Annoying things & small pleasures

 Annoying things:  

• It's Blue Monday today. I've written about Blue Monday (and its origins) in the past, and while it's basically a made-up event, it seems more appropriate than ever this year, due to an unfortunate convergence of Martin Luther King Day in the U.S. with that "other" most un-MLK-like event in the U.S.  'Nuff said. 
• Also, it's a chilly grey day here, with late morning temperatures of  -12C, windchill factor -16C. It could be worse: at the same time, where my parents are in Manitoba, it was -31C and -43C windchill. (And they moved today's events in Washington DC indoors because the forecast was -5C??)
• (Maybe more like like "alarming"?)  Politics, current events, etc. I am something of a news junkie, but I've had to turn the channel a lot lately, because I can literally feel my blood pressure rising. I said to dh, "I think I understand a little more about how Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland must have felt back in the 1930s."  :(  
• Two related annoying things:  (1) Mark Zuckerberg removing fact-checking from Meta platforms -- (not) coincidentally just as You-Know-Who was preparing to take office in the U.S. --which (2) has prompted a bunch of my friends to start exploring alternatives to FB & IG on other platforms (and some outright leaving altogether). (WhatsApp, which some have suggested as an alternative, is also owned by Meta, albeit it has the advantage of being encrypted.)  
• I'm not at the point of leaving Meta (yet -- too many friends & relatives on there, too many FB groups I'm active in, including a family group that I co-moderate) -- but maybe it's a good thing I haven't had a lot of time to spend on its sites lately anyway??  
• Trying to find another forum, especially for the groups I belong to, and one that everyone can agree on, is maddening. (How many new apps is this aging late Boomer/early GenXer supposed to install and learn how to use??)  A lot of people are moving over to BlueSky because of the even more maddening things happening on X/Twitter -- but for all its merits, BlueSky is not really an alternative to FB/IG, and certainly not conducive to private group chats. 
• Speaking of BlueSky -- as I was in this post -- I had a flood of new followers over the Christmas holidays -- again, most of them people I do not know or follow, and most of them men. I went in this week and started blocking them, and now I feel much better!  lol  
• My left eye has been twitching lately -- on & off, for well over a month now (maybe almost two). I was complaining about it to dh recently while we were watching the news, and he joked that I have to stop stressing out about the Orange One, because he's going to be around for another four years. I said, "Come to think of it, this DID start around mid-November...!"  Hmmm.... 
• Dh went out to get groceries this morning and brought me back some soup for lunch. And of course my sweater sleeve caught the spoon as I was reaching over to silence a spam call on his  phone (while he was in the kitchen) -- and almost the whole thing wound up on the placemat, tabletop and floor.  (And I was hungry!!)  SIGH... I wound up having toast with peanut butter instead.
• I've noticed that the most recent box or two of teabags I've bought (Tetley) is now being made from flimsier (presumably cheaper) cardboard. And the teabags themselves are now being made from a different material. I haven't been quite as satisfied with my tea lately, and I'm wondering it that's why? (It's quite possible they've changed the composition of the actual tea itself too, I suppose.)  Shrinkflation, grrrrr..... 
• I did some Googling and found this on Tetley Canada's website: "Notice some of our Orange Pekoe packs looking a bit different? Don't panic! We're still serving up the same great tasting tea you know and love... As part of our dedication to sustainability, we've upgraded our Orange Pekoe packaging. Our sleeker and more compact carton design means less packaging waste and all Orange Pekoe teas now utilize plant-based tea bags!"  Hmmm.... 
• Little Great-Nephew #2 is one month old and we STILL haven't seen him!!  :(  We left for Manitoba right after he was born and were away for two weeks. BIL told us because we'd both been sick and because we'd been flying, we were in "quarantine" for two weeks. (!) (Even though we'd both worn masks at the airport & on the plane.) Not BIL's idea, the parents' (!). They were not at all like that when LGN #1 was born -- but of course that was pre-pandemic. (Hoping this weekend may be the time...!) 
• Back home for two weeks now, and still feeling tired and overwhelmed by all the stuff that we let slide while we were sick/away.  :p   
  
• SO DRY in our condo unit (despite running the humidifier constantly -- albeit not at top speed -- too noisy!). I can probably count the number of times the humidity has cracked the 40% mark since we got home on the fingers of one hand (with some to spare). It was below 30% when we returned, and is often below 30% when we wake up in the morning. Constantly applying hand lotion, lip balm and eye drops. 

