Eating fresh during the Quarantine/Pandemic

On a good day, I am able to offer the bearded dragons plenty of fresh vegetables and a bit of fruit. The female (now passed) ate her greens very well. My daughter raised her from when she was a tiny baby. But the male we obtained after he was almost a year old. He is quite persnickety when it comes to greens. Well, green he won't eat. He will eat blueberries. He was doing very well with squash, carrots and sweet red peppers but recently I am lucky if I can get him to eat a blueberry or two. When I do offer him the blueberries I put them in a tiny container of water so I can get some water into him.

It is difficult to keep fresh greens during the pandemic. I try not to go out very often, but if I want fresh greens then I have to stay vigilant.  But then he hasn't been eating. I wonder if he is in a sort of semi brumation stage. When the female brumated, she went inside her "hide" (a small cave kept dark and she felt safe in there) and slept for a month.

The male will crawl in his "hide" every once in a while, but mostly just plops himself into the corner of the tank and sleeps there. Barely moving for about 3 days. Then he comes out, eats a blueberry or two, eats a handful of dubia roaches and back to his corner. I try to get him into a bath on the days that he moves around. My daughter told me to add a bit of calcium into the bath water. A way to get calcium into him - absorbs it through the water. He also gets water this way. He won't drink it outright like the female did.

He is about six feet away from my computer desk and I look over at him often. He used to be VERY active when the female was alive. After she passed he lost his zing. She was kept in a separate tank and we blocked the glass so they could not see one another. I guess he could smell her. But he watches me and I glance at him. They can just stare for hours without moving. I guess I'm kind of used to him over there and since I am working from home I have had time to study his changes and the way he does things. 

They really are quite remarkable creatures. He loves it when I softly pet the top of his head with my finger. I know I've hit the right spot when his eyes close. Mostly I use a soft make-up brush. My daughter and I went through a phase a couple of years back when for some reason or another, we bought a bunch of make up brushes. Naturally, the ones I use for the dragon I do not use for me. A large one with the bristles fanned out is the cat's favorite toy. He loves that thing. I haven't seen it in a while, so he must have pushed it under something. I'll have to look for it.

I Want to Stay Home

I ventured north to work on a family member's computer Friday. I hesitated because all three people in the house are over 75. And my county just went to a higher level this week. Sigh.

 I am back home and staying home. I have no plans to leave for at least a week, I am hoping longer. I am going to try to do a job remotely. They want me to come to them on Friday the 30th. I have all this week to remote into their computers and get what I need to get done finished. I don't want to go there.

I don't want to go there even when there is no pandemic going on. They are what we call "End users who we need to hold their hand."   Which basically translates to they can't do or think for themselves (as far as technology goes). Whether they can't or won't is debatable, but they do not move forward unless I go there and do it for them or walk them through it.

Next book up:  "The Thursday Murder Club" by Richard Osman.

I may also start " Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis."

I want to stay home. I love to stay home. I don't need to socialize. Well, not much.

 

Drained

 Totally. Drained. I awoke with a migraine this morning. I went to bed with this little nagging headache. I had a migraine last week also. Rats. I was having them so rarely, I thought - yay.  When I got out of bed, I immediately took my sumatriptan and ibuprofen. 

Now, I am drained. Completely void of any mental or physical energy. I am able to work but not exuberantly. If I ever did work exuberantly. I'm pretty sure I have. But certainly not today.

I always described a migraine or a post-migraine as feeling like a wet, limp dish rag. My Mom always used the thinnest dish rags she could find so she could fit her hand inside of glasses. After finishing the dishes, I would squeeze the water out of the dish rag and there was barely anything to the poor, wet thing.

I wanted to tell you about the book "Sonya". It was difficult starting out, but it picked up and I liked it later on. And, the old British show "Upstairs Downstairs".  I am watching that - the 70's version. 

But right now all I want to do is sleep. I may take the rest of the afternoon off from work and just do that. Except I took a vacation day tomorrow. You know that looks fishy when you do that and then take off sick the day or afternoon before a vacation day. Like you are starting your vacation early. 

Not in this case. I really just want to sleep.

