Wait! You Bombed A Frickin' Girls' School ???

Do I need to say I was shocked at yesterday's news about tRump and Netanyahu bombing Iran? First thought wasn't the alleged build-up of nuclear weaponry capacity. It wasn't true back when Dubbya claimed it was, and tRump is so much more of a liar. Not better, since he's so transparent, just it's a constant stream of what he wants to be true running from glimmer of a thought, likely gained off watching TV, straight through and out of his mouth - or fingers on a keyboard -  without a stop for some coherent reflection, were he even capable most days. The man is demonstrably unwell.

All those thoughts were there of course, but the first one was why the hell do we in the US, any of us, think we have the right to tell another country how to lives their lives and choose their government or - since it's tied in - their own religion?  We have a petty ugly history of it for the most part, and try to glorify it for a lot of wrong reasons. (I hold out WWII as an exception.)

The second  was why now? My immediate thought was it was just another attempt to get us all to quit thinking about what's in the still missing Epstein Files, or of what was in but has been deleted from what has been released, how awful a pedophile tRump is/was (since so many of us forget how publicly he bragged about it), with the aim on his part to possibly raise his ratings here at home. Because they've been way down, and that's what drives him.

My shock was about him combining with Netanyahu first instead of going to the US Congress, which actually holds the authority to declare war, but then was followed quickly by the almost tossed off comment by the TV announcer I first heard that one of the bombs landed on a girls school with a resulting fifty-plus deaths. Students. Girls. Children whose lives are already severely restricted by their religious society who were still trying to better their lives if even minutely, who might have one day become mothers capable of guiding their children in better ways of human interactions than the ones these girls themselves grew up in, now never getting that chance.

I wonder who thought that these girls were a danger to the world? Was it total stupidity or just plain cruelty? I ask that like it could be either-or, when both are obviously true.

I wonder about the soldiers who sent the bombs. Do they have any clue which of their bombs hit that school? Are they proud that they killed girls? Or will it haunt them as they go about their lives, perhaps looking at their own daughters or nieces or random children on a playground back home, or in a school concert, or play, or science fair?

YOU BOMBED A FRICKING GIRLS' SCHOOL !!!!!!

Jellyfish Galaxy?

Boredom leads to fascinating discoveries on occasion. Boredom? Well, the Olympics' two weeks of wall-to-wall coverage is over, regular programming is coming back amid a ton of reruns, so there's some new stuff to watch, but all is mostly indoor activities still, despite the calendar building up with all kinds of medical appointments with more to schedule. There's no heading out to see the newest flower in the yard, or just walk down to the lake to see which birds are back north yet. Some snow has gone, but keeps getting replaced, including by ice, all of which reinforces the "keep indoors" injunction for anybody not willing to risk certain kinds of accidents. Even the garbage goes out to the big cans without one leaving the porch, and the cans don't actually fill often enough to require weekly hauling curbside. And no, spring housecleaning is NOT on the agenda! Yes, the dirt is visible, but the will to push the body right now has gone walkabout - ironic since the body itself can't. Even a pile of tax documents are sitting on a table sneering at me.

So there's lots of time spent online. Some of course is spent writing, including here. Other time is spent reading weird stuff, or at least weird for a lot of people. I got introduced to "Science X Newsletter" over a year ago, and get a new email containing dozens of links in various categories five days a week. Sometimes they build up, sometimes they are promptly devoured. I tend to ignore chemistry, physics, and astronomy, and stick with biology, earth news, medical news, and sometimes pop in to read "other". I might not get to one for a week, as a bunch piles up, but they don't go away until I delete them. Sometimes it's accidentally, though I did fix that glitch a while ago. In the beginning I tried to read everything and not just the teaser first paragraph, but the load grew heavier of unread stuff beckoning.