Scary thing: 

• Repeat bloodwork to check our cholesterol levels, booked at the nearby lab for the end of the month. If the numbers haven't declined since the last bloodwork was done in late September, we're getting meds prescribed -- and neither of us wants another prescription...! 

Small pleasures: 

• Spotting a box in my parents' crawlspace with my name written on it in a corner I don't often enter, while hunting for gift wrapping supplies -- which turned out to contain some books and other items I'd been hunting for for several years now. I was THRILLED -- I'd feared they'd been sent to the thrift store by mistake. I couldn't bring everything home with me this time around, but I did pack: 
• My four university residence yearbooks (including one with photos of dh in it!). 
• Not just the two or three I remembered, but FIVE paperback novels by D.E. Stevenson that I'd bought at a used bookstore on Portage Avenue in Winnipeg in the early 1980s. (Proof that I'm a longtime fan!  lol) I posted about it on my DES fan group, and the other members were almost as thrilled as I was! (The titles were The Baker's Daughter (my favourite), The House on the Cliff, Shoulder the Sky, The Blue Sapphire and Green Money.) 
• Another paperback novel that I'd read as a teenager and LOVED: "The Distant Summer" by Sarah Patterson (daughter of British novelist Jack Higgins), who was just a teenager when she wrote it (published in 1976). It's what would be called a "young adult" novel these days -- set in World War II England, and beautifully written. It appears to be the only novel she ever wrote. (What a pity.) 
• Not in the box, but I also found and brought home my copy of "Nancy Drew and the Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes" by Carolyn Keene. I bought it with the allowance money I'd saved, while on an Anglican Church Junior Auxiliary bus trip to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, when I was 7 or 8 (late 1960s). Cost: $1.59 at KMart.  It's the one Nancy Drew book I wanted to save. :) 
• My (TV) broadcast news demo reel from journalism school. (I graduated -- gulp -- 40 years ago.) I don't recall what they called the format -- it looks a little like a VHS tape, but it's not VHS, or a format you could play on your VHS at home (assuming you still have one, and it still works!).  I doubt there's a newsroom in the country (in North America? in the world??) that uses that technology anymore. But I brought it home with me. I figure SOMEONE might be able to digitize it for me. I'm sure it would be both a cringe and a hoot to see what's on it!  
• Also in the box: other books, as well as a few old photo albums (one mostly empty, and one exclusively devoted to photos from concerts my friends & I had attended. Faded 50-year-old snapshots of the Bay City Rollers, anyone?? lol). 
• My sister pointed out a couple of other boxes in another dark corner of the crawlspace that had my name on them. They were too hard to access just then, and it was towards the end of our visit -- but I will definitely drag them out and go through them the next time I'm there.  (Still hunting for the box that contained my diaries, journals, holiday postcard collection, teenage fan fiction and other early writings/embarrassing stuff, lol.)   
• Returned to the dentist on Jan. 8th for my twice-postponed checkup and cleaning (not really a pleasure, lol). The dentist said one of my lower left teeth still seems a TINY bit loose, but it's better than it was when I took that tumble in December, and the others he noticed seem to have firmed up. He'll continue to keep an eye on things. The hygienist was not my usual one (she's away on vacation), but told me everything looked good and to keep doing what I was doing. 
• My knees -- which were KILLING me from going up and down stairs in my parents' SPLIT LEVEL house! -- are starting to recover...! 
• Finding some cute new clothes for the great-niblings at the mall. :)  
• Cashing in on my birthday discounts and other offers from various retailers. 
• Annoying thing:  realizing I had a discount from the mega-bookstore, AFTER I spent my Christmas gift card from dh there! Grrrr....
• Small pleasure:  I guess I'll just have to go back and buy some more books, right??  Why let a good discount go to waste? lol

