Sigh

It's been a long while. I've posted almost 12,000 times on this blog for over 20 years, but I haven't felt like writing for some time. That makes me sad. I've gotten caught up with life and I'd been relying mostly on my phone for Internet interaction, and it was just harder to do that, for one.  I have a laptop though now AND I just got a folding table big enough to write, read, do crafts, etc., on, rather than having a computer on a stool and being uncomfortable in my chair because I had to put a leg on either side.

I do post a lot on Facebook, and that's for people I'm friends with, and almost all of them are people I know personally, with the exception of a few librarians.  I guess I feel safer there in some ways than over-sharing to the great world beyond.  I know, that hasn't stopped me in the past. But I'm 55 now and a little wiser than when I started.

So let's see...I think I last wrote in February.  We got a puppy then and she was so tiny at 8 weeks that she could go between the slats of the picket fence.  Now she's nine months old, and she's nearly 50 lbs.  She finally has a big girl bark, is very tall and long and lanky, and generally is getting very big.  My roommate thinks she's part Lab (that part is obvious, as she has webbed toes and Labrador waterproofing) and part Doberman, much like the dog he had when I first met him over 30 years ago.  I'm leaning towards part Great Dane with her build, but he is probably right.  She's a joy, very enthusiastic, loving, and a good companion to the other dog, who is a Lab/Pit cross and now much smaller than her.

Healthwise I'm dealing with ageing.  I've lost 50 lbs. since early November and 28 of that was from late December on.  (I was put on a different diuretic in November and I swear 20 lbs. came off because I am a sponge.)  I'm on medicine now called Ozempic for my diabetes, but it helps with weight loss and I'm doing pretty well on it, despite early side effects.  I just went up to the maintenance dose.

I do need to lose weight because I have chondromalacia, which is a loss of cartilage in the joint.  My knees are to the point of being bone-on-bone and I need a bilateral knee replacement, but I need to lose another 40 or so pounds.  They'd like my BMI to be under 40, but 45 is a hard stop and I'm 48 now.  So I need to work harder because I'm in a lot of pain and it's very difficult to walk very far.  I do have an ADA placard for out in the community.  I had one at the university but they only gave me a temporary one as they couldn't read my GP's handwriting. I had him redo it and resubmitted it, but they denied my request.  I have a couple of weeks to submit records, which I've requested, and perhaps I can get one on appeal.  You can't just park in a spot on campus without their specific hangtag, you see...my state-issued placard doesn't do a thing.  And they're pretty tough.  One of my former co-workers used a prosthetic leg and they made him send over records, and he finally got it. I've had it all summer, though, and it's been a godsend.  Without it I'm going to have to walk probably a quarter of a mile from my car to the bus stop and back, and that is very difficult and painful.

I'm also most likely going to have my gall bladder out soon. I go to a surgery consult the first week of September.  They'd found gallstones on an MRI of my liver but I was asymptomatic until I had fried fish and was in extreme distress for a week.  I'm a little leery of this. Even with the weight loss, I weigh about 280 lbs., so lots of visceral fat and higher mortality chances with any abdominal surgery.  Hopefully, it will be laparoscopic, as I don't want to miss much work.

Next week will mark the five-year anniversary since I moved in with my roommate.  All in all it's gone very well, surprisingly well, actually. Neither of us were particularly sure about the move and living together.

At work, headquarters took over my surgery and outpatient visit authorisations, leaving me without a position, but my boss (who's only been here a few months) really went to bat for me, and they did a lateral move into a position I've had before that is technically a few rungs down, but because of the way they did it, I didn't lose my pay, although I'm on the high end of the scale for this one.  I'm back in checkout.  One day before I moved I had a panic attack, because when I did it before, I was alone for the better part of a year, did the phone and e-mails, and generally had trouble keeping up.  Now there are two people at checkout (although my work buddy, who is very bubbly, is moving to registration, so they're trying to hire someone for the checkout position that's open), and one person who's job is to schedule phone and e-mail requests, letting me focus on the patients and families for the most part.  So it's actually been nice.  Not as much pressure and I get to interact with families and see the improvements in patients' lives. I do, being an introvert, get drained by too much interaction, but I also find it satisfying in this case.  So everything's going much better than it could have.

