Still sick, but getting better

I haven't blogged in awhile, partly because I've been pretty much working, coming home, eating dinner, and then going to sleep. I missed two days of work due to my cold, one righ after my last post and one this week. I finally went to the Little Clinic at Kroger Saturday (a friend I work with made me promise). The cold is mostly gone but I'm coughing and having asthma issues. I have bronchitis, and was prescribed albuterol through my nebuliser every 6 hours, with the hopes of doing better with that. She said if I didn't feel better in a couple of weeks I should follow up with my primary care provider and have an x-ray of my lungs to make sure I don't have pneumonia, but that my lungs sounded fine, it was just hard to breathe deeply without coughing. And I'm not coughing anything up; it's a dry cough. My associated sinus infection is doing much better (I've gone from green gunk to mostly clear), but she said she could give me Augmenten if needed. It's got amoxicillin in it, and that concerned me, as I am allergic to penicillin and clindamycin, so I decided to hold off since it seems better. Mainly my nose goes a lot despite Claritin. Here's hoping everything improves. I hate spring colds, as they're always worse for me.

It was a slow day

We'd cancelled the game for other reasons, but it's good that we did. The weather's messed with my fibromyalgia, so everything from neck muscles down to the soles of my feet hurt, and I have what I think is a light cold I seem to have caught from a friend, so I've slept so much today and could sleep all night, too, I'm sure. I did about half of my chores, the ones that were most important, and went and got something from Captain D's (and actually got fried fish; we'll find out if my gall bladder will react badly--it's been almost a year since I was brave enough to eat it, but I was craving it). We watched an episode of 'Sister Boniface's Mysteries (an excellent show, a spinoff of 'Father Brown' but with a character that was not in the GK Chesterton stories.) I've listened to the new album by Ed Sheeran, - (Subtract), which came from came from Amazon yesterday. Because of the cold, I couldn't sing along with the car radio. I did test for Covid, but it's negative. My sore throat started Friday night, and it would be just my luck to finally catch it on the day the WHO said it was no longer a pandemic emergency. But no, it seems to be just a normal cold. That's about it. But some days it's good to have a slow day. And our coming week has high clinic numbers, so it's good to get some rest now.

This hits home

My mom constantly dieted. She was on Atkins back in the 70s at one point and was so skinny she looked anorexic. I remember desserts of sugar-free jello powder whipped into sugar-free Cool Whip. She was worried about my weight and put me on Tab and Fresca (sugar-free sodas) at age 8. I grew up with an unhealthy relationship with food. I can still remember stealing leftovers and hiding my eating, and I thought I was the fattest thing ever. I binged on apples and bread as a teen. I really just needed a growth spurt here and there and looking at old pictures, it's obvious that while bigger than some, I was not really fat, and I was pretty active. I biked across the desert for two miles, for example, just to go swimming in the base pool. I walked or biked everywhere, after all. But I grew up fatphobic and still struggle with that, even though I am fat now, and I have to catch myself judging others and especially myself. We never really came to terms with our shared experience with food, though, and with her death, never will.

My mother judged my body as a girl. Years later, we finally understand each other

A good memoir regarding generational dieting and negative weight stereotypes and the harm it does, check out The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl by Shauna Reid.

Someone hire this man

Video shows man rush to stop runaway stroller with baby right before it rolls into busy street

This does not serve teen patrons or their families, and is largely a waste of time

Why an Indiana library is pulling books from its shelves

I guess the bright thing here is that books deemed against board policy are not being removed from the whole library collection, but merely being relocated to the adult section, where they can still be checked out by teens.  But, the sheer amount of money and staff time involved ($114,000-$300,000 in terms of financial costs, a year and over 8,000 estimated staff hours in terms of time) will detract from the acquisition of new materials and presenting library programmes, and that's a shame.  All because of the current cultural war on libraries.  I was a medical librarian, not a public librarian.  But this is all very disheartening and against the training of most librarians.  I do wonder if fewer of us want to work in libraries, especially in red states.  While censorship comes from both the right and the left, this sort of thing seems to be the latter.  Teens are learning about life and will deal with all sorts of decisions regarding sex, relationships, menstruation, drinking/drug use, reckless behaviours and the like. Why can't we have books to start a discussion on those topics so they can think and be prepared for what happens in real life rather than keeping them in the dark till they're 18 and then letting them loose in the world?

I'm glad he took a stand, and won

 

Ed Sheeran’s court victory reveals the paradox of putting creativity on trial | Alexis Petridis

Beyond merely being an interesting copyright case, the lawsuit alleging infringement by Ed Sheeran's 'Thinking Out Loud' of Marvin Gaye's 'Let's Get It On' threatened artistic creativity and sought to tarnish the singer-songwriter's professional reputation. This was a big case, and Sheeran's taking a stand (and winning) was good for musicians everywhere. Outright theft is one thing. And I'm no expert--I can't even read music, although as a librarian I know a bit about copyright and licensing. Still, even I can figure out you've got eight notes to our music scale and about 338 commonly used guitar chords [possible ones are much greater, but most popular songs use a limited amount of chords, or so a quick Internet search tells me. Like I said, I'm not versed in music.] My point is, when songs are in the same key, there can be some overlap. You know what I do know about music? I listen to it, and a lot of it. I hear similarities all the time, usually fleeting. That doesn't mean the other song was ripped off in any way. This opinion piece outlines the effects of music copyright cases--and their arbitrary nature--has potentially on music creativity. Give it a look.

Lastly, it's true, I've always liked Ed Sheeran.  His latest album will be delivered to my door today. I like his (admittedly public) self-effacing personality.  I love his music.  I have not heard one of his songs I didn't like, and that's something I can say about only a few musical artists, and those could fit on one hand.  I've read that this suit was primarily brought not by the family of the co-writer, but by those who purchased the music catalogue. For them, it is all about money, not creativity. I hope we never get to the point where Money trumps Music.  There are already too many people who sell out, put out music that just sounds the same, use auto-tune to make it sound pleasing, and then stick the singer's name on the writing credits like they really did something for it.  It's interesting that a singer who obviously writes so much of his (and other people's) music, who incorporates different genres into his own catalogue, and who essentially produces 'real' popular music, is the one who got sued (twice now that I know of), given all that other same-sounding music out there.  The author of the Guardian piece is right, it's all very haphazard.

PS I've also read that Sheeran missed his grandmother's funeral in Ireland for this trial.  That's really a shame.