SOL31: Sleep Monitors

            The Fitbit I bought a couple of years ago is supposed to keep track of my sleep, as well as my steps. However, it has never worked properly. And it’s not just this one Fitbit. The first one I had was lost, and the second and third ones just stopped worked after several months. Not one of them has recorded the sleep that I know I’ve had or haven’t had. In other words, when I have actually been awake for an hour or more in the middle of the night, Fitbit thinks I was asleep, while it often shows gaps of one or two or more hours when I am pretty sure I was asleep.

            Here’s how off it can be. Last night I got into bed around 11:40, read for a while, and turned off the light just after midnight. Woke briefly just before 1 a.m., again at 3 a.m., and woke up for good at 8:45. Fitbit thinks I lay down at 11:24 p.m., shows a period of wakefulness for a while, then thinks I was up and about between 1:10 and 3:09 a.m. I feel like the device is gaslighting me.

            My doctor last week recommended another app, for my phone, called Sleep Cycle, and it looks much more accurate, showing me asleep between 1 and 3 a.m., including at least one period of deep sleep just before waking at 3, and then going back to sleep.

            Do you use any of these apps for monitoring steps and/or sleep? What’s your experience with them?

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SOL30: Life Begins on Opening Day...

            ...which was last Thursday this year, or was it a week ago Wednesday, when Seattle beat Oakland in two official games—in Japan.

            The baseball season used to start on Monday, the first day of the week. Then ESPN came along, with its Sunday Night Baseball, and two teams would start their season the night before traditional Opening Day. And this day would be in April, unless it was in late March, when it was more likely to snow.

            (Doing a bit of Google research, I learn that Opening Day was in Japan, on a Wednesday, seven years ago. In 2014 Opening Day was in Australia, but I don’t think we were paying too much attention that day as Jack was still in rehab at the nursing home. And in 1968, Opening Day was on a Wednesday because Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated the week before, and all sporting events were, along with others, postponed until after the funeral, on April 9. In fact, April 10 was the first time all Major League Teams started their season on the same day.)

            I like to score games when I watch, but I couldn’t watch the Mets’ Opening Day on Thursday because I had work to do. Today, however, I sat in front of the TV for the whole game, keeping score by a system devised by Bill James that is too complicated to describe here, but allows for keeping track of balls and strikes and makes it much easier to see who gets the RBIs. Here’s what it looks like. And hurrah, the Mets won, although they made it look harder than it should have. 

 

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SOL29: Polenta Problems

            I love corn on the cob. I love cornbread. And I like polenta when I eat it in restaurants. However, my attempts to make it at home have been been very successful.

        First, there’s that stirring, stirring, stirring, as the cornmeal thickens in broth, much like risotto. So when I saw a recipe that said that long stirring process could be skipped, I thought it was time to try again.

            The idea was to bring broth to a boil, add the cornmeal slowly, and stir until it begins to thicken. Then pour into a greased baking pan, cover with foil, and bake for 40 minutes.

            I wasn’t sure I’d gotten all the lumps out in the stirring process, but popped the pan into the oven. Forty minutes later, when I removed the pan, it had sort of separated, with a thicker layer on the bottom, but a still liquid layer on top. Clearly, this wasn’t working out as expected. At least I need a better method for adding the cornmeal to the liquid.

            Fortunately, I had some leftover rice that I could use as a base for the vegetable topping I’d made (leek, onion, asparagus). About half an hour after eating, I saw that the polenta had solidified somewhat, but didn’t have much flavor. Alas, I sent it into the trash.

            Have you made polenta? Do you have any tricks?  

