Author: samandoat

I am stubborn because I am stupid most of the time.

But I have learned that when something refuses to happen, you need give it up. Usually there is a good reason for delays that I find out or figure out later. If I’ve been frustrated trying to buy something on-line, I’ll discover it on sale the next day or I needed the money for an emergency. Or if I can’t reach someone to tell them something, I’ll discover it is something they should not know! Or if I keep getting interrupted while talking, by phones ringing, noise, other people, well, it means I should keep my mouth shut. I’ve learned these things the hard way. One scary time I was delayed going to the bank, and had I been on time, I would have been walking up the very sidewalk that a man lost control of his car and hurled down and plunged into the bank. I missed that event by mere minutes! So, yeah, I kind of trust delays.

But still I sometimes persist.

I had a barrage of medical tests to do, blood work, urine sample and x-rays. I decided to do them all on the same day and get it over with. I had my mind set on it. That was probably my first mistake.

I went to the usual place for blood work, they also have (had) an x-ray facility there. It was near where I buy cat food too, and a dollar store (YAY!). 2 buses to get there, 2 buses to come home. Because of covid, you can’t reserve an appointment, it is first come first serve, and there is NO way to contact them by phone, so I went early morning.

Because I had fasted, I could not pee. A man banged on the bathroom door for me to hurry up. That was helpful. If anything was there it was not going to come out now! So I left the lab and filled myself with water, orange juice and food, and still could not pee. I went and bought cat food and visited the dollar store and returned to the lab and squeezed out a couple of drops for analysis.

I went to the basement for my x-rays. They were gone. A surly lab tech told me the closest place was way out in the east end of the city. Being loaded down with a bag of cat food, I went home.

But I was still determined to get those x-rays and probably not thinking straight since they took 10 vials of blood from me. As a bonus, it was the hottest day of the summer, a mere 33 degrees celsius.

I found a lab that only required 2 buses to get to, it opened at 12:30. I had lunch and away I went. A big notice on the door said ‘X-ray machine not working.’ and gave the address of the next closest place.

Now I am getting stubbornly stupid. I take 2 buses to the next place, but I got on the wrong bus and it let me off in the middle of nowhere – I mean, Hitchcock’s North by Northwest crop duster cornfields nowhere! By now it is late afternoon, and I am wiped. The only building in the distance was a funeral home.

I guess x-rays today was not meant to be. Gee, what was my first clue?

So much written and discussed about procrastination. The plague that destroys lives.

Here is what I discovered about my own procrastination.

Why do we not do what we love?

We’ll do things we hate, really hate, before we tackle the thing we love. All of a sudden housework, mowing the lawn, clipping our toenails has an urgency, and we kill hours doing the despicable. And there, collecting dust is our masterpiece. The unfinished painting, the needlework kit unopened, the book unread or unwritten, the application papers for University untouched, that dream job unexplored, the music lessons we don’t attend.

Why?

I read that we suppress negative emotions, anger, depression, worry, and that we freely express joy.

Not so.

When I was growing up, silence and good behaviour were the rule. Parents did not want an excited, unruly kid on their hands. I was taught to suppress joy. Be a good girl. Keep my enthusiasm under wraps. Does this sound familiar?

I was taught there is something wrong with being happy.

So when there was something I really wanted to do or have or be, I kept it to myself. Stiff upper lip. I held back boisterous joy and laughter. I was not allowed to show unbridled passion, nor was I allowed to pursue it.

Hello? So whenever something in my adult life arose that imbued that bubbling sense of joy, I shut down. I did other things to keep it at bay.

That is why I procrastinated. This is why I worked at jobs I hated. Had lovers who were crap. Never bought a home, a car or took trips.

WTF.

I still find it difficult to express joy, but I seldom procrastinate now. I allow myself to make noise, messes, get dirty, be intimate, just as much as I allow myself to be angry, sad or just plain miserable (though I keep those negative emotions at home and yell and cry to the houseplants. No I am not suppressing my feelings, I’m just not making anyone else suffer them.)

I bet a lot of people procrastinate for the same reason.

Gradually I have come to believe that the cause of many of our mobility and other problems is a lack of good circulation.

I came to this conclusion after seeing injured animals restored with daily massage and manipulation of their limbs.

It gave me pause for thought.

Going for a massage is NOT something I would ever do however. I am squeamish about a stranger touching me.

So I do it myself.

If only it’d work on money!

There were two girls who followed me around when I was in Public School.

They weren’t my friends.

At least once a week they beat me up. They’d drag me off to a corner at recess and treat my face and body to some fists.

They tormented me by following me around like a cat stalking its prey. I was a shy little kid and defenseless.

Those two girls would escort me home from school nearly every afternoon. It was terrifying.

My Mom wanted me to invite them for supper. She insisted they were my friends. And she actually came out of the house one day and invited them in for dinner! And they ate with us!

She never believed me when I told her they were most definitely not my friends, and she didn’t hear me when I said they liked to rough me up. She thought I was making it up.

Until.

One day I came home with a black eye.

“I fed those two girls!” Was my Mothers angry response to my beating.

My Mother trusted everyone. Complete trust. She always thought the best of people.

Unfortunately, this was not the only time my Mother put me in danger. There were many times I learned some shocking truths and endured abuse because my Mother either put me in harms way, or did not defend me.