#MicroblogMondays: Blue Monday

It's "Blue Monday," that day in January (the third Monday) deemed (by marketers, if not scientists, lol) the most depressing in the year. I've written about Blue Monday several times in the past -- in fact, I did a search for past posts and thought, "I've written about this enough, I should create a hashtag/label for it." Then I realized I already did! (lol -- check out my other Blue Monday posts there). 

I was reminded that it was Blue Monday when I spotted an article in The Toronto Star this weekend: "6 science-backed ways to brighten your Blue Monday" (No gift links available, sorry -- so I hope that works!) In summary (in case the link doesn't work for you), the advice is:  

• Enlist the power of awe: The feeling of being part of something much larger than you are has tangible physical benefits. (Even just reading a good book can do the trick.) 
• Get moving: The link between exercise and well-being is firmly established.
• Do something fun with people you like:  Social connection is important. 
• Use warm light to improve sleep. 
• Take a dose of (very) dark chocolate:  Cocoa can boost your mood. 
• Put down the pinot:  Cutting out booze can lift the spirits. (Dry January, anyone?)  

How are you feeling today?  

(It's pretty cold here -- albeit not quite as cold as it is in western Canada and the U.S. Midwest! It was -13C/-18C windchill this morning, which works out to 8F & 0F, respectively.  But the sun is shining, and I even see a bit of blue sky peeking through the clouds, which makes a HUGE difference for me!)  

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here. 

Odds & ends

• I've been feeling a bit "blah" this week -- and then I heard an ad on the radio proclaiming that this past Monday was "Blue Monday." (Previous posts about Blue Monday & some background on the subject here.) I guess that explains it (or at least some of it...!).  
• The forecast for this upcoming weekend includes yet MORE snow -- for the third weekend in a row. I hope it's not too bad tomorrow -- we have tickets for a lecture and major exhibit opening at the local art gallery where we have a membership, and I've really been looking forward to it. 
• Dh, at the supermarket, picking up a package of diapers for Great-Nephew that we saw on sale at a good price:  "I like buying diapers. It makes me feel... NORMAL.  Like any other dad or grandpa." (This made me smile -- and broke my heart at the same time.)   
• Katy at Chasing Creation has been hosting monthly webinars on a variety of childless-not-by-choice topics. The most recent, "Embracing a Life Without Kids," is aimed at people who are trying to decide if childless living is for them, and features Tia Gendusa of Infertile AF, Jobi Tyson of Tutum Global, and Melissa Jones of Live Childfree. Even if (like me) you've been living childless/free for quite a while, it's worth watching!
• I've sometimes joked about embracing my inner quitter when I walked away from further infertility treatments. (See my posts tagged as "the Q word.")  So I was interested to see the New York Times recently published a feature called "I Quit," featuring 21 stories about people who walked away -- from their job, their band, the presidential race, sex and more. Lots of interesting reading (I'm still working my way through all the articles!). 

#MicroblogMondays: Blue Monday

I've been feeling just a little bit "blah" the last few days. Christmas is long over... my birthday is over.

We were housebound for most of the weekend:  there was a snowstorm on Saturday... and although the skies were much clearer & sunnier for most of Sunday, temperatures remained bitterly cold (like, -17C & -29C windchill at the peak of the afternoon sun... that's 2F & -20F for those of you in the States!).  It didn't help that one of my high school friends was posting photos on social media of margaritas on a sunny beach in Mexico...!

