Serendipity Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth
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I don’t wear much pink or at least light pink. I do occasionally wear hot pink, though.
The flowers are often pink and here are a lot of pink plants, flowers and a few dolls.
It’s a sunshiny day, so maybe we’ll go find more pink. It’s going to be a day full of flowers. I can just feel it. It goes with the sunshine.
So my test results came back. After I did a full translation of virtually every word in the report — I’m pretty good with medicalese, but this was way above my pay grade — I discovered that considering my age and stage of life, I’ve got functional, but not perfect arteries. If you want to factor in all the tests that were run initially during my first visit to the neurologist — and then this new set of tests — we know that I’m getting on in years.
Which is exactly what we knew before. We do not know if what the tests found to have anything to do with the visual symptoms. They could be connected, but they could also be entirely separate with no connecting thread. And worse, there’s actually no clear way to address the matter. It’s not like there’s a book which gives answers because what’s bothering me aren’t the symptoms for any known disease or condition or illness.
Thus I know what I knew when I started this process. I was afraid this would be the result and why I didn’t want to begin the process. It’s “non-result.”
A lot of information has been collected, but are any of these results related to the symptoms? I’m not even sure why I started this process in the first place except that I felt I had some kind of obligation to find out if it meant something — or not.
“Or not,” seems to be the answer.
I’m just as worried (but more confused) than I was at the start. I’m overloaded with information that doesn’t mean anything to me. I suppose — or at least I hope — that this will make more sense after I see the doctor next week.
With all the advances we’ve made in medicine, in the end, a lot of it is more like art than science. Maybe someday it’ll be just like “Bones” on the Enterprise. Just use that little tricorder and poof! Diagnosis, cure, and life renewed.
I’m waiting. Aren’t we all?
Is there anyone who doesn’t or has never watched Jeopardy? As game shows went, that has to be the most popular one ever. When I was a young adult, people were addicted to this show. It wasn’t because they assumed they could go on it to win tons of money, though some did hope for that, but because Jeopardy was and remains the original TV trivia game.
This is Trivial Pursuits for the world, broadcast (depending on the decade and year), daily or weekly. It was created by Merv Griffin (what wasn’t created by Merv Griffin?) and has been on the air as a daily (5-days a week) show, a weekly nighttime event, or a daily evening presentation, usually just after dinner time — between 7 and 8 at night – since 1964. That’s 59 years which is a great deal of television! I think the reruns are as popular as the original. Is there any other show that has been continuously broadcast for this long?
Recently, it has become a headline:
And he won. Again. So his winning roll continues. Unless he does something really stupid, he’s will come out of Jeopardy more than comfortable for the rest of his life.
Unlike most quiz shows, it didn’t give prizes. It was all about money. You got an answer and had to answer the answer with a question. When Trivial Pursuits came out as a board game during the 1980s, I kept being surprised that you didn’t have to answer the statement with a question. While I wasn’t addicted to the show as some people were, I did watch it and much to my amusement learned a lot more miscellany than I’d previously known.
I think writers are the best Trivial Pursuit players because we accumulate tons of random information. We absorb a bit of just about everything, from what we see, hear, and read. We remember bits of conversations about anything we hear or read. You just never know when that bit of information won’t become the lead in or conclusion of your next book, post, or long, shaggy dog story.
For most of the years when I occasionally watched it, Alex Trebek was the host. Since those years — I guess the last time I watched it was during the 1990s, probably with Garry’s mom — who was an addict. But she was in good company. Millions of people followed the show either sometimes or constantly.
It is the most popular show in elderly housing and gave them a chance to show off their knowledge, something old people rarely have an opportunity to do. Of course, we who blog are not showing off OUR knowledge. We’re just hanging out. Online!
Actually, I think blogging is our Jeopardy. We don’t cover quite as big a range of topics as the show does and did, we cover a lot of stuff. I have a genuine passion for writing about whatever weird little idea has passed across my brain.
It doesn’t need to be important. In fact, it’s unimportance is part of why I enjoy writing about it.
They’ve done it again. I don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it.
For those of you who actually use the various settings for your blog? WordPress has, without any notification to users, changed the way it’s done and what can be done … and worse, changed what the things used to mean to something else.