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SOL27: Postcards to the Government

            After Trump was elected, postcard parties were held around the country for people to send postcards either to the president or members of his Cabinet expressing their opinions about various actions or inactions being taken. I kept this up for the rest of 2017 and into 2018, but had slacked off a bit. But seeing the news today that Mick Mulvaney, head of the Office of Budget and Management and acting chief of staff, is the force behind the administration’s move to ask the courts to declare the whole Affordable Care Act unconstitutional galvanized me. Here’s my postcard to him today:

Dear Mr. Mulvaney,

What exactly do you have against people with pre-existing conditions getting health insurance? Why are you so eager to take away health insurance from people who’ve gotten it through Obamacare, when they could not afford it before? Do you seriously think that suddenly insurance companies will stop denying insurance to people who have had cancer in the past, or some other disease the company doesn’t want to cover? You are heartless.

      No doubt he’ll never see this message, but underlings in the mailroom will, and possibly it will get to someone in Mulvaney’s office. It might make a few people stop and think about what is going on.

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SOL26: No More Cash?

            As my cold lingers on, I feel less energy to cook my own food. Tonight I went out to a Dig Inn, a Northeast healthy chain of “fast food” restaurants whose food is supposed to come from local farms. There’s a cafeteria-style setup, where you choose a grain (brown rice or farro), two vegetable sides (hot or cold, including cauliflower, sweet potatoes, kale, mac ’n’ cheese), and a protein (grilled salmon or tofu, roast chicken, meatballs).

            After I got my bowl of farro, salmon, beets, and slivered collards with quinoa, dried cranberries, and slightly spicy dressing, my next stop was the cashier, who said I owed $14.11. I got out my wallet and wondered if I had enough change for the 11 cents, when the cashier said, “We don’t take cash.”

            Oh, this is one of the new businesses that is giving up on cash? Okay, I got out my credit card and handed it over. But I also wanted to know, “Why?”

            The cashier seemed to not understand my question, because she just repeated, “We don’t take cash.”

            “Why not?” I asked again. Maybe she couldn’t hear me because my voice is getting a bit hoarse.

            There was a pause as she swept my card through the card reader. Then she said, “We were getting too many counterfeit bills.”

            Did she make that up? Is that what her training told her to say if anyone was gauche enough to ask? I have not heard about any rash of counterfeit bills being passed in local restaurants. I’d have believed her if she’d said it was a security measure, to avoid robberies.

            What do you think about this turn to cashless business?

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SOL25: Doctor’s Visit

            I had a regular checkup scheduled for this afternoon, so this was my chance to discuss my cold, which lingers. My new doctor (after my old one retired two years ago) also teaches, so she had a resident take my history and answer my questions. The resident was young and nice, helpfully trying to deal with my problems. After he listened

to my chest and back and said my lungs sounded clear, I said I thought I could feel stuff rattling around. He then pulled up a diagram of the lungs on the computer screen (which has all of my information), to show me that what he meant by clear lungs referred to the branching bronchi and bronchioles, and that what I felt was most likely mucus in the trachea, which his stethescope wouldn’t pick up. Mucus in the bronchi and bronchioles could indicate pneumonia, so it’s good he didn’t hear that.

            Before the nurse drew blood, she asked if I was afraid of needles. “No,” I said, which is true, but it’s also true that I usually don’t watch when the blood starts flowing. Today, I did, and noticed how dark red it was.

            “Is that a good color red,” I asked, “or does it all look the same?”

            “No, blood has many different shades of red,” she said. “But I never thought about it,” she added.

            “Neither did I,” I said. “That’s the first time I noticed.”

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SOL24: Poetry Workshop

            This afternoon I went to a Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, a workshop led by Peggy Robles-Alvarado. Over a little more than two hours, we read eight poems and had five- and ten-minute writing exercises after each one. After “From the Book Titled Nejma” by Nayyirah Waheed, we had the prompt, “who does your body make a home for?”; here’s my draft for that one:

My body

makes

a home for

the lost ones.

My body halts

the oncoming winds.

It cries out

for

soft kisses.

It brings home

the birds at sunset

My body lies

on the ground of

sand, shifting

with

the water edging

along the shore.