I've been working every day on a series of exercises to help keep my mind sharp.  There's Wordle and Latin Wordle, plus I'm studying languages on Duolingo.  I'm trying to brush up on my rusty Spanish, German, and Latin, plus I'm taking Irish and Welsh.  I was going to try to learn Modern Hebrew (I've studied Biblical Hebrew), but that wasn't going well, as the characters were very small, and it just wasn't clicking. I'm going to take my Biblical Hebrew and do some work on that instead and then go back to the modern after I get a grip on the ancient language.  But I'm getting through the ones I've studied before pretty quickly and understand more than I thought.  My grammar is actually still pretty good, it's just the vocabulary that I'm having to pick up again.  German is extremely easy, even though I haven't had it since 1985.  Latin is my most-studied language (5 semesters, including Mediaeval as well as the normal Classical, plus a little Humanist), so it's going well, although there are a lot of angry parrots in this one. (To be fair, Hebrew had a dove that liked warm wine--you can see why I was having trouble).  I've already used a little Spanish to check a person out at work without having to use the video interpreter, and I asked one of the in-person interpreters what the word for 'stickers' is and put it on my bulletin board because the kids love those.

Okay, I guess I'll sign off for now. I'm on vacation. No plans, not going anywhere, but I took the week off between now and Labor Day.  I'm hoping to get some rest and work on some new hobbies and actually do some reading.

And for some reason my neighbours are setting off fireworks for no discernable reason.

Interesting

I still think learning a language with a native or at least trained teacher is best, but Duolingo is useful, and it's making strides with languages such as Irish, which have relatively few native speakers, providing those without access otherwise a chance to learn.

Irish President meets with Duolingo and course contributors

Okay, I'd expect it from the Americans, but really you would think the Brits would know better than

to include an Irish singer in their list of British sensations....

AN ENGLISH WEBSITE INCLUDED HOZIER AS A BRITISH ARTIST IN THEIR ‘BRITS BLITZ’ LIST

Hozier has become one of the most famous faces in music after his debut album went stratospheric, so he should be pretty well known at this stage.

The writer of the piece below even acknowledges that Hozier is, in fact, Irish, but she still claims that her publication are "happy to take him to our British bosom".

Um...no. He's Irish, from Wicklow, not from Northern Ireland, not from Britain, not British. What, if I were a famous musician, would she claim me because I happen to have genetic roots in Britain, even though I'm American? Doubtful. What about an Indian singer, since they 'used to be part of the British Empire'. I'm sure that would go over really well, too.

Tired

Today I was off work at both jobs. I only had three hours' sleep last night because I had to be somewhere by 6:45. People really shouldn't have to get up before the sun. But everything that needed to be accomplished was and I am now home for a little while and ready to sleep at least 2-3 hours.

I didn't see anything on the news that really struck me to blog about. One thing you might want to check out is YouTube's 2007 Video Awards voting, which they'll be announcing the 19th. I voted for 'The Guild' under Series, 'Doll Face' under Short Film, and the Mike Huckabee/Chuck Norris video under 'Politics'. There was also a piano-playing cat under Adorable and the University of Florida tasering at a Kerry speech under Eyewitness (okay, the tornado was cool in one of the other voters, but those storm chasers are crazy). I didn't really vote for any of the others. But you can vote once a day. Anyway, check it out.

Oh, and happy St Patrick's Day. Okay, so I'm pagan (you know, the things he supposedly drove out of Ireland, although they called them snakes), but I'm also got a lot of Irish in my background, and the holiday as we celebrate it in America isn't really religious. Of course, I forgot this morning and only by happenstance did I wear a top with pink roses and green leaves, so I had a bit of green on me. I ususally wear one that has purple and orange flowers on white with green leaves, because it has the colours of Northern Ireland (orange), the Republic of Ireland (green), and white, the colour of peace.

Okay, I know, I can be a loon sometimes. But I've been aware of the Troubles in Ireland since a Scottish teacher in Junior High pointed out to us that she wore orange instead of green to support the Protestants. Thankfully, a lot of the violence seems to have died down for now, and both factions, Protestant and Catholic, can hopefully co-exist.

I took a test in the newspaper to see how 'Irish' you are. It had a lot of cultural and historical questions. Out of fourteen the only one I missed was 'What was the boat that carried Patrick from Ireland to Britain carrying as cargo?' I said cattle (cattle being very important in Celtic cultures, but on second thought, a bit big for those boats) and the answer was wolfhounds. But everything else I got right, including that Patrick was a Briton who was enslaved by the Irish, and not Irish at all.

Here's some traditional Irish music, with lots of fiddles by way of celebration:


Now I'm going to sleep.