It could also be that I only had a half cup of coffee this morning instead of my usual 2 cups. That was all I could manage to drink.

Screw it. Screw what co-workers think. I'm going to bed.

Yowza

 I think I know where they came up with the idea for the scary Halloween characters we see in movies, in costumes and in our nightmares.

At first I thought that was her hair, but on a closer look, it is a hat/scarf or head covering of sorts and she had white/gray or blond hair.

I kind of like the head covering. I wonder if it was significant to a religion or her nationality. It reminds me of the scarves I would wear when all my hair fell out. I never did order a wig. I hate wigs. I can't even wear one on Halloween without sweating so much my hair is soaked. But the scarves and I got along just fine. Even if one made me look like a gypsy. Maybe I'll get brave enough and post a picture of me with no hair. Some people look good bald. I don't happen to be one of them.

Oh, and I think she is an ancestor of mine. A first cousin passed away and my brother ended up being the executor of his estate. He had been an only child and had his mother's huge chest of photographs and memorabilia. The above image is from this collection.  My brother painstakingly scanned all of the images (there were hundreds) and shared them with our other cousins. 

This guy had no will. No siblings. Parents long gone. Between both sides of his parents family he had eighty-some cousins. My brother got the job of tracking them all down and notifying them to see where they wanted their check sent, etc...  You read about this happening in books or in movies and you think "How does somebody not have a will?"  But it happens. 

Divvied up between eighty-some cousins it was nothing to crow about - but it would buy somebody a nice TV or new furniture set or even a laptop or computer.  The guy was a hermit. Through the years, my brother and sister (the older ones that played with him when they were small) tried reaching out to him several times as he lived only an hour away from where they live. He never answered the door, the phone or any letters.

Like I said, you hear about these people. I just never thought I would actually know one.

 

Little Blue Car

 Dug into my archives to do more posting of photos I have taken instead of finding ones on the Internet.    I believe the car is a 1963 Austin Wagon.  The date is June 2016.  I have no memory of where this was taken.  The Image properties option tells you a lot about the photo, but I thought I recall reading about a camera that would record the longitude and latitude of where the image was taken. That would be kind of nifty. Then 200 years from now, if by some chance an image survives - our future ancestors would know.

Take the Long Way Home

 After work Friday, I took the long way home.  The last few weeks have been a chaotic blur at work. I don't have to go often to a school physically, but I did on Friday.  Afterward, it was such a pretty afternoon, I slipped into the back (back) roads and headed home. Not for long. I didn't want to get lost.

Life in the year 1000

 The statue is a memorial to Byrhtnoth. He was the leader of the English (Anglo-Saxon) forces at the Battle of Maldon  in 991 AD.

Records declare he was six feet 9 inches tall.  Holy wow!

During this period in time, Vikings were coming from north to plunder the English country. It was customary for the English army to dismount and have their horses taken away from the battleground for safe keeping.

A cad stole By's trusty steed and rode away. Several men witnessed the horse galloping away and thought that it was the leader retreating, so they ran, too.

Poor By was not retreating and he perished at the Battle of Maldon. It does not specify where he was first buried but he was dug up and moved several times.  It was during one of these moves (1769) that the bones were measured and it was determined he was 6 feet 9 inches tall.

Fun fact (well not fun exactly) - the reason a sword has that long groove down the complete body of the weapon is to create an air pocket in the victim so it is easier to pull the sword back out. I wonder if this is what happens when you read where somebody twisted the knife after they stab them. Are they creating a pocket of air so they can pull the blade back out?

The book I was reading was "The Year 1000" by Robert Lacey. I had been looking for material to find out what kind of clothing/dress was available in that time frame. The book has so much more, though.

Next up:  "Agent Sonya" by Ben MacIntyre. I've been waiting to be able to check this one out. I am getting restless like the rest of the world is. Tired of the quarantine. Going places I probably should not be going. Sigh. It's just that I love the fall weather. All the area festivals have been canceled this year. I don't really go to them anymore, anyway. Too much walking for me. 

Once the cold weather really sets in, it will be easier to hibernate.