I Needed A Change

So I started a new blog just in time for NaBloPoMo

And here is the link --

     Seven of Seven -- Dusty Pages Revisited

I've only just started, and it may take me a while to get it right. But I'm going to try.

Boy Did I Get Behind!

What can I say? Life got busy, and I got out of the mood to blog.

And {drum roll} I FINALLY am having hot flashes! I don't WANT to have hot flashes, you understand. But I DID want to finally get properly into menopause, and it looks like that's where I'm going. They aren't horrible, but they aren't fine, either. I am already a person who does not do well with heat. I'm the person who is in shorts and a t-shirt in 40 and 50 degree weather. But I know it could be worse. My son's mother-in-law has been having really, really bad hot flashes for a year and a half now -- the kind of hot flashes that have sweat pouring off of her in buckets. When Thomas was undergoing his treatment and radiation for his prostate cancer, he had horrible hot flashes like that where sweat was pouring off him. And he is the person who is in many layers of clothing, coats, and hats when it is 70 degrees outside. He is so sympathetic to me right now lol.

A few days ago I had to gown up to screen a baby in semi-isolation, and I had a hot flash while I was doing the screen. When I came out of the room and took off the gown and gloves, they PEELED off me, and it was the first time that my clothing was actually sticking to me! I thought I was going to have to change scrubs. 

NaBloPoMo, The Seventh Post

Does This Count?

This won't be much of a post, I'm afraid. 

Last week someone commented to a blogger on a thread in the FB group "NaBloPoMo Revival" that she would have liked to have left her comment on the actual post but didn't have a Blogger (or was it Google?) account and didn't want to be rude and post as "Anonymous." So she was commenting to this blogger's post in the FB group. 

Blogger no longer supports Open ID, so I think you must have a Blogger account to leave a comment that shows your name. I don't mind if someone posts as "Anonymous" on my blog as long as it is a real comment and not spam. I have my settings so that I have to approve any comments, so I can tell if it is a real comment from a real person.

So if you want to comment and can only do it as Anonymous, please go ahead. You can always give your name in your comment if you'd like. 

Today is my last day off for a few days; back to work tomorrow. I'm feeling much better today, so I guess I did well to take it easy. I'll have a potentially long day tomorrow.

I'm a dog lighter at my house. The little Pomski I was dog-sitting went home today; my English Setter is happy to have me all to himself again.

And that's about it for now.

Ta!

~~Lori

NaBloPoMo Sixth Post!

Six Days Late!

Oh well! I haven't managed to do a post every day.  This is the first time I've failed at NaBloPoMo -- well, failed in that I've missed multiple days. But I still plan to make 30 posts this month, even though some days will be multiple-post days.

I started feeling bad last week with a head cold/sinus congestion/sneezing/maybe allergies/who-knows-what kind of thing. I have not run a fever and it hasn't gotten bad, so I didn't take off work last week, but I just didn't feel up to much when I got home each evening. I had four days off in a row to look forward to, and I'm on that third day right now. I don't go back to work until Wednesday. I'm monitoring myself and treating my cold symptoms in order to make sure that I don't -- or haven't -- contracted something contagious. I work with newborn babies, so I can't work if I think I might be contagious. I usually take Claritin and Flonase every morning, and that usually keeps my congestion away, but I ran out of Claritin and kept forgetting to stop to get more, and when I do that for a few days in a row, then I can get head congestion that takes longer to get rid of. I really do think that that, plus our onset of colder weather and some long, stressful days, have resulted in what I am now experiencing.

Saturday I didn't do much of anything, just tea and naps on the couch with the dogs. Yesterday was more of the same with a bit of housecleaning and a visit by our son and his wife yesterday evening. Today I'm again taking it easy and actually feel like blogging, so here it is, such as it is.

Things I want to blog about, in no particular order:

• Dog-sitting

• My job

• Our daughter's wedding

• Our daughter's illness

• Pets

• My mother

• My sisters and brother

• My father

• Some visits to some past blog posts

• Home schooling

Seems like there is enough fodder there to fill out the rest of the month, doesn't it?

