Boxing Day Sale Shopping/Being a Decorum Dummy

I've recovered enough to at least arrive at a place to be of better humour. Recently, I was educated more about the Aboriginal shamanistic ceremony of "saging" a home. That involves the burning of a bundle of dried sage grass to produce a smoke smudge used to purify one's living space; to cleanse it of negative energy, and to drive out any unwelcome evil spirits. I learned about this by the way of someone I know, who chose this practice to close off this year: a more unfortunate one for her, and to prepare to open their home up and invite something better to come in the New Year. The Japanese also have a custom of welcoming the incoming New Year by cleaning their homes near the end of the old one: every room, from ceiling to floor. This is done to welcome the presence, and good favour and fortune of their kami, the god-spirits of the Shinto religion, into their dwellings. I have my own pre-New Year habit that is similar to that of the Japanese one. I've been cleaning in my own place as well: not so much to invite the right kind of benevolent spooks and divinities in here, but more to be mindfully organized, and to clear and set a stage for efficiency and order that will hopefully help to attract some form of prosperity, of any kind, in the New Year. Given my condition, I started today to break the process into modular phases. It should all end on New Year's Eve. I don't give much credence into stuff like conjuring up spirits, feng shui, or anything else that is as oogity-boogity. However, after this latest bout of events closing my last month and a half of this year, if rearranging furnishings and scrubbing things down coincidentally helps to rid this place of any lingering bad karma around here, I have no objections to it. I don't have any sage; I do have some sandalwood and musk incense though. I started to burn that too, just to cover my ass.

I also have another custom in my home as I organize stuff: not done so much out of superstition, but out of prudence and frugality. If I bring in a new furnishing, appliance, or technical fixture into my home, I'm relegated to clean at least the whole room where it will be stationed or stored, and then sell off/repurpose/donate/throw out the same volume of stuff (if not more). Such a ritual prevents me from accumulating clutter; and encourages me to be more thoughtful about balancing my living space, to avoid being wasteful, and to seek practical alternatives (if any). Knowing that there is ultimately an obligation (or penalty) of having to press myself into some distasteful task of cleaning later also psychologically prevents me from buying anything rashly and impulsively. Thus, to be effective and efficient, I tend to do my home furnishing shopping near the end of the year when the Boxing Day and Year End sales are on, when prices are slashed, and I'm when scheduled to clean anyway.

I looked in my living room, and said
 "I gotta have more cowbell!"
 However, that didn't happen.
Instead I did the next best thing
 and found more cowhide. Ella isn't yet
 sure if she likes it.

That past month and a half of being stuck in here and staring at my mostly naked walls has been a real sobering revelation as to how much my own condo really isn't my vision of what I would think of as a truly comfortable home. It's actually very devoid of any reflections or signatures of my true personality. Most of the time, it is just a glorified dog house, as it is in fact Ella who is the being that spends the most time inside here, strewing her chew toys all about. For me, because I spend the majority of my week at work, this place ordinarily is just utilitarian space where I sleep, bathe, do laundry, and cook and eat the occasional meal. With having all this time off, I was dumbstruck after realizing just how little time I actually spend living in here while I'm on my regular work schedule. The decorum, or rather the sad lack of it, is a true reflection of that. I realize that because of this I'm kind of reluctant to invite other people over. It's no wonder I've been staring at screens all this time, because I really don't consciously want to look at anything else around here. A few other things also prompted me to think that I should put more thought into making this a place more personalized with creature comforts, and less like a place where it looks like Value Village busted in here, drunk in the middle of the night, and vomited up random junk in every room. Things like, receiving some pictures of my brother's family in the mail, they deserve to be hung in special places. I made myself a promise to keep junk off my kitchen table and actually use it for eating my meals, instead of plunking down in front of the TV and eating mindlessly. I have a nice new(er) rug now to dissuade me from doing that, because I don't want to risk getting it soiled. Rather than collecting a new piece of technology, like I initially planned to do, I instead chose to go on the grand adventure of at least window shopping for decorum for my place.

So, I ended up taking a trip to HomeSense where, as per their moniker, I thought they would have a lot of obvious things to make a house even more homelike. To be honest, I was in a loopy/crazy disposition for much of the day, perhaps due to being (finally) hungry and having low blood sugar, right along with my already impaired uptake of blood oxygen, so my observations tended to get a little weird and skewed toward the realm of the right-brain. I made handy use of the camera on my cellphone to serve as a visual memory aide. I'll declare and affirm right now that I'm by no measure any kind of expert on home decorum, but I am wise enough to see and know what kind of crap is out there that doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. I found a lot of instances where the store should have been renamed HomeNonsense. The following paragraphs and pictures I've listed are the random observations, home utilities, objectives for my own place, fancies, and other home-oriented concepts that made me wonder what kind of dope various artisans and craftsperson were smoking after viewing some of the stuff I saw there.

Observation: The Mega-Pot – I stumbled across a kitchen pot that would be every hard core home brewer's wet dream. The damn thing must have had at least a 120 litre capacity, a larger capacity than the fuel tanks of many half ton trucks. Being shocked and surprised, I was being silly and flippant at the moment when a young girl of seven or so, and her mother walked up to stare with awe at this strange anomaly along with me. I like kids at that age because their questions and answers are imaginative and spontaneous. Just to see the reaction, I turned to the young girl and said out loud:
"I wonder how many babies you could pack into that sucker?" She began to laugh and giggle uncontrollably, and I chuckled along right with her. Her Mama however didn't seem to appreciate this moment of levity, and kind of began to usher her away from me. At least the daughter had a sense of humour. The presence of this thing begs me to question: what kind of home is out there in which the wholesale purchasers of HomeSense thought it would be a perfectly sensible move to market a friggin' 120 litre cooking pot? This thing was made of stainless steel, and already heavy by itself.

Filled to capacity with liquid, it would easily crush my average-sized stove, that is if I could have ever got it on the damn thing! I guess this thing must have been there for that exact instant when a Hudderite colony should wander into their store looking for something to adequately cook all their borsht for them (for a whole bloody month!), or if the Jolly Green Giant comes along looking for something to steam his peas. I was going to get the young girl to stand by it to get a sense of the scale of this thing when I took the picture, but she and her mother already left, probably looking for Security. HomeSense 0, HomeNonsense 1.

Objective: The far wall opposite of my entrance at the end of my hallway – Initially, I thought I would hang a mirror on this wall space, to give it an illusion of greater space and depth. Then I thought again about when I'll be arriving home after work at night, and how I really don't want to have an instant reminder in seeing just how ghastly, disheveled, and bedraggled I look after an eleven hour day when I come through the door. I would want something a hell of a lot more welcoming than that. I may have to get creative and try to paint my own picture to hang there, but I think so far I like this one. HomeSense 1, HomeNonsense 1.

Objective: a utility, Drink Coasters – How is it that I'm using a drink coaster all the time when I'm at the bar; and yet I'm not so civilized enough to have them handy around my own home? Lord knows I do most of my serious drinking here at my own abode. Maybe I just don't set my glass down long enough around here. Apparently, throughout all this time, I've been one of those innovative bachelors who has figured out that any corner of a newspaper, or a DVD case, or the open end of one of my socks to slip around a drinking vessel works well enough to keep condensation rings and dribbles off my coffee table.

As eccentric as I am, I don't really use this kind
of makeshift coaster, but I was curious as to
know what the visual actually would look like.