A lot of changes that were easy to find in a single column in the “old dashboard” are spread into other “new” files that I will only try by using an “open in new tab” option. Otherwise, I’m sure it will become the only option I’ve got. I made that mistake with the block editor, which I wanted to look at to see if I was interested (I wasn’t) — and instead, they installed it and made it impossible to get out of it — after which I spent a week trying to get the old one back.
They have set it up so you CAN get the old one back, but ONLY if you pay them much more money — which is to say, their business rate.
Nor do I have that kind of money to spend on a blog that’s supposed to be fun. Apparently, it is, as always, entirely about money.
Seriously, not merely how things are done is different, but the same headings don’t mean what they used to. Go to your dashboard and try to set up things like your “primary menu” and “comments.”
That they keep fixing things that aren’t broken, but after they change them are indeed broken. These changes make organizing your posts enormously more complicated. My frustration level is over the top.
I don’t have time or energy for this. I pay them money, they give me what they feel like giving me and change what they want without consulting me or anyone else. I’m still simmering about their changing the “fonts” to “Large, Normal, Small, and Unreadable” as opposed to using the same point system in use everywhere else on the web.
I want to be informed about changes WordPress is making and I want a choice about whether or not I use it.
Without getting all Leroy Jethro Gibbs here … is there any other way to make a decision when you have no hard facts with which to work? It sounds right, doesn’t it?
Except when Gibbs does it, the entire agency agrees. When I do it, no one ever agrees.
If you’re a mother and you know your kid is “off,” you take him or her to the doctor. You don’t wait until the strep throat or whatever it shows up with full symptoms. The doctor promptly tells you he can’t see any problem. You go home. The kid is a mess the next day.
Let’s hear it for instinct!
You hear a noise in your car’s engine. A funny little squeaky noise which comes and goes. Do you wait for the serpentine belt to snap or take it to a mechanic? You take it in. They look. They shrug.A few days later, the transmission falls out. Instinct! Gotta love it.The meteorologists on the television are predicting a few inches of snow, but your bones are screaming “it’s a big one on the way.”
Do you ignore your instinct and believe the guy on TV? Or lay in some supplies, fill the car with gasoline, and bring the candles out … just in case. I mean, what the hell. A few extra items in the house won’t hurt, right?If I have data to work with (better yet, if I had Data to work with), I’ll work with it or him. But through most of real life, we have no facts. We have instinct, experience, “gut feelings.” Plus, we have a sort of prescience that comes with years of making judgment calls, dealing with emergencies … a kind of “know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em” sort of thing.
Unfortunately, the doctors, mechanics, bosses, friends, colleagues et al? They don’t share that with uw. They merely think we are a bit strange. Remarkably, no matter how many times we are proved right? They still won’t believe us.
The next time you just know what’s going to happen? Everyone will completely ignore you. Totally.
So, when you get that deep, gut feeling, the one which tells you a catastrophe is on the way? Run around. Tell everyone. They will ignore you. BUT later — you can enjoy the rare opportunity to tell everyone: “SEE? I TOLD YOU SO!” and they will say, “Yeah, yeah. Right. Uh huh.”Most major decisions in my life have been gut decisions and they usually turned out better than the “rational” ones based on whatever evidence I had. Instinct on the hoof.
I think it’s how we contact the basic, hard-wired knowledge in our brains.
If only someone would occasionally agree with us.
The snow is gone.
We didn’t get a lot of it this year. It didn’t show up at all until March and it only lasted a week and a bit, but it rained and stormed almost continuously from February through this month. So our water table is doing fine.
Now that the Gypsy moth caterpillars have been spotted locally, we really need the rain — so of course, we have lovely, dry spring weather. The rain brings forth a little caterpillar killer bug that drops those caterpillars dead from the trees. But we need rain and a lot of it.
It’s as if the weather is rebelling. Whatever it is we want, we can’t have it. It’s not a lack of weather. It’s a lot of weather — at all the wrong times.
It’s funny to think about snow now. All I have on my mind are the hospital tests and getting finished with them. I think I’m about to (in late May and June) finally complete … and how doth the garden grow.
And how many squirrels are hanging on the bird feeder. Perhaps, as Stuart Templeton said yesterday, “Isn’t it great to see some birds on your squirrel feeders?”
Unsurprisingly, the feeders were filled last night and were nearly empty this morning. I was going to let the feeder run empty and try to convince the squirrels to do their own hunting, but if the caterpillars take over, there won’t BE any food to eat. Those nasty bugs strip the woods and everything goes hungry.
