Month: June 2024

Part luxury and part necessity

What’s the one luxury you can’t live without?

As a person dealing with hemiplegia, the permanent partial paralysis of the left side of my body, I don’t have many pure luxury items. I have some jewelry that I rarely wear and a couple of luxurious handbags that I have yet to use. But the one thing that I would miss terribly is my lift chair. You see, it’s difficult for me to stand up from a regular recliner, and a sofa isn’t comfortable at all . My lift chair helps me stand, and it’s got a nice, wide,cushiony seat that I can sleep on. It reclines to a fully flat position, which also allows me to sleep on it comfortably most nights. I spend the vast majority of my time in my lift chair. It has heat and vibration options built in, and I would really miss both those options. As the heat helps my sore muscles and the vibration helps with blood flow.

Here’s a couple of pictures from the day it was delivered.

Never do this to anyone using an electric wheelchair

A couple of weeks ago, my mom and I enjoyed a matinee performance of swan lake from the wheelchair section of the theater, which is the back row, by the doors. As is our usual practice, we started to leave just as the audience began applauding. I was using my portable electric wheelchair and was already into the aisle when the usher opened the doors of the still darkened theater. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a woman was in front of me, and unfortunately, I bumped into her with my wheelchair . She said sorry twice, and I said, ” You should be.”

This isn’t about me being in the wrong. It’s about the fact that you should NEVER think that you can just quickly get in front of a power wheelchair user. Every power wheelchair is different, and the user may not be able to stop as quickly as you may think.  Luckily for the woman I bumped into, I have good reflexes. But I don’t have great eyesight,which should be obvious by my glasses.

This woman was lucky that I was in my portable chair that weighs 60 pounds and not a chair weighing over 200 pounds, or I could have done some real damage instead of some mild bruising.

Before this incident happened, I used to joke with my husband to speed up when I would follow him in my wheelchair ,that he’d end up in my lap if he wasn’t careful. But that’s not the worst thing that can happen if you stop suddenly in front of me, or if you just want to quickly get in front of me. And I’m okay with it. Because people need to learn to NEVER DO IT.

New teef, who dis?

No more black fillings!

Finally got my new lower denture today ! It’s more comfortable than expected just two weeks after extraction and one day after removing a lot of sutures.  I am about to eat my first meal with my new teeth.  Tonight, I decided to take it easy and am having beef bourguignon, with large chunks of beef and a cucumber salad .

Update after eating.

The choice of a slow cooked meal was just in case I needed to eat it without my dentures. And it was the right choice because it’s still a little too painful to chew. I’m going to give my gums until next week before I try it again, but I will be wearing the denture for several hours every day in order to get more used to it . Needless to say, the salad went uneaten..

My face is still swollen and a bit tender, but it should be back to normal in about a week or so… I hope .

I like the irony of my name

If you had to change your name, what would your new name be?

My mother will be very pleased to read that I like the name she chose for me. I don’t like what the name means because I don’t buy into the nonsense that surrounds it. But I do really love the irony of having a name that means daughter of christ as an atheist.

On to the answer to the question above. My new name would be Samantha because it’s pretty and because I loved the TV show Bewitched. I even taught myself to wiggle my nose when I was a kid and still bought into magical thinking. And yes, I can still wiggle my nose.

Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stevens.

Just two more days to wait

I’ve been eating a soft food diet for over a month, which has been very boring with the exception of a terrific mulligatawny soup

Yummy

that we just discovered today. 😋.  Tomorrow, I have an appointment with my oral surgeon, and finally, after two weeks, I will have the sutures removed from my lower gums . The next day I will be able to eat solid food again after an appointment with my denturist in order to fit my brand new lower denture and reline my upper denture that has been causing bad rub spots on my upper gums.  I haven’t been able to go outside for 2 weeks because I haven’t been wearing any teeth. And even though nobody would care, I’m a vain woman who would be humiliated to have people see me like this.

Anyway, I can’t decide what I’m craving the most, but every commercial for a restaurant I see ,even restaurants I don’t like, make my mouth water uncontrollably, and my stomach grumble .  It’s been far too long. I think that I deserve a treat.  Right now, I’m feeling like pizza.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm pizza

But in two days, it might be a burger,

I’m drooling 🤤

I only know that it won’t be scrambled eggs, soup, or mashed potatoes. Man, I miss bread and raw vegetables .

Mid- life?

Do you really think you’ll live to 104?

I recently watched an interview with an actress who, at 52 years old, said she was in the early stages of mid-life . While more people are living past 90,and even past 100 these days, it’s not the norm. In North America, the female life span is just over 80 years old, and for men, it’s less. I find it incredible that people delude themselves into thinking that 50 is middle-aged . There are still people for whom 50 is their entire time alive,and many aren’t that lucky.  Medical science has come a long way in the past 50 years, but it’s still a long way from solving the issue of death.  Perhaps we shouldn’t be assuming that we’ll be young forever and accept the obvious.  No one gets out alive . It’s perhaps the only way in which life is fair . Accepting your stage of life can only make life easier and less stressful. Accepting that you will die eventually is good for your mental health. And getting better at math is just good sense.

North America has elected its first female leader, Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo

The new president elect to Mexico, 61 year old,  Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo

It’s taken far too long for North America to elect a woman leader. But Mexico has done it,  bravo!

You’re going to be hearing that Canada’s Kim Campbell was Prime Minister decades ago in 1993, so technically, she was first. The only thing about that is that she was never elected to the role and was only PM for 132 days.

As I’m Canadian and don’t really know much about Mexico’s new president or her party, I will be speaking about Ms. Campbell here and thus staying in my lane. I will be giving you the basic run down of how she became the Prime Minister only.  If you’d like to know more on the topic, I suggest you read the Wikipedia article about her.

In February 1993, facing an election and with his popularity in the toilet, Brian Mulroney decided to retire from politics, stepping down as his party’s (the Progressive Conservatives) leader, but not before he chose his successor and that person ended up being Kim Campbell . She was PM from June 1993 to November of the same year before being trounced in the scheduled election by the liberals led by Jean Cretien .

So Canada can not lay claim to electing the first woman leader in North America . And as she only remained PM for a scant 132 days, the third shortest stint as PM in Canada’s history, she certainly didn’t effect change in the country. In my opinion, she was more a placeholder than a Prime Minister

Avril Phaedra Douglas “Kim ” Campbell

Donald Trump was right ( about one thing)

This man is guilty of 34 counts of election interference

When Donald Trump was speaking outside the courtroom of his recent trial, he kept saying the words election interference. He was trying to say that President Biden was interfering in the 2024 election by putting him on trial . President Biden had nothing to do with the trial, which was incorrectly called by the media, the hush money trial . First of all, it wasn’t a federal trial, but a state trial in which Trump was accused of election interference of the 2016 election, that he won,by paying 130000 dollars to adult film actress and producer Stormy Daniels in order to stop her from telling her story about a sexual encounter with Trump to anyone who might publish it, because he didn’t want it to hurt his chances of winning said election .

That payment amounts to election interference, and he got away with it until a jury of 12 of his New York peers recently found him guilty of it and 33 other things he did that were illegal, in order to win his only term as president of the United States.

So, yes, Donald, it was indeed election interference, but by you and 8 years ago.  For his part, President Biden remained relatively silent on the matter, as he had literally nothing to do with the case.