However, that just doesn't work if I'm endeavoring to attract and keep a more sophisticated ilk of company. So, I decided to get some coasters. After looking around there without any success, I finally approached one of the stock clerks at the store: a somewhat scrawny, yet strangely attractive and comely young blond woman.
"Excuse me, where would I find the drink coasters?" I asked plainly. The look on her face after my query was one of an attempt to stifle bemused astonishment.
"We have no drink coasters here." she replied with a thick Slavic accent, sort of almost half spitting the answer at me before she turned away. I couldn't help but to react like this was the stupidest thing I ever heard. How in the hell can an establishment, dedicated and devoted to decorating a home with ornaments; a place that sells seemingly endless varieties of stemware, cocktail glasses and coffee/tea cups; a place that sells a plethora of tablecloths, trivets, place mats, napkins, throws, slip covers and other surface protection paraphernalia not have a single goddamned set of drink coasters in its whole entire massive inventory?! I'm being led to believe that there are dinner parties out there in this town where even the more elite homes are having their guests using magazines or their own socks slipped on their wine glasses to protect the furniture because there were none to be found anywhere. HomeSense 1, HomeNonsense 2.

Observation: Ridiculous packaging – Selling bottled water here in Canada apparently wasn't already a stupid enough idea. Unless you were going to a place with an actual tainted water supply, there is no need to buy bottled water here. Now, I just found something that trumps even that for marketing imbecility. Yes, that is, A BOX OF WATER!!! . . . a 5 litre box of water,

They actually have to add the
word "Happy" on the label
to encourage the miserably
stupid people to buy this.

packaged like it was exotic bulk wine from Chile or Australia. It's not even imported from some exotic locale, it's from right here in Canada sitting on that shelf. . . WTF !!! I was tempted initially to pick it up and check and see how outrageous the price was for such a thing, but then that impulse was quickly halted by the self-conscious fear of having some onlookers watching me handle it, and thinking to themselves, "Look at that stupid fucker over there, he is actually thinking about buying that BOX OF WATER!!!
 
Another thing that pissed me off and made me think about how affluence is making us devolve into something that is so much stupider as a society is what is in this next picture. Look at it. Kinda pretty, isn't it? Is it some finely-crafted chocolate bon-bons from Switzerland? . . . Nooooo! Is it an intoxicating fragrance from some boutique in Paris? . . .Nooooo! Is it a package of high-quality rolled up silk handkerchiefs? . . . Again, Noooooo! This is actually a package of plastic bags for collecting DOG SHIT!!! Why is it packaged like this? Is it to give people a fleeting window of appearing superior to someone else when they whip one of these out and bend over to pick up after Rover? I began looking for some gold-leaf embossed toilet paper there after I saw this. HomeSense 1, HomeNonsense 4.

Objective: Decorative, yet manly – Adjectives for things that I will not have in here: frilly, ephemeral, sparkly, pink, yellow, lacy, chiffon, fluffy, sheer, silky; that already eliminates about 40% of the merchandise in HomeSense. There are some things there that would suit me, but would go out of style too quickly as I mature. There are some definitely non-feminine, testosterone-charged things that guys embrace a little too willingly to use as ornaments in their homes, like antique license plates, sports memorabilia, heads of antlered beasts, or even the more ridiculous collections of swords and battleaxes. Unless there is an impending attack by a horde of Visigoths over the hill, I really have no need to keep medieval weaponry around the place. The same goes the relic pieces of vehicles: if I don't want that crap cluttering up my garage, why would I then draw it into my actual living space?

The weird manly things I'd probably have around here are wood carvings and figurines of animals, mathematically complex sculptures, hand puzzles and classic board games, and signs in tasteful calligraphy that reflect a simple personal philosophy, like what is seen on this serving tray. HomeSense 2, HomeNonsense 4.
 
Observation: HUH?!?! – And finally there is home ornamentation there that I just have no words for, as it just boogles my mind as to what kind of home these things would actually belong in. HomeSense2, HomeNonsense 6.

The perfect something for the gay cowboy/cult leader in the family

I don't know what this thing is supposed to
represent, but I can think of a few people
I'd like to have sitting on it.

A house is just walls and a roof, but a home is defined by the characters in it, which in turn are often reflected by the objects and artifacts that they chose to include in it and collect. Sadly, today's shopping trip was a reminder that there will always be people stupid enough to buy water in a box in a nation where it's free on the tap, and others who are pretentious and idiotic enough to by dog shit bags designed by Gucci. I wish all it took to cleanse these sorts of people away from me was burning some sort of herb. If I had only one wish for the New Year, it would be to encounter fewer and fewer people with this degree of stupidity. If that happened, about 90% of my problems in life would probably disappear.

Addendum: I at least managed to find some bloody coasters. I went to Pier One (a place too dangerously close to the Future Shop) for them. This time, I was helped by a stunningly beautiful store worker . . . another one with a thick Slavic accent coincidentally, but this time with some very pleasing proportions. They are of a black alligator skin texture (the coasters I mean, not the physical assets of the woman I mentioned). Nothing too pretty, and yet nothing too corny and cheesy: something you'd expect to find in a more sophisticated man cave.

Yuletide Gratitude

The 10 simple things making this a very nice holiday:

• Surviving November's ordeal (perhaps not so simple, but I'm thankful all the same), and being well enough to stay out of a hospital and to travel. Some people won't have this benefit this year.
• El Niño, and the consequential weather patterns that made the incredible scenes of hoar frost laden trees and buildings, and yet was mild enough to be out to enjoy such views before Christmas.
• A recent windfall that covered most of my Xmas shopping expenses.
• Watching the dog's reaction and excitement of receiving a gift from one someone. The aerial manoeuvers she performed to simultaneously greet an auntie, and then do a Kamikaze drive head first into a gift bag to get her treats was entertaining to watch. I wish I had video footage. It was like Ella Boo Boo's Flying Circus happening there and then.
• Discovering Gevalia coffee: it is divine stuff. Seeing that it comes from Sweden, the number one coffee-drinking nation in the world, one would think that they would know their stuff, and they sure do. Add that to the other great things to make it here from Sweden, like IKEA, ABBA, Skype, maybe the Koenigsegg hypercar, and Malin Åkerman*.
• Homemade Butter Tarts, Cabbage Rolls, Surprise Seafood Spread, and Turkey Stuffing with gravy. If this is all I had to eat for the holiday, I would still be quite happy.
• Dad having another birthday, and seeing that one more year of age hasn't stopped him from being the silly and witty old character that he is.
• My present: a set of cookware, a welcome new addition to the arsenal that is my kitchen. I guess I can finally retire the hand me down cooking pots that I have been using thus far.
• Not hearing so much ridiculous exposure on the news about the political correctness of using Happy Holidays versus Merry Christmas.
• Finally breaking some cycle of depression, and learning how to deal with all this being alone with idleness and no energy, and sitting still by myself without as much negative thinking and anxiety overwhelming me (again, perhaps not such a simple thing).

*- Well . . . I'm not too sure about ABBA or IKEA, Skype has glitches, and the Koenigsegg isn't even street legal here . . . but most definitely for sure, MALIN ÅKERMAN.

Approaching Solstice

I've been getting better throughout the past couple weeks. I would estimate that I've now recovered to some point between 65 and 75 percent of my pre-embolism self. Now however, it feels like I'm in a bit of a stall phase. I probably reached that point where the clots may have subsided, but the scar tissue that's left behind is slower to get through. Being able to get out during the brief thaw phase of this month to at least get some good fresh air and away from my own walls from time to time has been a relief. I still have to be wary and mindful about exposure to people with colds and the flu. I was warned that contracting anything with symptoms of respiratory impairment, even to a relatively mild degree, would put me several steps backward from recovery if I'm not careful. Thus, running out to a crowded mall to do Christmas shopping hasn't been on my to-do list. I did go out during a couple less busy days and times of the week, more so to meet up and visit with some friends and familiars than to do anything else. Otherwise, the only real physically active and sometimes social thing I've been doing is taking Ella out to the dog park.