Suddenly it changed. The folks putting it out decided they either needed my money to keep reading any and everything that caught my interest, or I'd have to wade through ads for every in depth article I read. Screw that! OK, sure, I agree that they're worth it. The service is invaluable. But so are a lot of things online, and my budget isn't that accommodating, especially these last months when I'm not working. Five dollars a month here, and ten there, can build up in a hurry. I can't support them all. Decisions needed to be made. 

Since I still get the very short version of each newsletter, meaning a title and a couple sentences, sometimes a very tiny photo or indecipherable diagram, I can still browse through those. If something is really compelling, I can pull up the full article and fight a system of ads which has a very poor history of letting you clear it off the page after reading/watching it fully, meaning it still covers the article I clicked over to read even after the video ends. The result is it gets quicker and quicker to go through the teaser titles to see what's going on. 

If something looks more interesting, I find myself noting a key word or two and heading elsewhere trying to find more information. Maybe Google. Or Wikipedia even. I've been surprised by how brand new concepts (to me) wind up there, though the opposite is also true, and whatever it was doesn't seem to exist. Today was a good day.

Science X Newsletter had a teaser on jellyfish galaxies. What? Never heard of them. You? The thumbnail photo didn't really give me a clue, so first Google then Wikipedia. Both had information, or at least enough that I now know a bit what they're talking about. I'll even pass on the simple layman's version, since you've read this far.

I presume you are familiar with our own galaxy and its shape as spiral galaxy, more or less two dimensional with arms spinning off in curves along a relatively flat plane, maybe (or most likely?) with a black hole in the center. Got that image? If not, go Google it.... or use whatever search engine you please.

OK, now imagine something huge, like perhaps another spiral galaxy (don't ask me, I'm not sure) rams into it fairly flatly (aka broadside) and knocks a bunch of combined stuff through the "flat" to the other side, and some of that kind of dangles in strings as if still attached to the galaxy but trying to move away.  What's left of the original flattish spiral along with what it gained from whatever rammed into it that couldn't escape (yet?)  now resembles the head of a jellyfish. The tendrils of escaping matter - stars, planets, dust clouds, nebulas - that haven't fully separated (yet)  appear to be hanging below, like those on a jellyfish. (I doubt they move like an ocean jellyfish, but that  would be interesting! Likely very destructive as well.) Scientists describe the cause of this as ramming, so I'd guess there's enough color shift to suggest it's all still in motion. I haven't read the article for the above stated reasons.

I have no idea whether these are supposed to be static in their new confirmation, but I can't imagine they would be, just that the moment in time we observe them shows them that way, just like any constellation in our sky seems permanent. We know things move and that different forces like gravity hold them in a pattern. Observe our solar system, everything moving yet staying much the same. We can observe the evidence left of collisions in the distant past from craters on the moon, or even here on earth. Some of us have seen comets breaking up within our lifetimes, like Shoemaker-Levy 9 falling into Jupiter back in 1994 in 21 pieces.

Now go look up jellyfish galaxies and let your imaginations play, or bring out your crayons and design your own versions. Have fun! It's that or knock yourself flat on your ass with awe and/or fear.

You do you.

When Neither One Works

 Things got weird this last weekend. Going into the weekend, the right arm was somewhat mobile, pain free,  and looking forward to regaining muscles or tendons or whatever means of control it still lacks after 6 weeks of forced immobility. Its hand works perfectly, with great grip strength, but there's a disconnect when it comes to getting it elevated enough, say, to touch my head. It has to be placed in position. PT is the anticipated cure, with appointments scheduled.

When I woke up Sunday, the left arm still had the mobility it had the months before, only now any move forward and to the center is sharply painful. My plan of perhaps fixing that one in late summer just morphed into a plan to ask the surgeon at this week's "final" appointment  how soon we can schedule it, period.