My body craves

tea leaves,

orange blossoms to

feed

your insecurities,

to heal

my insecurities.

My body lifts up

to the universe,

stars speckling

the dark sky.

My body makes

a home for memories

it can’t escape,

for memories it

feeds on,

for memories that

nourish and

memories that starve,

memories that have

no end,

memories that ride on

dirt tracks to

nowhere,

memories that can’t

be completed,

that stop at the

edge

of a canyon rim.

My body wants a home

that no longer exists.

My body builds a new

home from

nails, wine books,

words, words, words,

letters, numbers. 

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SOL23: Nothing Today...

            I have a bad cold, have had it since Monday. Cough, sore throat, the usual, no fever though. Thank you for small favors. It’s my first cold all winter, and it comes when it is officially spring, if still in the low 40s.

            I went to see Jordan Peele’s new movie, Us, which is a straight-up horror film. That did distract me for a while. But this is it for now. I’m going to bed soon.

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SOL21: On Hold, Again...

            Yesterday I posted an experience of stubborn perseverance (redundancy?). Today I engaged in some stubbornness, then gave up.  

         I got my cable/Internet bill today, with a welcome one-time rebate of about 40 percent and an offer of 3 free months of HBO or 6 free months of Showtime. It seems my cable/Internet provider has made a settlement with New York State because it didn’t provide the Internet speeds or coverage it had promised the state it would. I guess this is the company’s punishment, although I’d also like to have that Internet speed as well.

            The offer included a telephone number “to redeem your offer.” So I called. Of course, the phone was answered by a recording, and you’d think it would have been easy to program that recording to let me choose my HBO or Showtime channel. But no such luck. It took me a while to figure out what “problem” I had to tell the recording so it would connect me to the correct “representative.” I was on hold for maybe four or five minutes, but within a minute of a human being answering, my smartphone dropped the call.

            That just made me want to dial that number again. This time, I got past the recording more quickly, but that just put me into telephone hold musicland faster. And I was there for 30 minutes. Thirty minutes! I hung up because it was getting late and I had to eat dinner.

            Will I try again? Probably. Once I decide whether to go with HBO or Showtime. What’s your choice?

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SOL20: Perseverance aka Stubbornness

            Some people call it knocking your head against a stone wall. Keeping after something over and over even if you don’t get it. Some people call it stubbornness. But take the same behavior and (eventually) get results, and suddenly it becomes perseverance.

            After my husband died, I decided I didn’t need two telephones, a landline as well as a cellphone. And my flip phone was feeling more and more burdensome. I wanted a smartphone, with its connection to the Internet and e-mail and easy-to-type texts. But I didn’t want to change my phone number.

            I knew that it was possible to transfer a landline number to a smartphone, a friend had done it. So my daughter added me to her account, which enabled her to get a new smartphone, which she graciously let me have, and I called both my new phone company and my old phone company to request the number to be transferred. At first each one said to call the other one to start, but eventually they both said transfer was made.

            But it wasn’t. First, calls to the old number from my flip phone rang only on the old phone. Then calls to the old number rang nowhere; the old phone was shut off, but the new phone wasn’t receiving calls. The text function seemed to be working, although it was weeks before I learned that what I thought were texts (which run the phone service) were actually IMs (iPhones can text directly to other iPhones, but no other phones).

            Two months went by as I called the tech departments at both the old company and the new company every week, sometimes many times a day. I basically had only my old flip phone, which was a prepaid phone (on yet a third phone service), and I was using up a lot of my minutes calling “toll-free” numbers at my landline and smartphone companies. Somewhere in here I was able to make calls from my smartphone, but could not receive calls. And then I couldn’t make calls from the smartphone either.

            Eventually, I found a tech at the old company who saw that the problem involved multiple computer systems that were getting incompatible messages, and no human being had noticed, despite my constant calls to them that SOMETHING wasn’t working.