So, now with it being payday, and the realization that Christmas is only six days away*, I now have a fire lit under my ass to finish my Christmas shopping. Being amongst the teeming hordes of shoppers is now unavoidable. Inspiration and ideas have been so far alluding me.
 
After being shut in for so long, and finally getting some more of my stamina and energy back, I strongly felt the need to explore: to get out and tour new places, see new things. I've become desperate for novelty. I also received a bit of a settlement recently; as tempting as it is to book a trip somewhere, I won't be medically fit for air travel for some while (Boo!). All the places I want to travel to are markedly more expensive than most vacation packages to Vegas or Mexico anyway, and will need more time to save for these locales. I hope the falling fuel prices help with achieving such a goal sooner.
 
In a past entry I talked about finding a substitute pastime for running, cycling and skiing. Well, recently I thought I should make good on not just making that lip service. I was inspired by a figure of a gargoyle in a bar recently and got to perusing some magazines in Indigo to consider taking up wood-carving. As cheap as carving sets can be though, I notice now that even when handling knives in doing my own kitchen prep that my hand-eye coordination is getting more crude. I just didn't want this to be another pastime that I'd be rashly taking up, only to drop later out of frustration. It would be my luck that I would be destined of somehow slashing open my hand or fingers by accident while on Warfarin as I chip away at some piece of wood and then bleeding out really badly. I later found a place in this town, one of the hobby shops, that is an outlet that sells the MakerBot series of 3D printers, and I got to finally witness a demonstration of one's capability for the first time. I just about bought one right there on the spot. It's a beautiful and marvelous thing: an entire workshop condensed into less than one cubic meter of space, easily fitting into the office space of my condo. I'm looking into really getting one, but the rest of my computer systems are so antiquated now, and I require a lot of upscaling in the basics of technology before I'd be able to get and use one practically.

The first few weeks of being out of the hospital have been worrisome for me, in regards to wondering if I'll really ever recover to 100% of my old self, and get enough of my strength, energy, and stamina back to endure the rigours of a typical 11 – 13 hour workday**. The recovery has been going well, but the path through it all is still riddled with potential landmines. It has been unsettling being left to wonder what options I'd have left to do vocationally if all I'd be doing is torturing myself and suffering more after going back. As miserable as office jobs make me, I do have to consider the real options for getting one for the long-term out of necessity in the near future. Creating options in a career in design/development and fostering them with an applicable interest or hobby is probably the way to go to avoid outrageous education expenses. Who knows really? Vocational counsellors seem to be getting further and further out of touch with the world for me to rely on anything on what they have to say. Finding/creating a job/career at this time that both pays well enough, and that I'd love to do (or can at least tolerate doing) while in this state is a huge challenge.

I'll hopefully know more about a route to take as I sort out things from next medical appointment coming next week.
 
*- Of that time, only three days are available for me to use for shopping, the pressure's on . . .
** - Commuting time included.

More Sick Leave Ponderings

It's Week Three post-hospital. Today I resumed a mission of re-organization. It started at first of the month, with paying bills, and taming down the stack of accumulated papers, correspondence, and other junk mail. I have only entered my office space maybe only three times since the middle of November, and now I'm trying to deal with the runaway state of entropy and chaos that has struck the place. I also went to the office of the Canadian Lung Association today to see if there were other options they had available to expedite a faster course of recovery for me. They had nothing new to share with me in terms of more strategies to use other than what I'm already doing. I was just given reminders: to be patient, to note that I am making progress (even if it's coming slowly), to avoid reviewing recovery information on the Internet (too much conflicting/bad information), and to just be thankful that I managed to survive this ordeal.

I've realized that this has so far been the longest time I've ever been off work, surpassing by a couple of weeks or so the longest stretch of vacation days I've ever had. The following random thoughts have been occupying my mind. I have no gumption to elaborate on them better, so I will just list them in a rough outline:

1. Discovering how badly in which impaired breathing affects my ability to mentally focus: I'm trying to commit to writing exercises (at least around 500 words a day, including this entry) but it just isn't flowing like it should. I usually can noodle out four star logic problems in a puzzle magazine without many errors or much backtracking, but now I'm having trouble keeping a bead on the clues of one and two star problems. I usually dominate in Jeopardy, now I'm zonking out midway through the show. I'm learning directly by comparison just how quality thinking is heavily dependent on getting oxygen. I never realized until now about just how much energy is really needed to just to be able to physically speak and sustain even a short conversation. I recently discovered that through my online chats that thinking, speaking and writing in a foreign language somehow deceptively uses about four times more energy than for me to speak English, and it wears me out quickly.
2. Discovering the hard way how ignorant I've been about how potentially harmful cold air is: The shock of sucking in air from a -42 wind chill outside with buggered up lungs is a bit of a jolt.
3. Wondering ahead to the retirement years: If I'm managing this poorly with the malaise and boredom of being this inactive and away from work or anything else useful right now, what the hell am I going to be like if I actually reach some age when I've really become some kind of feeble old man?
4. Thinking that I really need a meaningful new hobby/creative pastime: I haven't figured out yet what kind of low-impact, non-physical pastime I could do that serves as a satisfying substitute for running, hiking, biking, and skiing. It has to be one that's cheap to do and doesn't require me further straining my eyes by staring at screens or dealing with an intense amount of visual detail. From Wednesday, I can say that pissing around with wiring and trying to reconfigure network connections lacks some appeal, so electronics is out. Making more wine or beer is pointless because I'm well-stocked, lacking the storage room for it, and I can't regularly imbibe now due to the medications. Cooking without an appetite is uninspiring and seems like a waste of time also.
5. Discovering a changing attitude toward having company: Introversion usually suits me. It used to be such that I never had a problem being my own best company and to relish in any quiet moment of solitude I could get. Now the prolonged period of isolation and disengagement from the public due to both this condition and the past cruddy weather is starting to dull my wits and senses a bit. It seems that as I regain more ability to have longer conversations, the more willing I am to have some company. I never used to be as needy to be social this way.

PE Status: Week Two Post-Hospital

The recovery continues to be slow, but steady. I'm at least not getting stricken with anything else to put me a few steps backwards thus far. I'm still getting exhausted too easily, along with dizziness/light-headedness, laboured breathing, and a wildly pounding heart, but level of activity needed to reach those signs of pulmonary fatigue is gradually increasing each day. It's unfortunate and really aggravating that these are the only symptom barometers I have to indicate to myself as to whether or not I'm healing. It sucks that I have to push myself to those levels each and every day and measure how long it takes to reach and recover from such stress periods for me to figure out if I'm actually making any progress. It's so ridiculous. It's like being given a hammer to smash your fingers with as your only option to use to tell whether or not you have any feeling in your hand. It's counter-intuitive to push one's self closer to the edge of collapse, but I still manage to do it.
 
It was a more vigorous day than I should have allowed it to become; but snow fall warnings were being issued again, and I chose to be practical with the time and shopped a bit after going to the medical lab. Today, it took me almost an hour to do the sort of shopping task which ordinarily takes me 15 to 20 minutes to do for the same amount of goods that I ended up getting. The excursion today has left me really bushed, but it was worth it. The past stretch of eating soup several days in a row was getting pretty monotonous meal-wise. I couldn't resist the chance to find some delicacies that are more flavourful, and yet such that they can be prepared on the lighter side, which is more agreeable with my current state of appetite. I did it before this next predicted big dump of snow comes blowing in tomorrow. It was probably a mistake to be trying to tour through a place as large as the Superstore for groceries given the way I felt afterward, but it was close to the lab, there was heated underground parking, and they had what I wanted all under one roof.
 