Think of it this way: with both hands working, I could mostly function. The right hand needs something to bring it left and high. Low mostly works just fine, though I haven't explored all options. Even when it needs effort to get in position or stay held in position, mostly it works. If I can brace that elbow on the arm of the chair, the hand can scratch my head when I move the head into place if it itches... which of course it does. That's just life. Braced, it can hold a hairbrush, but not move it to brush the hair, a job designated for the left hand since surgery. Same for the toothbrush. So those get done, when they get done, with sharp pain now.  With both hands working together I can manage to get a wet washcloth across my face, carefully.  Neither arm can replace the shower head back up on its hook. Not yet anyway. I'm considering the cost of a plumber to make some permanent height adjustment on that wall. Or perhaps there's a gadget one can attach without making a hole at risk of puncturing plumbing behind the wall? I'm open for ideas here.

I don't know enough of internal anatomy to understand why the sudden pain when the left shoulder has been the one relied on for so long. I'm sure its use has contributed to whatever suddenly changed. Imagination fills in the gap to suggest some chip of bone, undermined by the arthritis, loosened and relocated in an unknown spot where it grates between other parts of that shoulder joint when they move. But I've never dissected one, nor even seen diagrams, so who knows?

My supply of "normal" painkillers doesn't touch it, though the ache after movement does ease after around an hour. I can assure you I'm not at all tempted to go back to NSIDS since the pancreatitis. After resisting doing so for ages, I'm about to request an interim supply of the heavy stuff. Whatever the cause, it won't be needed much after surgery, based on past experience with the other shoulder. However, once again there'll be however many weeks of the sling before the needed PT to go through to restore function to that arm.

The frustrating part is not the pain. The frustrating part is just when I start thinking I can be independent and capable of doing normal things on my own again and soon, life has its way of laughing, in a way that's both full of irony and bereft of humor. It reminds me of my chronological age, not the twenty-year-old remembered me tucked away inside. She's still there on those mornings when I wake pain-free, read to go and take on the world again, at least until it takes on me.

A Shocking Milestone!

I'm not saying it's a terribly important one, even though it is worth note, just one of those that sneaks up on you and tells you that you're getting old. (Or older, anyway.)

First, I'm back driving again, at least for those things where I won't be medicated or otherwise disqualified from doing so. Hopefully that mostly won't happen again until... late summer? Considering the issues of wearing that contraption they call a sling in the winter, I've been giving thought to scheduling the other shoulder. I see that doc next week, my final check-out, and we'll have that discussion. But I'm hoping for no slippery snowy roads, no multiple layers of heavy clothing to fight with, and no contraption preventing me from wearing my coat outside in winter weather. So I'm going to push for mid July for the second shoulder, pending the surgeon's input. That doesn't even take into consideration how cold the house gets in February when you mostly just sit around for 6 weeks, even under a doubled polar fleece blanket, and can't even tolerate being in your own bed  because you can't/shouldn't roll over so it's still just life in a chair 24 hours a day, or how itchy my dry skin gets in winter, or being unable to pick up our own mail for fear of ice causing extra damage besides a bruise or two.

So that's my starting point on milestones and scheduling, based on too much experience.

My youngest has been very helpful with all kinds of things I/we can't do under these circumstances. I'm getting a chance to return the favor... provided he goes ahead and gets some of his own scheduling done. He's going to need his own driver soon. He'll be needing a routine procedure where he'll be released after waking from anesthetics, in no condition to drive himself. I'll be able to do that for him, even bring a book to read in the meanwhile, or who knows? I might still be working on taxes and bring that paper jungle along just for "fun", though this year will be much simpler than last year because we didn't move and sell a house. 

But this year my baby turns 50! And lucky for him, his doctors inform him he needs to come in for a colonoscopy! Not the box on the doorstep kind, but a full look-see kind. Lucky him he gets to start when they use propofol, aka "milk of amnesia" for sedative. I still have awful memories of stuff that didn't work, no pain relief, no ability to speak ( or scream - I tried), just wide awake paralysis. Oddly enough I just scheduled my next one for next month myself. I'll have Steve drive for me, barring some blizzard. He'll have a book or two to bring, maybe even just sit in the car if it's a nice enough day. March can provide anything. We geezers are used to getting our own medical stuff taken care of, based on symptoms and age. We almost take it for granted that X happens every Y number of years. But that's for us.

