Tired of Medical Intrusion

I have to have an ultrasound tomorrow to see if my spleen is enlarged.  I never knew the spleen had anything to do with platelets but it does and, if it is enlarged, it could be the reason my platelets are low.  I hate having intrusive medical tests like this.  I feel absolutely fine but it was routine bloodwork that found my low platelets.  If my doctors would just leave my poor little 80 year old body alone and stop bothering me with bloodwork and ultrasounds I would be a lot happier.  My opinion is that looking at the innards of an 80 year old will most certainly show a few anomalies.  Those anomalies might just never bother me until my last day on earth but you can bet, once seen by a doctor, they'll want to do more tests.  I hate it!

A few years ago I had an ultrasound or catscan (can't remember which) and was diagnosed with a 3 1/2 cm cyst on my pancreas.  To me that meant imminent death so I cancelled my winter in Florida and had to wait until April for an MRI which showed NOTHING at all.  I was lucky but their mistake meant a miserable winter for me when I was feeling perfectly healthy.

Anyway, I really do think doctors should leave us old folk alone as long as we're feeling good and have no symptoms bothering us.       

Life Matters

There's a section of Facebook that shows only videos, some professional and some amateur.  I tend to ignore the T.V. news articles because most of them are political and I'm totally fed up with politics right now.  I watched an amateur video today that was very interesting.  There was a notation on the top that said the man who made the video committed suicide soon after posting it and that caught my attention.

It happened to be a black man who looked to be in his late 30's and he was speaking from his car.  He first said it was his last day at work because he'd been laid off but he spoke in a quiet and calm voice.  I assumed his main topic would be how losing his job had affected him but he only mentioned that he loved his job.  His topic of conversation was much deeper than that.

You could tell he was speaking from the heart and that it was important for him to have people hear him out.  He said that it was a mistake for us to stress that "black lives" or "police lives" matter.  It was so much more important to understand that it was life that matters.  Now, in my mind, I'm wondering why he would say that and then take his own life but I wanted to hear what he needed to say.

He spoke for a while on how important life was and how we were missing the point when we shrunk it down to black "lives" or police "lives", etc..  I didn't watch to the end of the video because I was afraid he'd break my heart.  Just watching what I did of an intelligent, thoughtful human being who, in the end, found the life he'd been given was too much for him to bear made me stop the video.  I understand suicide.  It defies logic but I know that unbearable pain, mental or physical, can drive us to it.  It rarely solves anything unless it's done as an early escape when natural death is imminent.  Someone once told me that suicide was cowardly because she knew of someone who had committed murder and then committed suicide.  I don't believe that person killed himself to escape punishment for his crime but to escape the gut wrenching mental pain when the reality of what he'd done finally hit him.

At my age, I spend a lot of time wondering why I'm still here when much better people have passed on.  I regret the many ways I wasted the life I've been given and, like most people, sort of wish I'd done a lot of things differently.  I wonder why we treasure newborns, childhood, and young adults but tend to think seniors have lived too long and are only taking up space.  We're all experiencing the miracle of life from beginning to end and each phase should be relished.

And so, when I watched that video and carefully watched the facial expressions of the man as he spoke, I saw his pain and I wished he hadn't been alone.  

  

Where Is The Vaccine?

 I gave Trudeau a lot of credit for how he's handled the pandemic in Canada but I was wrong.  We're a country of 40 million people and certainly not a third world country so why the heck do we not have a facility in this great, huge country to produce the damned vaccine?  We have been receiving some from Belgium but that has stopped because countries that do have facilities have decided to use their product to vaccinate their own citizens first.  I don't like it but I understand it.

Billions, maybe trillions, of dollars have been handed out to some of the richest companies in the country as a stimulus to help (?) them through the lockdowns so why didn't our leaders realize that only by producing our own vaccine could we hope to get the country working again?  Those companies won't survive without customers and their potential customers are sick and dying every single day without the vaccine.  Their customers are also falling so far in debt from loss of employment that they might never be able to pay it off.  Spending money on unnecessary consumer goods will take a long time to become the norm again.

I've read a bit about the "great reset" and, even though I don't believe the virus was planned, I do see how powerful people might be in a perfect position right now to become even richer and more powerful.  They have the resources to take advantage of a distressed market.  Unfortunately, this is going to be off the backs of hard working citizens who have lost their jobs and maybe their life savings.

Something I have a hard time understanding is how Ontario, under complete lockdown, can continue to operate financially.  So many people aren't working and paying taxes.  Most businesses are closed and not paying taxes.  Where is the money coming from to pay for the everyday running of a province of 15 million citizens?  Some say that people living in the next century will still be paying off the debt we're incurring but where is the money coming from today and who is providing it?  

Well, we might never know but we'd better hope we're not indebted to a country or countries that will take us over.

  

Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead

 Well, not really, but he has been impeached for the 2nd time in his 4 year term as president of the United States.  Most of the people in the world are not surprised but Trump still has his die hard followers that would believe in him if he committed murder right in front of him.  Some would even join in with him.  I don't like this aspect of human behaviour.

What finally did him in was when he and his family spoke in front of a huge crowd of his followers who believe the presidential was rigged and Trump should have won.  They riled up these weak minded individuals, telling them to march up to the Capital building and "kick ass".  Trump said he'd be right there with him but, of course, he just watched the mayhem on T.V.  And so his brain dead followers did march up to the Capital building in Washing D.C. and stormed the building, breaking in and looting and damaging property as they roared through the halls looking for Democrats and even Vice President Pence to rip into.  Everything is documented on film so Trump can lie all he wants but the video evidence tells the whole sad story.