I'm bothered by the fact that enough snow has fallen for cross-country skiing, and more is coming; but I'm not fit enough for that sort of rigour yet, and I may miss this season entirely. The next paragraph is a jump ahead into Friday.

Today is Black Friday in the states, but it's White Out Friday here. The snow is arriving, the result of the wet Pacific air jabbing its way across the mountains and far inland, mixing with the descending Arctic chill. I walked the dog outside at 5:45 AM, just because I couldn't sleep. The random yet necessary rest periods splattered throughout the course of a day, and no set routine of things throughout these past couple of weeks have been really messing up my sleep patterns. It wasn't exactly a bright or sane thing to do: for the dog and I to walk the streets alone in the dark in inclement weather with my defective lungs. However, it's better than taxing myself more with trying to tramp through a few more centimeters after an extra three hours of accumulation; and when it's expected later to blow up to 50 km/h gusting with increasing wind chill and whiteout conditions, all just for the sake of waiting for daylight. They say that this will all last until midnight, so today is turning into a total write-off for getting some relief from going shack-whacky or hoping to get stuff done outside of home. The doctor just phoned to tell me that my INR levels are a little high and we readjusted dosages. I should be taking it easy for today anyway.

The big American marketing phenomenon of Black Friday is oozing over our border into our own shops and stores. I had gave thought to checking out some Black Friday sales for tech stuff, specifically seeking out a hugely discounted big-ass external hard drive for network backups, but I'm going to let that pass today. I honestly don't think it will be worth the trouble. This wretched weather may actually be useful in dissuading me from impulse buying any other tech stuff out of this burgeoning madness to cure boredom, like an Xbox One console, or a super-mega home theatre system that I can't really afford. I'm hoping that the sale will extend beyond door-crasher specials for today, and will be available throughout the weekend as things simmer down. As much as I am getting sick of being stranded in here, I just have to turn my head 90 degrees to look outside through my living room window, and turn back again to read, binge-watch TV, and surf the net, and be thankful again that I don't have anything so pressing happening to make me be out there on a day like today, and to learn to be content with what I have.

PE Status: One Week Post-Hospital

It has been a week and a day since I came back home from the hospital. Recovery is happening, but very slowly. I've been spending the majority of that time being cooped up and shut in at home like some sort of fart in a jar; lingering around here and feeling like my wits are getting dulled by the staleness of the slow time and my lack of vigour. For the first couple days, I didn't have much of an appetite. Cooking and eating even felt too strenuous. Throughout the past week, the amount of energy/stamina that I seemed to have had for my most active periods during each given day varied between about one sixth and one quarter of that of my regular normal state of health when I compare and assess. The margin line of my daily activity where I start crossing into that red zone and begin to feel the effects of overexertion to my heart and lungs seems to shift each day, and happens so unpredictably: better one day, and then worse the next. The only remedy now is to move slower and take frequent pauses and breaks. Consequently, it takes about twice as long to do even lighter chores and errands that involve walking, repetitive motion, and carrying and moving stuff. My eyes are becoming really fatigued from all the extra reading and staring at screens. This is all getting boring. Ella, as fun as she is, doesn't contribute much to the art of conversation.

I'm trying not to weaken more and stagnate. I give myself some chore or reasonable goal to do each day with some form of progressive intensity. As tempting as it is to save energy and use extra money on processed/pre-packaged snacks and meals, or getting food delivered, I've been committing myself to cook my own meals mostly from scratch. I push myself to get off my butt and get more active with some walking and limb movement exercises. At Day Four after returning home, I began to walk the dog outside and around the half the block by myself; still some light-headedness, speedy heart, and laboured breathing, but nothing too severe. I welcome these chances to get the fresh air, but I still have to inform people when I'm heading out, and I can't yet go as far as my normal usual routes. I'm trying to expand my range though; I just hate how gradual the process has to be. Yesterday was really tiring after running around, because I felt pressured and relegated to do as much as I could to resupply, and get at least some essential tasks done that I needed my car for before the forecasted freezing rain and snow hit us later.
 
It's bothersome that I have to be all of a sudden so mindful about simple stupid things that I never had to take account of before. For instance, the weather is doling out a spell of freezing rain now, later to be blanketed by snow, which I normally didn't have much concern for. However, now I have to walk outside with more prudence. With me being on anticoagulants, any possible simple slips and falls on ice that I would have just simply shook off before are made more dangerous and potentially life-threatening due to the greatly increased risk of internal bleeding from such impacts. Now that I've cleared aside all the tasks that I needed to do with what little energy had, I'm now going to start using the treadmill downstairs in the rec room to have some means of measuring my progress and temper myself up. It's a handy option to have when the ice on the streets outside gets too treacherous. Not that I have the inclination or energy for it, but contact sports are a definite no-no. I never did bruise very easily before, but now with me being on Warfarin the least little hard bump/pinching pressure make me bruise like an overripe peach. The area surrounding my stomach around the injection spots where I was giving myself Tinzaparin looks like some weird black/purple/brown Rorschach ink blot. I'm glad, at least for now, that the last of the injections was yesterday.
 
I'll hopefully know more about how I am to proceed onward from here after I see the doctor next Monday.

Surprisingly, there is not much out there on the Internet regarding the aftercare and recovery for survivors of pulmonary embolisms; which is actually fine because I'm suffering from too much information overload already as it is.  The best website I think I found so far is THE CLOT SPOT (www.clotspot.com), although I wish I could glean something more definitive from it pertaining to my specific case.

Pacing, But Doing It Very Slowly

It has been an especially harrowing and significant week for me. I got to learn the hard way that I'm not Superman. Some of my readers and familiars may already know about what happened to me. This entry is for those who didn't, or were left behind in the dust as to the state of my condition throughout the chaos. I'm trying not to bog you down with too many details, but writing this out thoroughly just once spares me from having to explain it numerous times verbally on a person to person level and repeating the same conversations, which I have been finding very physically exhausting to do right now. It's the long-winded explanation that I literally don't have the wind for.

For the last couple of weeks or so, I was beginning to notice a gradual and progressive impairment to my breathing, and was getting interrupted sleep; sometimes drenched with intense night sweats. I started to notice things, like for instance, that while I was cycling to work, it felt like I was dragging an anchor behind me: using three times as much energy, yet going two times slower. I dismissed it as perhaps a cold coming on, yet I wasn't coughing or sneezing; just panting and wheezing. My energy seemed to decline dramatically and fizzle out earlier and earlier each day throughout the course of a week. When this past Monday came around, my breathing seemed even more stifled, my heart was pounding uncomfortably and uncontrollably, and the strange pressure I was feeling in my chest seemed to intensify exponentially after just a short stint of walking the dog, and a climb up the flight of stairs to my home.
 
It was a strange and unique form of pressure in my chest that registered in my mind, but not anything that I would have immediately identified or compared with in my own personal mental inventory of sensations of what I already knew of as "pain". Because it was more like simple discomfort and less like "pain" to me, I dissuaded myself from seeing a doctor earlier on, thinking that I would probably just be turned away, and then have "paranoid hypochondriac" stamped into my medical file.* After all, I reasoned, I just had a physical six weeks earlier and was given a reasonably clean bill of health. This time though, the discomfort prevailed a little too long and was really strong in magnitude at that time. There was even more breathing impairment along with the beginning of shakiness and feeling like my legs were going to buckle out from under me. It was a definite sign that things were taking a turn for the worse. I was prompted then to follow up on my friend's advice to see my family doctor to at least get a referral to see an allergist, or a respiration specialist to see if I acquired something like asthma. I just learned recently through a first aid class about what the signs for a heart attack were, and I didn't sense any of what I thought were the supposed internal symptoms of one. What I experienced accorded more with what I learned about as the symptoms associated with asthma. I drove nine kilometres to my doctor's clinic. It was a foolish thing to do in retrospect, because I could have passed out at any moment. I staggered from the parking lot, through their front door, to the reception. I was breathing as fully and deeply as I could, feeling my lungs fill to full capacity, and yet I felt like I was totally suffocating. I saw my doctor, who then rigged me up to an electrocardiogram to read my heart rhythms. Then, before I knew it, an ambulance was being dispatched for me to take me to a hospital emergency ward.