But OMG! My baby is old enough to start that cycle! Sure he's grown, responsible, holds a long-term job, switched to an electric hybrid car, pays his mortgage, grows and harvests fruits to make jellies out of, helps us geezers with heavy tasks. 

When did he ever get old too?

Bad Timing

It's been unusually warm after being unusually cold... at least in recent terms. This winter had lots of sub-zero days and piling snow. As a kid this would have been just "Winter", at least for Minnesota.  After many winters in  Arizona, and a mild first winter back north, this winter felt harsh. Add in being trapped inside for multiple health reasons, it added to the subjective harshness.

Then we get a week plus of highs in or near the 50s. Streets of black asphalt clear, despite their sides lined by piled snowbanks. Sidewalks finally lost almost all their ice and are safe even for me to walk on these days. News reports resume mentioning people breaking through the ice and either getting rescued or drowning. Ice houses are still scattered across local lakes while we natives give them the side-eye, wondering which fish house or vehicle - or combination - will be the first to break through and sink, and at what cost. They range from tents and snowmobiles to RVs! Around here cost includes, on top of everything else, fines for polluting the lake with fluids from vehicles or whatever non-native things just got dumped into the lake along with fees for pulling out whatever fell through. One might even be "lucky" enough to have an ambulance fee to top it off.

Aside from lakes, however, it's been great to finally be back behind the wheel, getting out to doctor's appointments on my own, shopping again, and planning that trip to the library to pick up free tax forms for filing in the next couple months. (Oops, holiday: closed! Sigh.) Days are getting longer, sun actually starts to melt snow off roofs and should it peek into the house, can add some actual warmth, a good thing after looking at the latest utility bill, a bit of sticker shock after last year's baseline bills.

I finally could walk safely to the mail center again. We (meaning my son) shoveled our half of the length of the paved walk running between homes to the next street over. The neighbors on the other end who had responsibility for their share went snowbird without making arrangements. Lumpy ice simply wasn't doable. Often mail in our box would pile up for a week until somebody younger and more able bodied could be persuaded to fetch it for us. That path's tail end is visible on its meandering path if one stands on our front porch and looks across back yards. Yesterday the last of its ice left.

Two packages, one catalogue, and one envelope were expected. (We get that service from the post office, often too optimistic, but at least letting us know when not to bother heading over.) After lunch I pulled on my winter coat, with help from Steve because that's still part of my life, and headed over on foot. I could have waited, but after all the warmth, we now have afternoon rain and snow expected. Talk about a safety reset! Clouds are starting to fill back in.

We still have ice over snow in places with a lot of shade, like where the garbage and recycling bins sit until their day curbside. Neither has enough in them to warrant fighting slick ice today. They are big, our refuse supply isn't. I have developed a system where they snug up against the porch. I can stand on the dry porch right outside the front door, reach over with a long grabber stick, lift the lids so they can be filled, and drop the lids back down. No snow, no ice, no stairs. And almost no contents despite clearing out the house this morning. So they'll stay, and I won't be pulling them over wet ice ( since the roof drains right there.) As I inform anybody nosy enough to ask or rude enough to raise an eyebrow, I just mention everything inside is frozen so nothing stinks. 

But the mail was calling, or at least Steve's two packages, promised today, were calling him. He was waiting for a return phone call, so I headed out after getting his assist with the coat. If I take the long path, I had a safe, dry way to get the mail and back. In summer I cut across the grass, but shade still left too much snow and presumably ice in that direction. 

Just before I left our yard's area on that dry path, I noticed a speck of motion. Slow, undulating, motion. Had it all been black on the black paved path, I might not have noticed it, but in the middle was a fuzzy band of orange. It was a woolly bear caterpillar! I hadn't seen one of those for over a dozen years!  Mostly I've seen them in the fall, doing whatever it is they do to get ready for winters. But we'd been spending so many falls, winters, and springs in Arizona, that I'd not even been reminded that they exist. Yet here one was, not warm enough yet to be able to hurry to get wherever it thought it needed to go next. Knowing the forecast, I wondered if it would be given enough time today to make it to its desired destination. The morning forecast suggested another hour in this part of the state before it needed to be wherever it was going, oh so slowly, slowly, in the direction of. 