I really though he'd get away with it, though, because these political parties stick together no matter what but even Republicans were shocked by how close they came to death at the hands of a president with no morals.  10 Republicans joined the Democrats by voting to impeach Trump and now their lives are threatened by his pathetic followers.  I don't know what has gotten into the average American who is willing to sell their soul to a monster like Trump.  

I likened him to the anti-Christ, a man with no morals and with the ability to lead even the super religious to accept him as their dictator.  Some called him a gift from God.  It's beyond understanding.

Trump may not be president after January 20th but the chaos he has created in the 4 years he was president will go down in the history books.  You can bet that Americans 100 years from now will look upon their ancestors as Neanderthals who refused to see the evil right in front of their eyes.  I hope the U.S. survives this assault on their democracy but Trump just might have set in motion a large group of crazies who have grown larger and more powerful because of his encouragement.  I don't think the U.S. will fully recover from Trump's reign.    

As Bad As 9/11

 

This is Donald Trump's legacy, how he lied and convinced his followers that the election had been stolen from him and that he didn't really lose.  This is how he manipulated his followers to storm the Capital building on Jan. 6th where the law was being followed in handing the election to Joe Biden who had won a legal election, elected by the citizens of the United States.  This is a culmination of every law he broke trying to have the election results, the will of the people, overturned so he could remain president or dictator of the United States.

This is treason and Trump should be dragged out of the White House and thrown in jail.  Every one of his followers who broke into the building should be arrested.  This won't happen but it should. 

The Americans who stuck by Trump over the last 4 years and turned a blind eye to his criminal behavior, his crude behavior, his lies, and especially his close connections with North Korea and Russia should have seen this coming.  Some called him a "gift from God" but most of us recognized an "anti-Christ".

I'm left feeling very remote and unattached to the United States after watching these events today.  This wasn't all Trump and the blame also sits on the shoulders of the people who have supported him.

Trump continues to lie and say he won the election so is he insane or just a pitiful human being who would rather convince his followers to destroy the Constitution than to admit he lost the election?  Regardless, The United States has lost face in the rest of the world for being gullible enough to have elected him as president in 2016.  I've tried to draw the distinction between how the Trump supporters I know are decent people but, in my eyes, blind to what Trump really is but I can't do that any more.  Everyone with half a brain could see that Trump will do anything, even destroy his own country, to get his way.  He's done a good job of that.   

Sick or Tired?

My sleep patterns are so screwed up that I rarely get a good night's sleep unless I take a Melatinin.  I do this every once in a while when I can feel my body becoming way too tired.  Apparently I waited a bit too long to use the Melatonin because yesterday, after a horrible night's sleep, I awoke at 8:15 feeling like I'd been run over by a truck.  I was so exhausted that I felt sick to my stomach. I immediately worried that I might really be sick and not just overtired.

I knew my day was ruined because I was so tired I couldn't even concentrate so I gave in, settled on the recliner with an afghan and slept most of the day and evening.  I figured all this daytime sleeping probably meant sleeping through the night, too, wasn't going to happen but at least I was starting to feel normal.  Strangely, I was tired enough to go to bed at 9 P.M. so I took a Melatonin just to help me sleep, watched a little T.V. and konked out at 10 P.M.  I slept well and was wide awake at 3:15 A.M. but I wasn't exhausted any more so I got up and started my day.  I know it means I'll need a nap or two this afternoon but I'll take another Melatonin tonight and try to reset my sleep clock for a while.

I know there are a lot of people of people with sleep problems just like mine and many of them don't have the option of taking a nap in the afternoon.  My heart goes out to them.  

I Have Stuff

 For years I yard saled, went to auctions, and learned about the value of a lot of things or at least how to research about them.  I thoroughly enjoyed finding little treasures that I, in turn, sold on Ebay or at my flea market table.  It was mostly fun because I didn't need the money to survive but was more of a hobby.  My skills with choosing sort of valuable items grew over the years.

I finally gave up both Ebay and the flea market and did donate lots of stuff to the venders at the flea market but I kept a few things I had fallen in love with, mostly jewelry that I didn't wear but wasn't ready to give away.  I started selling a few things on Marketplace last summer and I guess the selling bug got me again because I've gone on to sell quite a few items, mostly clearing out things I'll never need again.

Being stuck at home most of time now and really enjoying doing research on the computer, I dragged out a few items I'd stashed away and almost forgotten about and decided to sell them on Marketplace.  What has surprised me is that a lot of these things are fairly valuable but I'd never done research on them before, just put aside until I felt like doing something with them.

I found a gorgeous vintage Coro necklace that is worth far more than the $100 I listed it for on Marketplace and I also found a gorgeous vintage copper necklace and earrings that I'll list for the same amount.  This is so much fun for me.  If they don't sell, I'll save them and list them later on.

One of my problems is that I only have cheap magnifying glasses and can't see the markings on anything if they're small enough so I ordered a better magnifying glass from Amazon.  I have lots of fun researching the items I want to sell and having to buy a new magnifying glass is a sensible addition to my hobby.

I'm thinking my yard sale days are not completely over but I'll have to wait until the summer and a Covid vaccine before I can start doing that again.  It will be fun!