After several hours of waiting for a CT scan, I used much of that time watching my heartrate readout on the monitor being unable to sink below 110 beats per minute, despite the fact that I was lying down still and immobile. Any movement I made caused it to spike even higher yet. It lowered once they hooked up a blood-thinner IV and oxygen line on me. I finally received my CT scan results, and the good news was that they concluded that I did not actually have a heart attack (although I came close to it). The bad news however was that they discovered that I had pulmonary embolisms in, not just one, but both of my lungs. They can be as deadly as a heart attack if they aren't caught in time and treated. I suppose I managed to get some sense to get to the doctor just in the nick of time. I am lucky that my heart has had a bit of seasoning and conditioning through my running days, or else I really think that if it was just even a little bit weaker and unable to handle all this extra stress and punishment, I'm sure that I would have died that day.

It's fairly straight forward to understand what pulmonary embolisms are and what they can do. I'm not wasting time and energy to explain any further details about it. Use a search engine if you are curious and want to know about such things; you'll get a better explanation. What I don't understand yet however is the how and why of my particular case. I'm still struggling to process all of this onslaught of information now nearly a week after all this happened. The medical team working with me is just as mystified as I am as to how a person with my particular health and history could even ever have acquired such a condition in the first place. It would be something in which the people who I serve would be statistically far more likely to get rather than myself. I'm still slotted for a series of additional tests on an outpatient basis to figure out what's going on, and thus I have nothing more to say about my progress: except that for now I've been deemed well enough to be home, and recovery is going too slow far my liking. I'm pacing around indoors now, albeit very slowly, as my only exercise to promote better circulation in my limbs and body to prevent blood from pooling and creating more clots, even though the doctors currently seem to think that this wasn't a factor for me.

The most unnerving things for me about all of this are as follows:

• Even though I'm set on taking the right path in treatment for them and trying to not let them grow more, the clots still have a potential to shift, dislodge, and migrate as they began to shrink and loosen up. They then may potentially move to block vessels that feed blood in the lung tissue itself, causing pulmonary infarction and subsequent necrosis (death of tissues) in the lung, or else cause blockage and damage to other more vital bodily organs. It comes to my realization that it's like I've had a time bomb wired into my chest, and the only means I have to defuse it are anticoagulant medications, extra vigilance, and having a constantly charged cell phone nearby for a 911 call. I have no idea yet as to how long that it will take to clear this up, if it is clearing that is. It angers and disappoints me somewhat that I have been proactive in trying to stay healthy, and this still ends up being the result of it.
• The extreme limitations put on the amount of physical activity I can do within a day. My life has been turned upside down. Simply taking a small bag of garbage out thoroughly exhausted me yesterday. I caught myself on a couple more times being too light-headed after doing what seemed to be very little, and had to sit down immediately before I got so dizzy and could have passed out. It's frustrating to have all this time off, yet so little energy and ability to make what I would call good use of it. I'm still overwhelmed with uncertainty as to what this will mean for me in terms of future travel, energy, and time needed to deal with this problem alone. I'm also bothered by what this will mean for me in terms of possible future loss of work and income.
• A new routine of having to be dependent on medication. It's not just some simple pills either, but stuff that needs constant dosage correction and regular sessions of blood work to do it, and using other junk that I have to give myself through daily injections.
• What bothers me most now is the loss of some of my independence. Perhaps one reason that I'm not a good candidate for marriage, co-habiting with someone, or having a lasting romantic relationship is because I don't seem to respond or react well to being pampered, coddled, or asking and getting help for stuff that I should damn well know how to do myself. I really don't have the right words to describe the reasons, it's complicated. I'm just not used to asking for favours from anyone. Now, I'm put in a spot where I'm left to impose upon and trouble people to do chores with heavy lifting/exertion, or other errands for me. Worse yet is getting people involved in fixing up my stupid mistakes I have made and should be responsible for, like fetching a pair of my glasses for me that I had forgotten back at the hospital. I'm finding this role reversal of going from a helper to helpee a very difficult one to adjust to.

As much as this week really sucked, I'm at least thankful that I got out of this alive, I managed to avoid a full out progression toward a heart attack, and I didn't need to be treated with something as invasive as a surgery (at least not yet for now). For those of whom were involved with my particular incident throughout this week, I'm thankful to you who were there and helped as you did when you could. I'm sorry if I have been too grouchy and stricken with worry to express this gratitude appropriately. I'm sorry also to the concerned others who were worried about me, but never got any accurate information about what was going on. I declined some visitors at times, not because I didn't want to see them, but because with this condition and three days and nights in a noisy emergency ward unable to get sleep, I just didn't have any energy left to give them good company. It's a pain in the ass to park at RUH anyway. I was sparing some of you the trouble. I tried keeping quiet about all this at first, but all that seems to do is ignite a whole other bunch of panic and strange rumours. I hope you are satisfied hearing it directly from the source. I also wish to extend my thanks on behalf of Ella to those persons who have showed up and have been so kind as to volunteer to take her out for walks for me.

Today, my mission and ambition is to start walking the dog again for one time outside today. I have been given instructions by my medical team to limit my range within my surrounding block. It's sort of a place where I'm picking up from last Monday to work towards some normalcy. We'll see how life goes on from there.

*- A doctor, in my mind, is someone I see once or twice every year for a physical for taking preventative measures, or else for any other time when I feel real "pain" . . . that's it. As nice a guy as he is to see and chat with, I don't make it a habit to run to my clinic every time I feel "discomfort", or else I'd be there once or twice every bloody week.

Mindful Consumption: Patronage and Support to Our Public Liquor Stores

Another conference was attended, giving me a lot more to dwell on with the current political climate in this province and reviewing the insidious changes to the Saskatchewan Employment Act, and how it ultimately affects us as not just unionized employees, but all of us as workers in general. I thought I'd better start taking a firmer stand on things; to be a more conscientious opponent against all the bad things that this government is doing to strip away our crown corporations and the privatizing of other public institutions. We ended the first evening of it having a bit of a social mixer and being well entertained with a hypnotist act. On the closing of day two, a note of gratitude came to our entire group from the young lad who was our bartender the night before. He said that ever since he worked at the hotel where our conference was, we were the people who he had so far made the most tips from; this is news coming from a guy who on numerous times served that same room full of businessmen and corporate big shots who probably drank more and had a lot more money than us to spread around for gratuities, but their habit of greed prevented them from doing so. That fact gave me lots of faith that we as unionized employees are really innately out there looking out for our fellow labourers, affiliated or not. The subjects of liquor, corporate business greed and hypnosis set my mind to write about this so called trial of privatized liquor stores in the province, and the propaganda that the Wall government is trying to use to sell us on this nonsense. Given what I said in my second sentence, one thing of meaningful action I vow to do, and we all should do as well, is this:

Stop buying from the new privatized liquor stores in this province. Why?

They take profits and revenue away from being used for public services and works in the province. With that money in pure profit diverted instead to private corporations, the government then becomes further relegated to reclaim those losses through more taxation elsewhere, or else slashing funding to other aid programs and public services and amenities. The yield from the profits going to the government coffers from just Saskatoon alone is huge: one million a month from just one of the larger ones alone, according to one of the brothers from SGEU. I dread to think about how much of a loss that would be if all of a sudden every liquor store in this province became privatized.