In February? In Minnesota? Winter returning with an attitude?

Really?

On my return from checking for mail that hadn't arrived yet, I noticed it had made it about another foot across the path. It had maybe 5 inches to grass again, brown and almost thawed in the tips showing perhaps an inch above the ground where snow hadn't totally matted them down. 

Good luck little critter.

Reset

I roam wide and far online. Some places involve conversations. Some "merely" input programming, or some paragraphs of data.  And of course there's shopping, especially the advance grocery orders so we can avoid entering a store. Eventually it starts to catch up with you, particularly when some sites both quote something and for verification, add a link to the source.

I started having trouble loading stuff I wanted to read. I love a quick perusal of a site and lining up several articles to be read in depth along my search bar to pick later, waiting for me before I can forget them from that initial look. I started getting blank pages when I tried opening them.  Add in a few other issues, and it was time to clear out some stuff.

Of course I did it wrong. But my laptop, in the interest of speed, offers me a chance to clear great big everythings at once. After all, how would I know, one by one, what's sitting there months later and not completely cleared, or worse, connected to three dozen other unknown sources - for better or worse. I mean, if it's email, I can clear by category or individual message, quite easily. I just need to remember to check SPAM because sometimes my computer is really stupid on how it assigns things there. If you are a good friend with a long list of people you send good jokes to, it decides on its own that I didn't really want to hear from you. But it's incapable of figuring out that all the messages from a good friend who died three years ago are attempts at corrupting my system. Not only had she died but she is no longer sending photos to anybody... unless I'm really wrong about what happens after cremation! Just to make it a teensy bit more challenging, I also get supposed photos from one of my kids, which still have to be sent to spam unopened. He never takes photos, much less sends them. Those were a surprise the first time, but a totally weird-ass origin tipped me off before I opened what I supposedly needed to in order to view the "photos".

Once my laptop stopped letting me have good access to a favorite few sites, it was time to clear stuff off. My laptop gave me a quick three choices: history, cookies, or cache. You know what happens when you try to call the sure-fire person who could tell me which to delete and which to rethink before doing so, and they don't answer the phone? A couple moments thought later, and I clicked "yes" on all three. 

It worked! 

There was one little catch, however. Places where I needed to log in refused to recognize me. Oops.... was that the Cookies? Cache? Or History? Luckily the financial sites (where I needed to keep regular track of balances) I'd had set to require a full log-in every time. I remembered those from daily use, though some days better than others. But others, less financially sensitive, I relied on to just be there when I clicked. A third category, like various kinds of weather reports, needed no special access, just open and navigate. The whole of one site shows fire smoke for the continent, for one example, and just zoom around. Same with the lightening map. My road map site only asks for a location to display, whether a full state or some building, not caring who I am or why I need to know.

Lucky for me, I've been writing down my log-ins over the years, especially when they change. I'd gotten a bit coy with some of them, like making references to stuff I was sure I'd remember that nobody else could figure out. After ten-plus years and changes in passwords, you know what happens, right? Ever reference "dog's name" and wonder looking back which dog it was at that time? Some of those rescue dogs had fairly short lives, a big reason they were still waiting for homes.  Just note, however, if you try to figure out my passwords, that none of them were ever dogs' names. Just giving an example of how to confuse oneself. Good thing I never tried cat's names, since some of those I can't recall myself despite a clear image of the face/fur patttern, while I'm still pretty good with the dogs many years later. 

Earlier this week I was ordering something online, and was going to use PayPal. Usually when I open the link they send me a notice that they recognize my computer. Oops. Uhhhh..... what was that again? Oh, I got cutsey with that one? Fine, I'll switch directly to one of my cards instead. 