Before the weekend, on Friday night, we attended a funeral visitation for a 70-year-old woman (a relative of a relative) who died in a tragic car accident earlier in the week (caused by some young idiot driving at twice the posted speed limit -- at 7 a.m.!!)(truly, the drivers hereabouts are THE WORST  :p  ).

Because of the weather, anytime we do get out of the house these days, it's generally to someplace indoors -- quite often, the bookstore, the supermarket or the mall (although we did take a trip last week to the well-known local art gallery where I have a membership to view an exhibit that was wrapping up).  At the malls, the clearance racks are getting pretty picked over, but there's not a lot of cool new stuff arriving yet to fill the stores. I've been finding it difficult to get into a new book.

And then I realized: today is Blue Monday. (And of course, February, my least-favourite month, is just around the corner...!)  Well, I guess that explains it (at least partly...!)...

(Previous Blue Monday posts here.)

Is it a Blue Monday for you?  What's your favourite mid-winter pick me up? 

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

#MicroblogMondays: Blue Monday

Today is supposedly "Blue Monday," the most depressing day of the year, as first determined in 2005 by a professor in Wales who looked at factors that included the weather, debts, time since Christmas and motivation.(Apparently, the idea was also popularized by a travel company as a marketing ploy to sell sunspot vacations.)(!) 

I was reminded that today might be "Blue Monday" by a story in my Facebook "On This Day" feed, and did some Googling, which confirmed that yes, it is indeed today. Not only that, several British newspapers were of the opinion that this year's Blue Monday could be even gloomier than usual, because of all the upheaval caused by Brexit and the election (and upcoming inauguration) of Donald Trump in the U.S., along with the large number of celebrity deaths over the past year -- including, most recently, George Michael & Carrie Fisher -- that reminded aging baby boomers and Gen-Xers like me of our mortality.

While the papers might have a point in that respect, personally, I'm not feeling it today. True, it's a bit of a grey day (with freezing rain in the forecast for tomorrow -- UGH), but it's a relatively mild 3C outside, and we even had the balcony door open a crack for a little while to air the condo out. We ran our usual Monday errands -- a visit to the bank ABM/ATM, lunch & then grocery shopping at our favourite supermarket, a stop at the drugstore to pick up a few things and then a browse at the bookstore, with Starbucks coffee/tea lattes in hand -- and dh is making his favourite beans & rice for dinner tonight. We had dinner last night at BIL's, with both nephews there and entertainment provided by Older Nephew's adorable puppy. Last week was my birthday, and they all came over for cake & coffee -- puppy included. It's been a very long time since I had anyone besides dh around to celebrate with me on my actual birthday, which helped make up for the fact that I was turning another year older.

I find my own low point usually comes a few weeks from now, in February, when it seems like the winter is never going to end. Although I will admit I had a few "screw you, winter" days last week when both bad weather and a visit from Aunt Flo conspired to keep me at home for three claustrophic days in a row. 

How about you? Is today a Blue Monday for you?

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

#MicroblogMondays: Blue Monday?

Today is supposedly "Blue Monday," the most depressing day of the year. As this article explains, Blue Monday came into being in 2005, proclaimed in a press release by a British travel company (! -- no doubt looking to boost its sunspot vacation business), based on some dubious scientific calculations that included factors such as the weather, after-Christmas debt levels and failed New Year's resolutions.

I'll admit, the day after my birthday last week, I went into a bit of a funk. Up to that point, I was still basking in the after-Christmas glow -- but once the happy birthday calls & Facebook posts ended, it was hard to feel like there was much to look forward to for the next while. People have been asking why we don't go away somewhere (after all, we're retired!! we can!!) -- but we did some work on the house and bought a new car just before Christmas, and may have some more expenses coming up in the next few months (including Oldest Nephew's wedding this fall). My answer is that my sunspot vacation is sitting in my driveway. ;)  Plus the Canadian dollar has taken a nose dive in recent weeks, making any southbound travel a lot more expensive -- a friend recently posted about her trip to the bank to buy some U.S. dollars for her own sunspot vacation. All I can say is OUCH. :p 

As Mondays go, however, today hasn't really been all that bad. True, there's a local cold weather alert -- as I type, it's -9C outside (15F), with windchill values around -18C (-1F) -- although the sun is shining,  which helps a lot, in my book!  But I slept in this morning, spent some time at the mall this afternoon (found some cute Valentine-themed T-shirts to send to the Little Princesses), and just finished a nice cup of tea while sitting on the sofa listening to a podcast. Things could be a whole lot worse.