The employees of the private stores are paid less than the unionized workers at the public liquor stores for the same labour, and I will not support an entity that is doing its part to drive a bigger wedge between the rich and the poor, and taking away from its workers the chance of having a fair living wage, despite the fact that I'd be paying about the same price (or perhaps even more in cases) for the same product at private store. If you do manage to find a cheaper price for the same product at the private store, the average overall difference is probably amounts to within the range of a dollar. However, the difference between the hourly wage non-unionized and the unionized employee is usually greater than a dollar. Why can't they then just be paid the same higher wage if the workload and product prices have little to no significant difference? There are discounts in the public liquor stores too, but just because they aren't advertised more publically in a flyer, as with the case of the private store, we are given the illusion and misconception that there aren't any discounts at all in the public liquor store. I find it to be a strange irony that the private stores can advertise alcohol "publically" while the public stores do not.

You may, for whatever reason, truly hate your current government; and may think that by not buying from the public liquor store it will be your way of "sticking it to the man!" , but think of this repercussion. The reality is that when you take that booze money from the government and instead give it as a profit to a singular (family-owned as is the case with Sobeys here) multi-billion dollar corporation, that buys and lobbies governments on their agendas without our say so, you have basically started a trend of selling off whatever personal political power that you have left as a citizen and a consumer, to a corporation who will give you sweet-bugger-all as a result of their profits, unless you are a share-holder and relying on the crap shoot that is the stock market for a dividend return from them. When all is said and done, the ultimate thing that all governments respect is a means of filling their coffers. The more means of power that a mass of citizens has to pay its government directly, the greater the chance that same government might actually listen to and think more about those masses of people rather than listening the whims of a corporation that has become too large with money: to the point where their money is greater than that of what the rest of the masses have combined.

If there is little to no difference in savings in cost for product, what about the factors of transportation: vehicle usage, fuel, and time? On a personal level, the public liquor store I use is close enough to cycle or walk to; it's convenient, more economical, and more environmentally responsible. The cost of fuel I'd be using to drive to either private liquor store from my place on either end of this town would burn up whatever savings (if any) I would have gained from the booze I bought there. In a practical sense, it's totally pointless for me to buy from the private stores here. As it is now, in Saskatoon, the two private stores are logistically located in some very out of the way spots for the majority of the population of the city, while the public stores are distributed more closely amid the majority of the residential neighbourhoods. You certainly wouldn't be buying the privately sold liquor for the fuel economy (or to save time) in Saskatoon unless you maybe lived in the far West End or in Stonebridge. I don't even have to draw out the Hamiltonian circuits or Eularian graphs to prove it. As someone who grew up rurally, it drives me crazy when people don't more accurately account and factor in for the actual fuel and time costs in the overall "savings" when getting their purchases.

I'm a frugal person, but not to the point where my saving of a few nickels and dimes supports depriving another local worker a chance for a few more dollars and protected rights and benefits if s/he were union affiliated, and only serves to take away revenues that help my community and province, and gives more power and leverage for corporations to exploit people and crawl into the hip pocket of government leaders. Buying from the public liquor stores is a direct investment into the province of Saskatchewan. Buying public ultimately serves the greater good.

Learning What Lagom Is

I've been enjoying what might be the last weekend of the year that is fair-weathered enough to partake in enjoying my Sunday morning coffee outside on my deck. I write with mixed emotions. I'm reflecting on an onslaught of information which has been knocking around in my skull since I acquired it from my last conference I attended. I'm saddened that organized labour is coming under such attack from all sides by corporation controlled conservative politicians. How has it come to be that the labour movement has been made to look like such an evil thing, when all the policies that unions are trying to fight for are in the interest of fairness, equality, and access to a better standard of living? I'm at least grateful that the recent transit union lockout in this city was deemed illegal, and that these workers can proceed with their jobs. The impact of it has been making life difficult for many of my co-workers.

I don't usually like to climb on top of soapboxes and start tossing around my opinions on political things. However, I'm stuck with dwelling on the subjects of politics and healthcare, and how both our provincial and federal governments seem to be doing all they can to ruin the whole system, and I feel I have some need to process it all through some writing. It really sickens me to know that here in Saskatchewan, the birthplace of Universal Healthcare in this country, which has been noted through the polling of our population as one of our nation's greatest achievements, is now being threatened in various ways by the current provincial and federal governments in the very province from which it was born. Compounded with this is our governments' blatant attacks on the unionized workforces of this province and country. Here are some facts with regard to this province and nation as to the progression of their attempts to erode the healthcare and unionized labour. I could go on and on about the insidious activity of the Harper government: about how he slashed funding and staffing from Statistics Canada and put a gag order on the scientists of Environment Canada in regards to the reality of Global Warning, but I'd like to just remain focused on these things first*:

• Premier Brad Wall spent a ridiculous amount of our tax payers' money to pay a single American consultant to determine how to run the healthcare system instead of consulting directly and working collaboratively for needs assessment with those who actually operate and work in the hospitals and community clinics in this province. Why are we getting administration advice from someone in a nation that: doesn't have the same proportionality of organized labour in the healthcare system as ours does, has the most expensive healthcare costs in the world, no model of Universal healthcare to operate with, and a closer to failing grade in terms of a rating for health care services in a comparison on the international level? Compounded with the expiration of the healthcare expense sharing plan to the provinces set up by the Liberal government 10 years ago, and the Harper government's refusal to renew it, this provincial system will be deprived of several million dollars for our healthcare budget as of this year.
• What reason(s) do businesses and supposedly democratic governments have to really fear and condemn organized labour? Why don't we throw in another nation into the mix for comparison and contrast, someplace where the labour movement is highly present in a democratic country, and then see what kind of hardships are happening there with this extra presence of Unionized labour? So, I did just that. I found out that the nation with the highest percentage of unionized employees is Sweden: one of the countries on this earth that I really like besides my own. I'm using the percentage figure of unionized labour I was given at the conference (67.7%), but I have found other stats with the union membership there as high as 80%. Regardless, in either case,  either figure still makes Sweden the most highly unionized country in the world. I did a three way comparison with Sweden, Canada, and the place where Brad Wall foolishly spent our tax dollars for consultants: the good ol' USA.
  
   

Stat Category	Sweden	Canada	USA
Percentage of Workers affiliated with a Union (2011 -2012)	67.7% (highest in the world)	31.5% (Saskatchewan is province with the highest %age at 35.4%)	11.3%
Health care spending %age of GDP 2011	9.36%	11.81%	17.85% (incidentally, the highest medical expenses of all nations)
World Health Organization rating of Each nation's health system	23rd	30th (but declining)	37th (and declining even faster)
Universal Health Care system	Yes (even plans for coverage for illegal immigrants)	Yes (but being threatened) I learned that Canadians that were even born here and leave the country for a long time are subjected to denial of services	No
Human Development Index Score (Ranking) of 2006	0.949 (4th)	0.949 (4th) tied with Sweden	0.944 (10th)
Nation's rating in highest average longevity	8th	11th	34th
Percent population living below the poverty line	3.7%	9.4%	15%
Average Disposable Income after taxes (in USD, 2014)	$3,181.11	$2,773.50	$3,258.85
Corruption Perception Index (the higher the score the cleaner the government) Maximum good score is 100	89	81	73
Crime: Prison Population Rate (prisoners per 100,000 people)	57 (159th in the world)	118 (129th in the world)	707 (2nd in the world, also ranked number 1 nation for having the largest population of incarcerated people)
Paid Maternity Leave	420 days, 80% of wages paid	52 weeks (365 days), 55% of wages paid	No national program, but some benefits varying state to state. In 1993, a national provision of 12 weeks unpaid leave enacted
Free University	Yes	No	No

 
What can we learn from this?