I wanted to add a couple shows to the YouTube TV lineup. We're on a family member's plan. When it got installed, I wrote down everything! All 4 lines of "everything"! Now I have a call in to that person asking which of those four lines I need in order to get back on. I haven't even gotten to BritBox yet, and that's a different person. I'll wait till after the Olympics, I guess.  Besides, Steve handles the cable for the TV. I've gotten as far, on occasion, as pulling out the plug, counting to 5, and replugging.  More than that, it's his problem.

Sick Of Winter Yet? #6

If you're reading these in numerical order, you might be waiting for the story behind why we stopped one blue agave from blooming. This is it.

Agaves, as already noted, have a well-earned reputation for keeping you at a distance, even worse than cacti, except for cholla. If there is one exception, it is the octopus agave. The leaves are smooth, and aside from the very tip of each leaf, don't stab you. They're even easier to deal with if, like me, you take an ordinary garden clippers and trim off the last half inch of each leaf spike. It won't grow back, and even if you bump into it after that, you'll barely get the meerest scratch, and then only if you work hard at it. 

I decided I had to plant one, and placed it at the front corner of the house, close to the wall. It thrived there, since even under the eave, there was no gutter to defer the rare rain, so whatever fell watered it well. It was a beauty.  In a short time it started its own flowering stalk.

 

 

An unfortunate effect of its location was the stalk grew up into the eaves, trying to shoot through them.

This started a week's tug of war with the top of the stalk: pull, check for movement, check for progress, check for house damage. Repeat. Repeat again. Still again. But don't! break! the stalk !

Once freed from under the roof, it thrived, kept growing, and started loading up in tiny flowers.

 In turn, the flowers attracted the local bees, who loaded up on pollen.

Lots and lots of bees,  for several days. That corner of the house was humming!

We had been expecting seed pods. Once the flower petals dropped, baby plants replaced them instead.

The plants grew, filled in, and suddenly we realized we had some work ahead of us! We had plants needing homes! LOTS OF HOMES! My son Rich put an ad for us in a neighborhood online location where one can sell, trade, even give away whatever. We used it previously to divest of a bunch of X-mas tree stuff we no longer wanted, free to a good home, or an organization who'd find it all good homes. In this case, we invited people to pluck off their own plants as wanted, free. We also invited anybody with ambition (and probably a business) to come over and cut the entire stalk and remove all of them. We had several phone calls for more info, some asking for care tips, easily given.

I had already plucked a couple dozen babies off the stalk, setting them on a wide window ledge in plastic 3 ounce cups of water. They quickly grew roots, went into potting soil in peat pots, in turn got  set into thin aluminum baking pans converted for the purpose, where they could go back outside in sun and be evenly watered from the bottom. Some of those I shared with friends for their yards, depending on their own green or brown thumbs. Some I planted in our yard after they were well rooted.

 One day I stepped out front and noticed somebody had come by quietly and taken us at our word that they were welcome to the stalk and contents. I wished them the best of luck in growing them. We'd had fun.

Being busy with the new "octo-babies", the remains of the old plant were ignored for a few weeks. As predicted, stalk and leaves died . We finally made plans to dig the remainder out, asking Rich for the favor of doing the work. Instead he called me out, having news. There was new growth in the bottom! A few fresh green leaves were poking out beneath the dead leaves.  We still had a nice octopus agave, or would very soon, once the dead was removed. Instructions changed, and the new growth thrived, The babies which were planted got ignored during our snowbirding northern vacation, despite promises before we left for regular watering. By the time we sold the house, we had "only" four new healthy ones in the back yard, still a good result for a favorite plant after a minimum of work.

Note the fat plant behind the octopus agave along the house is one of our large blue agaves I showed in the last episode. After photos of where this octopus ended up and knowing what was required to do in order to avoid damage to the house, but the next time with a real stabber of a plant, I hope you'll understand better why we cut that flowering stalk. Besides, I was informed it produced seeds, not plants, and those really are a lot of work!