At any rate, I now cannot get the old Foreigner song out of my head -- with a slight change in wording, it becomes, "Blue Monday, blue day..." ;) 

Are you having a Blue Monday? What's your favourite pick-me-up to beat the winter blues at this time of year?

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.      

Blue (Mon)day?

When I woke up Monday, the DJs on the morning radio show I listen to were referring to it as "Blue Monday." According to a somewhat unscientific formula (concocted by a psychologist & used "to give academic weight to a press release put out by Sky Travel to encourage people to cheer themselves up with a holiday"), the third Monday of January is supposedly the most depressing day of the year -- taking into consideration factors that include the weather, the amount of time lapsed since the Christmas/New Year holidays, Christmas bills coming due and broken New Year's resolutions.

Actually, Monday was a pretty good day. My birthday last week helped carry the festive mood over for a little while longer. The Christmas bills have been paid off. And the weather hasn't really been that bad (knocking wood...!) -- grey & a tad chilly, but really not unbearably cold this week, & very little snow for the past while (knocking wood again).

As I've written before, generally, my seasonal blahs kick in around November, go into (semi) hibernation through Christmas & my birthday, & then resurface with a vengeance sometimes in February, when it seems like the winter is never going to end.

I must admit, though, that yesterday was perhaps a little bit tinged with blue:

• I was fretting over some loose ends from work, hangovers from while my boss was on vacation. No doubt this anxiety was exacerbated because...
• ...I got my period -- & it's been on the heavy side, leaving me feeling tired & drained. One of my online childless-not-by-choice friends, whose 50th birthday is coming up, remarked yesterday that the greatest gift would be "no more periods!" I responded, "I hear ya... I may eat my words later, but I'm actually looking forward to getting that transition over & done with. I'm not brave enough to have an ablation done -- but if AF went away for good tomorrow, I'd say goodbye & good riddance. If I'm not going to have children, what's the point? I never used to think this way, but the longer this drags on, the more I can't wait to be done with it."
• I came home from work to find a large envelope from dh's cousin in the mail. I knew right away that it was a baby shower invitation for her daughter, who announced her pregnancy (actually, it was her mom who spilled the beans) at a family gathering last summer. And of course, that's what it was. She is due in late March & the shower is in a couple of weeks. I've already checked out the online registry & am planning to get the shopping over with this weekend, if possible.
• (Sadly, we learned before Christmas that the hostess at that family gathering -- who inadvertently had her third pregnancy "outed" by her toddler son that same day! -- lost the baby. I enclosed a note in my Christmas card -- on notepaper in a separate sealed envelope -- saying how sorry we were & that we were always available to talk, if they felt like it. I didn't expect a response, & there hasn't been one. Nevertheless, I could be wrong, but I'm thinking that this shower may be difficult for her to attend, too.)

Today was a little better:

• My boss is back, so we finally have someone looking out for us & our work again.
• The work issues I was fretting over have (mostly) been resolved.
• I had to go for a mammogram this afternoon (at the same hospital where I had Katie). (That's not the "better" part.) I could have gone back to the office again for awhile -- but I didn't. I could have gone shopping, but with AF tagging along, I didn't really feel like it. So instead, I sat in a cafe for a half hour, reading the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, sipping a cafe au lait & snacking on a divine bread pudding with vanilla sauce, until it was time to meet dh for an early (much less crowded) train home. Ahhhhh!!