, excited to tell you how he'd found the cheapest off-brand ON SALE.
But he'd spend real money on cool old toys (books, records).

My mother grew up middle-class and loved antiques, but my father was the one with quirky taste that I share. He'd think Toys Recreate Paintings was nifty. My mother would appreciate the art history but wish I'd do something more . . . culturally elevated.
________

I didn't much enjoy Christmastime this year. Setting up Winter Village was nice. Recreating "Hunters in the Snow" was a highlight. And, weirdly, another was spending four hours at the art museum café with my sister. Surprising because we're not close. Not surprising because we're the only people who've known each other since babyhood. (She's the elder, by less than two years.)

We talked about the books we most enjoyed this year. Hers included Lessons in Chemistry.
My stand-out was Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians. But once again, I FAILed to keep track of my reading and couldn't remember many titles. Sister tracks hers on Goodreads. She has less to remember--I was surprised she'd only read a dozen books last year. Mostly of the book-club caliber.
I am indiscriminate--picking up odds and ends from thrift books and Little Free Libraries, nibbling and rejecting most of them. I quit Lessons in Chemistry: it felt like those Home Goods above.

So--THIS YEAR I intend to try, try again to keep better track of What I'm Reading.
Right now I'm on page 38 of No One Is Talking About This.
It's almost entirely references to social media---and I can follow it because I've been watching lots of TikTok and reels on IG etc. They are sometimes excellent--like Nike ads or Dutch still lives, they are sponsored by, arise from the Culture of the Times.
Our Times!
For better or worse.

It's also funny--I've laughed out loud--so I'll post something later, but that's it for now--I'm heading out into the sunny cold (single digits) to go to work. I have options--today, it's a combo of bus & walk. I decided it's better to walk a mile than to stand in the cold, waiting to transfer to the second bus.

Tootle-oo!