Mom never believed people would do terrible things, even though some people did terrible things to her. A paradox I could never understand.

My brother also was bullied but solved his woes by brandishing a two by four. In the 1950’s and 60’s you were on your own, kiddo.

In August my teeth decided that they needed attention. And what attention they needed! It really bit off a lot of my savings and put me a few months closer to being a bag lady.

But I will be a bag lady with great teeth!

I got to warm the dentist chair for two hours every session. My mouth has been stretched somewhat I suspect. Not good news for those who are sick of listening to me.

One thing I’ve learned as I watch my money disappear as fast as I can take a breath, is that your health is always way more important than money.

If you come into some money, think about your teeth first and spend it on that. You won’t regret it. A healthy mouth equals a healthy body.

So when you pass me wheeling my grocery cart around town at least I can flash you a brilliant smile!

And if you can’t spare some change (who has coinage nowadays?) maybe you could buy one of my books and that’ll help pay for the teeth that blinded you!

God Bless.

Recently I had what I thought was a mouth infection. Having worked for an optometrist, I equate it with conjunctivitis for the mouth. It wasn’t fun.

Now I went almost immediately for dental care, a bit of a wait as I was also about to receive my second covid shot. So I toughed it out for a couple of weeks to make sure the vaccine was in my system before I went to the dentist.

I reflected during that time on other medical emergencies and why I always hesitated to go for care.

Fear was only a small part of it.

Shame was the real reason.

How many of you have been shamed for being sick?

That is the reason I hate going to a doctor. Many of them have shamed me in the past.

This little gum affair – which turned out to be something entirely different, taught me this. Disease is NOT your fault. It is part of life. Everything on this planet eats everything else, and everything decays and dies. That is the unpleasant reality we live in. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. Eventually something will get you. Every living creature is subject to the same rule. It is NOT your fault.

We don’t deliberately go out into this world to get sick. It befalls us. We can live spotless lives and still get sick and yes, die. So for anyone (hello Mothers out there as well) to shame us for our physical misfortunes, they’d better watch out for karma.

My doctor and dentist do not shame me. I am fortunate. I have had specialists however shame me plenty, and treat me inferior for being a female, and now for being old.

It is wrong to shame anyone for misfortunes. Diseases befall us. Life and shit happen in equal measure. Just take a look at poor Job in the Bible. Yikes. He learned the same lesson. The terrible things he endured were NOT his fault, and his friends tried to shame him!

Be kind to yourself next time you are sick. It is just life happening. It is not your fault.

I read recently that a boss paid his former employee his fought for wages with a bucket of five cent coins that weighed 66 pounds.

I am fed up with this.

You blockhead owners and bosses of retail and restaurants are the most vile people on earth. Immature, self entitled brats. You can’t understand why no one wants to work for you. You point the finger at everyone else, you say they are lazy workers and blame the corrupt government, when it is YOU that is the problem dick head.

First of all IDIOTS, there is a pandemic going on, and the last place any one wants to work is in a place where they will be exposed to a lot of maskless, unvaccinated strangers. DUH.

Second of all, it is no secret that you treat your staff like shit. Pay them shit. Make them work long hours. No benefits. Steal their tips. They take abuse from you and customers. DUH.

You have such a disrespect for the people who make you a millionaire, you deserve to go out of business. And I could care less if we have one less restaurant if you are the owner of it.

I am fed up with your whining. Grow up.

I am of the opinion that many of our diseases are caused by too much or too little sunshine.

We are aware of the damage too much sunshine can inflict, especially since us intelligent human beings have found new and wonderous ways to make the sun unfriendly by polluting our air and making it so thin that the sun can fry us. Or our vanity insists on that all over alluring tan.

But have we considered how too little sunshine is also hurting our bodies?

When I was working, I got four weeks in the summer to find sunshine. But you can’t bottle it up and use for the other 11 months of the year when enslaved in an office.

I know how it can affect your moods, the infamous SAD syndrome. But I wonder how it might also make our bodies wither, you know, like a plant without light, all white and spongy.

Just a thought.

I am reading two great books about pan- and epidemics that prove we are idiots.

New Pandemics, Old Politics by Alex De Waal clearly shows us that history repeats and repeats and repeats and we never ever learn a damn thing. We follow an old script that never worked in the first place, and that is, we are in a war against pathogens, and ignore science. We don’t see the forest for the trees. We ignore or downplay evidence that is so in our faces, that it could be on our faces.

Modern Epidemics by Salvador Macip agrees, ‘We don’t learn from our errors.’

Neither do we learn from the facts.

Instead we whoosh around like the morons we are, motivated by emotions. Emotions are never logical and can be deadly.

I am fed up with the entire Covid pandemic, not because of the isolation or masks, but because of the astounding and abounding stupidity of the masses. They talk trash, throw trash and make an unpleasant situation a thousand times more unpleasant. I have lost patience with it all.

I could state all the facts and evidence that vaccines work until the cows come home, but people get high on emotions, even to their last denying, dying breath.

The solution to our problem is so simple and easy. Get vaccinated. Wear masks. Social distance. If you do this, our problem will be temporary. But as long as you scream and yell, make this a political issue and refuse the above, the longer this will go on, Covid will be a pandemic forever, and your life will be very short.