• A country that makes it easier to people to access education seems to have less of a need to incarcerate them.
• More investment in starting a child off in life with receiving the proper care might have a lot to do with keeping this person out of jail as an adult
• A greater unionized population seems to have less, or tolerates less, corruption of its own government
• If you have a system that implements a fairer living wage in that country, you'll have less people under the poverty line
• Healthcare spending seems to be occurring a lot more efficiently the more the country is unionized, at least in this comparison
• Even though Sweden still ranks 23^rd on the WHO healthcare ranking, the average life expectancy there is dramatically higher than that of the USA which has no true Universal Healthcare system
• The USA may have the highest take home pay out of the three after taxes, but an accident without the proper insurance through one's HMO down there, or some denial of coverage through some bureaucratic loophole which private insurers often pull will dwindle that pay down really quickly.

So, the nation with the largest number of union affiliated employees has come around to developing a society with: less crime and therefore less tax money used to feed and shelter prisoners, free university to keep fewer people enslaved to paying off student debt, a better rated healthcare system; yet with less GDP used for healthcare spending, less social poverty, and more relief to parents for rearing children. Not included on my table is the fact that Sweden has universal daycare. So why then is Brad Wall consulting with a nation whose healthcare system is rated more poorly than that of Canada, where the average life expectancy is already lower than that of Canada, an inefficient one where your access to healthcare solely depends on your own ability to pay/insure yourself for it, a greater division between its rich and poor, has a more dystopian society that has brought them to having the degree of crime, and their policies to deal with it which results in exponential spending on militarized police forces and wars on drugs, and having one fifth of the entire world's prison population incarcerated in their country alone? Isn't that an indication that their society is breaking down? Is it not then a ridiculous notion to be consulting with them for some means of improving our healthcare system? The only reason Brad Wall went this course was to try to learn how skirt around the organized labour in our hospitals and clinics for the sake of making cutbacks, not giving a hoot in hell about patient and client care, or the needs of the people who tend to them.
    
To be fair, Sweden also has this thing going on in its society that can't be conveniently pasted onto a table or chart. They have this unique word in their language called "lagom"; it means not too much and not too little, but just enough. Exercising moderation is held as a high social standard of appropriateness there. It is a cultural concept they have that is applied to a wide range of things, from their diet, to their resource consumption. I also imagine that it can also be applied to things like a common sense of fairness, environmental issues, social justice, and weighing of consequences on a person at a social level. It probably has a lot to do with making people there not so motivated by greed, and more geared toward fairness and equality. It's one of the few places left in the world where the middle class isn't facing extinction as quickly, and a bigger divide isn't being widened so dramatically between the rich and the poor. Over-the-top displaying of affluence and material wealth is generally regarded in their culture as absurd, obnoxious, ridiculous, and even obscene.**I find this attitude deeply engrained in myself already, and am appreciative of it. It makes me want to visit Sweden all the more to give it more exploration. If given an opportunity to be sponsored to be part of making a social documentary in this country for Canadian television or for my own union, I'd jump all over the chance to do it. The social fitting of lagom somehow probably correlates into how and why there is such a notably high preponderance of unionized labour in Sweden, but because this is a correlation it doesn't indicate cause and effect or determine how which begat what, the unions or the social attitude of lagom itself. Whatever the case, the two ideas seem to work interdependently and function well enough together for the Swedes. Union or not, healthcare or not, we would all do better by learning this same ethic from them.

Sweden also has a higher number of their female population representing their constituents through their government offices than either Canada or the USA. Perhaps that's another reason why there is a greater social mindfulness to allow for a long maternity leave for proper childhood development. With less of an old boys club to deal with, and less influence of some other patriarchal or some other old school theocratic oligarchy ruling them, this has a chance to happen. I wonder what the reaction of the Swedes would be to the senate scandals that happened here since the Harper government took power.
 
*- Statistics Canada used to be the envy of the world with having a publically accessible information for civic leaders and developers, public institution planners, scientists, activists, and businesses to use alike, but through the reign of the Harper government, 20% of its staff were let go, $30 million of its operational funding was slashed, and now measures of privatization and deregulation no longer assure unbiased data processing. Along with the short-listed census, this makes this a war on science, and cripples the Canadian public to having the freedom to access information.
 
**- This social attitude even prevails with the richer capitalists from there like of Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA. Despite being one of the richest people on the planet, he still flies economy class, drives a mid-90s model Volvo, recycles tea bags and encourages his employees to write on both sides of the paper.

Inflammation Blaster Recipes

I found myself using my day off to do some inventing in my kitchen again; not because I really wanted to. The prolonged period of more idleness due to injury, the extra stress, and being at work too often and eating the cruddy food there is all taking a toll on me. I won't go into any more specifics than that. The resulting poor medical evaluation I got is forcing me to prepare for some dietary and lifestyle changes. I don't want to be relegated to start eating like a tofu-munching hippie, but I'd rather have some compromise and do that with some moderation than be setting myself on a course of being dependant on expensive medications, and then be perhaps afflicted by adverse side-effects from using them.
   
The stuff I made should be useful in countering many types of inflammatory problems in general, not just specifically my issues. Inflammation of one type or another is the major symptom of most chronic diseases. The challenge is to not feel deprived, and to use and substitute with stuff that I already like (or can at least tolerate). Because I was weighing and calculating proportions and quantities, I decided to translate all my activity into the following three recipes for sharing. The MyFitnessPal app on my smartphone did the rest of the calculations for any really anal people who need the specifics about the calories and nutrition, which are also transposed here.

Smokey Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup

4        Red Bell Peppers, halved with cores, seeds, and green stems removed
2 Tbsp        Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Coat the bottom of a heatproof dish with olive oil as well as brush the outer skin of the pepper halves. Place and arrange the halves with the skin side up in the dish and put into the oven on the broil setting. Cook until the waxy skin of the peppers begins to blister and turn black. Remove from the oven, and then put the pepper halves into a ziplock bag. Press out the air, seal the bag, and allow the peppers to cool until lukewarm or cooler. Peel off and discard the blistered and blackened waxy skin away from the flesh of the pepper halves (the back of a knife works well). Once skinned, chop the pepper halves into fine bits. While the peppers are broiling, sauté

1        Small Onion, finely chopped in
1 Tbsp        Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and

Small pinch of salt

 

Once the onion is sautéed until translucent, add it with the peppers into a pot of at least 4 litre capacity* with

1 ¼ Cup        Chicken Stock
200 mL         Tomato Sauce

Heat the mixture to a boil, and then turn the heat down to a simmer. Using an immersion blender, purée the contents until it is a smooth and even consistency. While simmering, use a whisk to blend in

1 Tbsp        Smoked paprika
 
The whisking will also help remove some remaining bits of waxy pepper skin that may have been left on the pepper flesh.

Add salt to taste. Makes about 3 servings. Recommend serving with crackers or croutons.

Nutrition per serving:
Calories: 188; Total Fat (g) 10.9: Saturated (g) 1.7, Polyunsaturated (g) 1.3, Monounsaturated (g) 7.3, Trans (g) 0; Cholesterol (mg) 3.0; Sodium (mg) 844; Potassium (mg) 278.3; Carbs (g) 17.2; Fibre (g): 4.4; Sugar (g) 9.5; Protein (g) 5.2
Daily Percentage Value of: Vitamin A – 25.1%, Vitamin C – 9.7%, Calcium – 1.8%, Iron – 8.5%

 
Cauliflower and Roasted Garlic Dip

Take a whole garlic bulb and slice off the root end, and on the exposed root end drizzle about a teaspoon of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and a small sprinkle of salt. Wrap the bulb in a square of aluminum foil and place on a heatproof dish with the cut end facing upwards. Broil for about 15-20 minutes or until the bulb begins to soften. When cool enough to handle, remove the aluminum foil, and then peel the skins away from the cloves.