So, I will try to post every day, perhaps a few posts today, and we'll see if I can catch up. I not only feel like blogging today but like reading other blogs as well, so hopefully I still have some readers (!!), and hopefully I'll see you around the blogosphere!

Ta for now,

~~ Lori

NaBloPoMo Day 5

Venting My Spleen

No, I'm not going to vent it, I'm going to talk about it. It's an expression I like. I was skimming over some older posts from this year and in one of them I mentioned "relieving" or "venting" my spleen. Do you ever use that expression?

In ancient Greek medicine it was believed that there were four "humors" that determined behavior and emotion. They were Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric, and Melancholic. The organ associated with the melancholic humor was the spleen and the qualities were cold and dry. I wonder if when Shakespeare wrote Petruchio saying of Katherine, "I'll tame her mad and headstrong humor," he was speaking of changing her from a hot and dry (choleric) humor to a cold and dry (melancholic) humor. That might fit. But why did the spleen change from symbolizing melancholy to anger? 

My first introduction to the phrase being used this way was when I began reading Georgette Heyer at about the age of sixteen. Heyer used a lot of historic slang, appropriate for the period she was writing about, and she used the phrase about venting one's spleen more than once. Back then you couldn't look up phrase origins on the Internet like you can today. But I was an avid reader with eclectic tastes, and at some point I came across a book where one of the characters believed in phrenology -- the

Victorian notion that one's character or natural tendencies could be told by "reading" the bumps on one's head. I brought this up in conversation with my elder sister, Barbara, who had an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure subjects, and during the discussion we covered not only phrenology but humors as well. She told me about the spleen being one of the sources of the humors, and we discussed venting the spleen meaning anger, which I knew it did by the context of what I was reading.

Now, of course, we have the Internet, so we can look up things like this.  One of my favorite websites is The Word Detective, and he says of the phrase, "The spleen's job is to act as a sort of filter for the blood, but in medieval times, when each bodily organ was thought to be the home of one emotion or another, the spleen was regarded as the seat of melancholy.... There was apparently a brief period later on when the spleen was suspected, improbably, of supplying humor and good cheer, but by the late 16th century it was decided that the spleen was the source of rage and ill-temper. Thus 'spleen' has for several centuries been a metaphor for 'anger,' 'resentment' and general crankiness."

And it was my general crankiness of which I was relieving myself in the earlier mentioned older blog post. I don't "vent my spleen" too often, though. Aren't you glad? :)

Ta for now,

~~ Lori

NaBloPoMo 2018 -- Day Four

Loss

Our J-Land friend, an anchor of our online blogging community, Donna Diggins, passed away today. I first met Donna through her AOL Journal This and That and Hockey For a while Donna kept a blog on Blogger called D's Designs, but it won't load for me when I click on the link that I have. 

Donna used to enjoy creating animated graphics that she would "tag" for her friends and offer on her blog. I still have several that I got from her over the years. (For the life of me, I can't recall what the program was that she used to create them.) She was a pretty good photographer, too.

We stayed friends on FB after AOL Journals shut down, and our Facebook J-Land community mourns her there.

On another sad note, an elderly friend of ours passed away this morning also. She was a spunky, outspoken lady in her eighties. Wanda truly loved people. She "never met a stranger," as the saying goes. We will miss her greatly.

Again, Dedicated to you, Donna.

And that's it for today, folks. I'll try to be more creative tomorrow, but I'm a bit drained right now and still nursing a head cold.

Hug your family. Call your mom and dad. Say "I love you" every chance you get. Don't waste your minutes, your breath, or your health on getting angry about little things or differences of opinion. Everyone have a good night.

Ta for now

~~ Lori

NaBloPoMo -- Day Three, Belated~~

Yesterday I was just TOO tired!

I missed my post yesterday! I don't think I've ever done that during NaBloPoMo; at least I don't remember if I have. I worked yesterday and my day ended up being longer than I had expected. And then in the evening I started getting sick with a head cold, sneezing and feeling a bit achy. So I just went to bed.

Feeling a bit better today, but I definitely have a lot of head congestion. I know so many people who have had a nasty stomach thing rampaging through their families, so I won't complain too much about a head cold.

Going to close this now, though. I'll make a proper post for today before I head to bed.

Ta for now!

~~ Lori