The Gypsy moths are an evil omen in an evil year. Last time, I survived by getting everything sprayed, but I don’t have the money this year — and I don’t even know what (if any) company is set up to to the work. No one was expecting them to come back so soon. They usually lay low for decades before making a return appearance.
If it gets ugly (and Garry is horribly allergic to these nasty critters), I’m going to hide inside and refuse to leave. Since our squirrels are always starving, can they be convinced to eat these guy? Except almost none of the birds will eat the big hairy caterpillars, but many will eat the egg masses they leave behind. We do have most of those birds here. On our deck.
Bring on the birdseed!
And, for what it’s worth, squirrels eat them too, even the caterpillars. So I guess we’re going to keep those feeders full!
Some native birds, such as cuckoos, downy woodpeckers, gray catbirds, and common grackles, will eat gypsy moth caterpillars but, unfortunately, not in large enough quantities to have an effect during an outbreak. White-footed mice, and occasionally gray squirrels, prey on gypsy moth larvae and pupae.
These little-known buggers can lay waste to entire forests and crops as they munch their way through the leaves and plants. Up until last year, the Gypsy Moth Caterpillar was not considered a big deal. Granted, they are still a problem when they infest your farm, but they had taken a backseat to other common pests. That is until some states (the northeast and especially Massachusetts) saw the worst Gypsy Moth infestation in more than 30 years.
NOTE: In 2016 and 2017 — here in the Blackstone Valley — virtually every hardwood and fruit-bearing tree were defoliated by the caterpillars), farmers started paying attention.
Some birds typically eat Gypsy Moths. Birds such as the Bluejay, catbird, blackbird (cowbirds ARE blackbirds), crows (we have them, though they don’t favor our woods) and such find these insects delicious.
Encourage these birds to visit your property to feed on these moths by not chasing them away when they come.
I am not (mostly) disingenuous. I certainly lack false modesty. Okay, that’s not true either. I’m really terrible at taking compliments, especially when I am not sure I deserve them — but I really improve if I think I’ve earned it.
So, while I am not 100% honest, who is? If you count the fake excuses we make for places we don’t want to go — and little white lies about the dent in the hood of the car — we are all a little bit politely dishonest. We don’t lie about important stuff, though. The fact that I blog probably eliminates “disingenuous” from my resume.
I figure I’m honest enough, especially these days when I’m not even sure what honest is supposed to mean. Are we all equally confused or is it just me?
Today, it’s off to the hospital to get tested for something that has been lingering with me since I was in my early thirties and for which I have been tested — repeatedly — both here and in Israel. Lots of guesses, all of them wrong. So now they are checking to see if I perhaps have had minor strokes without knowing it.
Tests and followup appointments for the next two weeks will keep me ridiculously busy. I don’t know how this can be, but I swear my life seems three times busier than it felt last year.
I used to have plenty of time to blog, write stories, take pictures and all that and still have time to read other people’s posts and comment. Now I swear by the time I am halfway through my first cup of coffee, I’m already late for something.
Today I am having a Carotid Duplex Scan, which is some kind of intriguing CATscan of my throat and arteries to determine if I have had one or more minor strokes with no after effects. After which, there will be an appointment with the specialist to sort through the half dozen tests I’ve already done. And the bills. Sigh.
This will not even close to the first test for this problem, here or in Israel. They have more advanced testing now than the last time (about 18 years ago) I was tested. It will be interesting to see if they find out something. So far, this has been a lot of running around without anything to show for it. I didn’t want to do this because each time, the result is “idiopathic” — which is to say, medically clueless.
It could be anything or nothing.
This “small seizure” thing has been popping up intermittently for 40 years. It’s scary (especially to those who are around when it occurs), but it never seems to do any harm. Five minutes later, I’m fine and it feels like nothing happened. It may not occur again for years.
As we get older, though, it becomes more of an issue to determine what is happening. So we endure all the tests. So far, we know what isn’t wrong.
I’m betting I’m going through this entire testing and doctoring thing — and will know nothing more when I’m done than when I started.
Also under exploration is my spine. That’s of more concern. I’m hoping — seven years after being told there was nothing anyone could do — that maybe medicine has advanced and there’s something.
Not a cure it because it isn’t curable, but at least something that might make it feel better. Even a little better.
I’m off to the hospital. This time, I get to go to the big shiny building on the campus! Are we having fun yet?
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