Add all the roasted garlic cloves to

400 g        Cooked and mashed Cauliflower, and
½ Cup        Plain Greek Yogurt, with a
Dash of salt and a sprinkle of Cayenne Pepper

Blend together with into a thick consistent purée. Chill before serving with crackers or raw vegetable sticks. Makes about 4 servings.

Nutrition per serving
Calories: 83; Total Fat (g) 2.3; Cholesterol (mg) 1.7; Sodium (mg) 350.8; Potassium (mg)72; Carbs (g) 12.7; Fibre (g) 2.1; Protein (g) 4.3
Daily Percentage Value of: Vitamin A - .5%, Vitamin C – 87.6%, Calcium – 8.4%, Iron – 4.1%

 
Lentil Hummus
 
500 g         Cooked Green Lentils (preferably grown in Saskatchewan)
½ Cup        Chopped Cilantro leaves
2 Tbsp        Tahini (Sesame Seed) paste
15        Pickled Hot Banana Pepper Rings
½ tsp        Ground Cumin
1        finely minced clove of raw garlic
1        Lemon's zest and juice
 
Drain lentils thoroughly, and then add the remaining ingredients in a high sided bowl. Use an immersion blender and whiz the mixture into a thick and even consistency. Use for dipping veggie sticks or crackers. Makes about 4 servings.

Nutrition per serving
Calories: 140; Fat (g) 4.9; Monounsaturated fat (g) 1.7; Cholesterol (mg) 0; Sodium (mg) 86.3; Potassium (mg) 53.1; Carbs (g) 16.2; Fibre (g) 0.6; Sugars (g) 1; Protein (g) 8
Daily Percentage Value of: Vitamin A – 2.7%, Vitamin C – 29.6%, Calcium - 3%, Iron – 4.1%
 
*- More so to keep from splattering the entire kitchen with redness when whizzing with the blender.

Closing another Year of Age

I'm trying to get out of the habit of writing and thought-charting during certain conditions. I'm trying to avoid it while I'm under immense clouds of negativity and frustration, or at times when I'm trying to solve big predicaments, or whenever I've taken ill or have been afflicted by some sort of pain; but lately it has been getting harder and harder to find those gaps within my free time when I'm not cursed by any or all of such things. Generally, I've been trying to limit my assertion of vibes involving complaint (admittedly, I'm still doing a poor job of it). Thus, the lack of input into this blog has been a sign that things haven't been going as well as I want them to.
 
Still nonetheless, it's time for a due assessment. Today is the last day of the year of this particular age number I have right now. Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm noting that it has been a cycle where it's ending with a few personal deprivations. Some brought on by my own volition, which I'm trying to ride out for a better outcome in the end; others are quite unwelcome and affecting me negatively.

I did manage to find some reprieve with some levity yesterday. By some weird impulse, I chose to collect a fiction book that captured my attention with its rather strange and lengthy title. It's a Swedish novel, and like many other titles of books that seem to come from that country, it didn't conveniently have a more concise title in English: perhaps due to some quirk of directly translating from Swedish, or maybe due to some cultural need on the part of their publishers for using long-winded bluntness and accuracy. The book is called The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. It's about an elderly gentleman who, on his hundredth birthday, becomes cantankerous and impulsive enough as to escape from his seniors' care home and his own birthday party and gets led into a pretty strange and madcap adventure. There are also some flashbacks along the storyline about his involvement in a Forrest Gump-like series of events that influenced history throughout his personal life leading to his centennial. This book was a real serendipitous find. I couldn't help to notice that it seemed like a sign for me to make it a point to take a radical break from mediocrity for my own birthday, and to be a lot more spontaneous, impulsive, and daring, and to not let some prescribed age number stop me from doing so.

The repeated message in the book is: "Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be." It's the kind of book that I would recommend for everyone read just before whatever birthday they are celebrating, as a reminder to make the time count. Who knows, maybe by doing so you'll discover the elements in you that would change this world's history.

Toxicity Taking Away Toxicity

Neo Citron is a troublesome over-the-counter remedy for me because I make less-than-prudent decisions while using it, and I begin perceiving cause-and-effect events in a whole different realm*. It makes me more disinhibited in thought and deed: more so than alcohol ever does. I know I experience strange occurrences which have bizarre repercussions triggered every time I consume the horse-tranquilizer strength form of this cold medication, but after this time around, I experienced one of the weirdest series of consequences that I ever had under its influence. This time it made me realize how even my most passive involvement in things could unravel some wild series of consequences. For this time around, its use, along with being extra irritable and less tolerant to nuisances since I became sick, plus the lack of sleep due to coughing and sneezing all night which put me into my disinhibited insomniac state were factors in the equation that prompted me to make a 911 call.

A raging domestic dispute was happening down the block. Such things have been happening repeatedly during the early mornings of the past few weekends, and sometimes midweek, from this one particular house; sometimes so loud and wrathful that their arguments wake me even when my windows are closed. I just ignored all the previous battles as best I could. I wasn't even really able to pinpoint the source of all of them until that morning. So, this couple have been fighting and verbal feuding openly on various mornings, screaming and playing out their petty drama at each other taking it out on the street. However, this time it escalated to one them starting to destroy property: racing out and breaking down a staircase guard rail at the front entrance, and taking a large column of it and swinging it around and threatening to club the other with it. It seemed pretty obvious that they were intoxicated. After witnessing that, and knowing that there was a legitimate enough concern to report a violent outbreak, I jumped on the chance to call the police and end this ongoing loud and toxic bullshit once and for all. Even after the cops came, they didn't tone down their jostling and hollering. They were so oblivious to everything else that they didn't even notice the police arriving, so I felt pretty assured that they had never noticed me witnessing this drama unfolding from my distant vantage point. My blood ran cold when I heard the woman then screamed out, "He murdered my sister!" repeatedly. Another police cruiser came, a prolonged period of de-escalation and intervention ensued with more cops entering the home. The police didn't clear out of there until an hour afterward, taking away a guy in handcuffs. If there was a killing, I don't believe it happened at that site, since no ambulance came there that morning.

What makes my head spin, apart from the cold medication, is realizing that my simple expressing of a complaint with the intention to just have a morning peaceful enough to enjoy my coffee** outdoors on my balcony for one of the last weekends of summer, and to make it feel less like one of my precious few days off for summer was being stolen from me by illness and other intrusive frustrations, may have by some fluke led to a homicide suspect being taking into custody. There was nothing heroic in this on my part. It was dumb luck to have this kind of negativity simply cleared away in this manner. I hope it will ultimately bring some peace to that household and the rest of the neighbourhood. This time, I'm thankful that using Neo-Citron probably had a lot to do with setting off this particular chain of events, because truthfully, I don't believe I would have made that call if I wasn't using it. I would have probably just instead took the regular course of action of either ignoring it, or leaving my place to go elsewhere for some peace, failing to be around to actually witness the real implications and results of that feuding, and thereby allowing this crap to continue and having someone get hurt or worse. I thought this all was a story worth writing about because it's one of those weird ironies and rare cases where a disinhibiting side-effects of a mind-altering chemical was used to actually prevent a crime and possibly linked to solving, or leading to an arrest for another more heinous one.

Another thing to note to be thankful for is how the police here dealt with this situation, and comparing it with what has been going on in Ferguson, Missouri in the past few weeks. I can honestly say that I'm thankful for the fact that we have a police presence here that operates more with civility and less with brute force and active militarization.
 
*-The worst sentence I've ever written where I am over-using-hyphenation.
**- Actually, it was another dose of Neo Citron.