            In the middle of this process, a friend asked why I was putting myself through such agita—it was all I could talk about for weeks. “It’s just a phone number,” she said. But I was stubborn. We had had the same phone number for 46 years. Losing my husband and my phone number in the same year was just not acceptable. So I persevered.

            And finally, finally, finally, the transfer of number was complete. (There is a downside to having an old landline number. All those robocall companies have that number, and I get many scam calls. But it’s still the same number that Jack knew. In case he ever wants to call me from, wherever.)

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SOL19: Celebrity Sightings

               A friend recently posted on FB that she had seen Claire Danes in front of a barbecue place in her neighborhood. We live in New York City so celebrity sightings are not unusual. 

               Many years ago, when our daughter was eight, she and her father were waiting for a bus after she’d been to the dentist. She, as usual, was engrossed in a book. He, as usual, was people watching, noting how different East Siders are from West Siders. He saw the actress Barbara Hershey walk by, and said to Christie, “There’s Barbara Hershey.” Christie looked up briefly from her book, said, “Okay,” and went back to her book. The jaded New York kid, we thought.

            Several years later, Christie was an adult, on a street in Brooklyn. Coming toward her was Ice-T with his entourage. She registered who it was, but (still) continued on as though he was just any other person on the street. She was not going to blow her cool and act like a groupie.

            Once I saw David Letterman on the subway. Once I saw Stacy Keach on the subway. Julianne Moore was around the corner from where I live talking to some film crew. Karen Young, one of the FBI agents on “The Sopranos,” had a son at the private school next door. We see them, note it, and move on.

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SOL18: Where Do Memories Belong?

            For about a year after Jack’s memorial, this photo board was in the living room, across from where I sat, in his chair. I would see it every day, and it was almost (almost!) as if he was still here. It was also an occasion for people who came over to talk about him, if they wanted to. I always wanted to.

            After a year, I thought, maybe it was too much, to leave it where I would see it whenever I looked up from whatever I was doing, on the computer, reading a book, watching a baseball game (the photo board was right next to the television). So I moved it into the bedroom. That was also more appropriate, considering how much enjoyable time we spent in bed over the decades.

            In the bedroom, it stands in

front of a cabinet holding linens. So I have to move it once a week when I change towels and sheets. Yesterday, when I moved the board, I was pricked by irritation. This should not be the way Jack still exists in this world, pinned to a board in bits and pieces. It felt wrong that he is dead. Yet that is still a fact.

            I’ve just finished reading Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins, which is in many ways all about death, and life, and death in life and life in death. I am still struggling with the reality and immensity of all of that.  

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SOL17: Technology 101

            This morning I was in the “computer room,” organizing my paper files, when my printer clicked on two or three times. I couldn’t tell what was happening, but I had heard similar sounds before, so I didn't pay much attention.

          About an hour later I noticed that the router that extends the wifi in my apartment was flashing yellow. Uh-oh, that’s not good. I go back to the computer room where I see that the cable modem that connects to the Internet is off, the printer is off, and the computer is off.

            At first I thought the problem was with the modem. I looked all over it, but could not find a button to press off and on. So I called Time Warner/Spectrum and after listening to the recording through several steps, I finally hear that I can press 0 to get a human being.

            The tech human being explains that my particular modem model has no power button, but has me try a few things. It seems clear that the problem is likely to be with the surge protector. So I go out and buy a new one.

            But when I unplug the old surge protector, plug in the new one, and plug in all the cords (computer, modem, router, printer, and an analog clock), nothing works. Hmmm.

            So now I take the old surge protector, plug it into another outlet, plug in the clock, and it works! So back to the computer room, unplug the new surge protector, replace the old surge protector, replace all the power cords, and voila! The lights on the modem start flashing, and in a few minutes everything is back to normal.

            I should have unplugged and replugged the old surge protector in the first place, what my husband used to call “plug and unplug.” That’s the tech lesson for the day.

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