I received an e-mail from someone I know

who plays Celtic music and ran an Irish class I was in for awhile--and the e-mail is completely in Irish. So now I'll have to dig out my Irish grammar and see if I can piece together what the hell he's trying to say.

Evil. Do you know how hard that is with mutations?

Years ago a friend of mine

stepped down on my foot accidentally. Yes, the one that is broken now. It's possible it fractured then; I never went to see about it because I didn't have any insurance at the time. We think that the bones were weak and then between my weight and standing at the cash register, they broke again.

So it's kind of funny that when I've been thinking of him (and not in the kindest of ways), Bill sent me the Irish version of a song I've only heard in English, but love: 'I am Stretched on Your Grave'. He's apparently doing well and his wife and he are moving to Massachusetts soon as part of an effort to eventually head to Maine or Nova Scotia. I wish them well. In the meantime, here are the words, primarily for my benefit, although I'll have to go back and review how the devil they're pronounced and what them mean. He posted them on a blog entry for his blog, Ríocht na nGael. (It's all gibberish if you don't read Irish, by the way, although I found an excellent translator online at Irish Dictionary Online). Irish has so many mutations it's hard to program online dictionaries that can recognise the various changes. But I'm glad I found it because the only thing I really recognised in his post were the words 'agus' ('and') and Eilís (my name). I am beyond rusty. I'll follow the Irish with an English version of the song.

Cé Sin ar mo Thuama?

Ise
Cé sin ar mo thuama
nó an buachaill den tír tú?

Eisean
Dá mbeadh barr do dhá lámh agam
ní scarfainn leat choíche.

Ise
A áilleáin agus a ansacht,
ní ham duitse luí liom–
tá boladh fuar na cré orm
dath na gréine is na gaoithe.

Eisean
Tá an clog ar mo chroí istigh,
atá líonta le gra duit,
lionndubh taobh thíos duit,
chomh ciardhubh le hairne.

Ise
Má bhaineann aon ní duit
is go gcloífeadh an bás tú,
beadsa im shí gaoithe
romhat thíos ar na bánta.

Eisean
Nuair is dóigh le mo mhuintir
go mbímse ar mo leaba,
ar do thuama a bhím sínte
ó oíche go maidin,
ag cur síos mo chrutain
is ag crua-ghol go daingean,
trí mo chailín ciúin stuama
do luadh liom ‘na leanbh.

Ise
An cuimhin leat an oíche úd
a bhíos-sa agus tusa
ag bun na chrainn droighnigh
is an oíche ag cur cuisne?
Céad moladh le hÍosa
nach ndearnamar na milleadh
is go bhfuil mo choróin mhaighdeanais
na crann soilse os mo choinne

Eisean
Tá na sagairt is na bráithe
gach lá liom i bhfearg
de chionn a bheith i ngrá leat,
a Mháire, is tú marbh.
Dheanfainn foscadh ar an ngaoith duit
is díon duit ón bhfearrthainn,
agus cumha géar mo chroí-se
tú a bheith thíos is an talamh.

Tabhair do mhallacht dod mháithrín
is áirighse t’athair,
is a maireann ded ghaolta
go léireach ‘na seasamh,
nár lig dom tú a phósadh
is tú beo agam id bheatha
is ná hiarrainn mar spré leat
ach mo léintín a ghealadh.

'I am Stretched on Your Grave' (as I learnt it)

I am stretched on your grave
And will lie there forever
If your hands were in mine
I'd be sure they'd not sever
My apple tree, my brightness
It's time we were together
For I smell of the earth
And am worn by the weather

When my family think
That I'm safe in my bed
From night until morning
I am stretched at your head
Calling out to the air
With tears hot and wild
As I grieve for the girl
That I loved as a child

Do you remember the night we were lost
In the shade of the blackthorn
And the chill of the frost
And thanks be to Jesus
We did all that was right
And your maidenhead still
Is your pillar of light

Oh, the priests and the friars
Approach me in dread
Because I love still love you
My life and you're dead
I still would be your shelter
Through rain and through storm
And with you in your cold grave
I cannot sleep warm

So I am stretched on your grave
And will lie there forever
If your hands were in mine
I'd be sure they'd notsever
My apple tree, my brightness
It's time we were together
For I smell of the earth
And am worn by the weather

Here's a version different from what I've posted before, Paul Knight of "Four for Naught" performing at the Into the Bean coffee shop in Mesa, Arizona on 8/15/2007, playing a bodhrán (Irish drum).



Today's radioplay: 'The Murder at the Casbah'