Back to Grade School

I saw, in a post comment, a question as to whether one should say “I feel bad.” Or “I feel badly”. The answer is, alas, either, depending on context.

Verbs, you were taught, can be either ‘transitive’, needing an object (a transaction) to follow or ‘intransitive’, needing an adjective or adverb to enlarge on the idea.

So, you can feel the towel to see if it is still wet or you can feel happy. So far, are you with me? Reluctantly, but still reading?

Adjectives become adverbs, in  many cases, by having ‘ly’ added.  It is a quiet room, not a quietly room. Right? You by the door, do not slam it behind you. The first use is as a descriptor for ‘room’; the second answers the question ‘how?’. As an example, You by the door, leave quietly. (Answers 'how') Your exit should be a quiet one. (Describes 'one') Or even "Your exit will be quiet if you do not slam the door." (Describes 'exit')

So, you can have a bad dream, but not a badly dream. You need to turn the sentence around and dream badly. In the first instance, the dream is defined. In the second, what you are doing, the question ‘how’, is answered.

How are you feeling? I feel sick, overwhelmed, wet, bad. ‘Intransitive’ use. Descriptor for ‘feeling’. What is not shown here is that "I feel" is actually a shortened form [grammatically noted as 'understood'] of "I am feeling..."

How do you feel? Badly. I have gloves on and that makes it hard to identify small objects. Transitive; you are running your gloved hand over something understood to be there.- you are doing something; a transaction.

Got it? Class dismissed. 

Clean Thoughts

 Old age has some fine moments. One of these moments is now, as I am ensconced in my fine office chair (a gift for my birthday several years ago), writing this post in glorious leisure while my neighbour scrubs out my bathroom for me. I can’t manage this kind of work any more and so I have hired her – young, muscular and hard-working – and my bathroom is looking good. It will also smell good and be organized when she is done.

Our first job was to empty out the storage closet. An embarrassing number of things were stale dated (some by years) and got binned. There is also a collection to take to our local recycling centre. And the things to keep are being returned to unstained, clean shelves. It is a salutary operation to sort out the keepers from the junk. In my case, a little voice in my head keeps saying “WHY did you ever keep THAT???”. Not sure how you shut up that kind of little voice.

As you can see from the paragraphs above, the downsizing is going on. It gives me the cold chills, however, to think about doing my office.

This afternoon the hockey teams are in play for a place in the finals. I am not sure I have the strength to watch; one more incident like the one that took out Crosby and I may have to stop watching entirely. These days Olympic level play is about the only thing left where the game is a game. Other than hockey and skating, ignoring the scoring in the latter, I don’t really care for the winter games. There is too much that is not fun to watch – long track speed skating, for instance – or too nerve-wracking – short track speed skating, for sure. Ah well, I am sure Canada’s teams will be out there trying today.

Grammarly wanted me to put commas after each of the opening clauses in the paragraph above and I am ignoring it. I think too many commas spoils the cadence. This, while I sit with my mother’s favourite grammar text beside me, looking at all her underlining and comments, while I try to get the {censored} Oxford comma rule stuck into my head. Again. The book, just in passing, is Douglas Brown’s A Handbook of Composition, 1953 edition, and is pretty beat up. But it will last me out. My other go-to is Dreyer’s English. I am on my second copy.

If my mother could read this, she and Grammarly would have a field day. The Microsoft Word grammar check, on the other hand, is quite happy to pass the whole thing.

Anniversary Time

 It is February 14^th. In two days we will have a wedding anniversary. I have put up posts similar to this one in other years as mid February rolls around. But as I think about it, each year is now a victory. Twenty-five is so long ago as to have vanished from my memory. Fifty I clearly recall, as JG’s brother came to help us celebrate and complimented my driving on the way back from the city where most of us (I don’t drink alcohol much) had hoisted many toasts, leaving me (and I knew better than to drink on that occasion) as the designated driver. At sixty we were deeply embedded in Covid restrictions and the vaccine was not yet out, so our celebration was quite muted. But Monday, February 16^th, is our sixty-third wedding anniversary. And we are going to have a fine celebration.

The daughters are shopping and planning presently. They will arrive with food and other delights, cook, serve, clean and depart, having given the old folks a fine, fine dinner. Sixty-three years ago now JG and I were getting ready to go to a formal Valentine’s Day dance run by a group called ‘Levana’, I was never sure why, the society of women undergrads at my university. Women, you see, were not part of Arts and Science, but held a place apart. Very fifties, a time we had just barely left behind on the calendar and not, obviously, at our university.

We were both undergrads when we married. It was an unusual step to take then, but if we wanted to share an accommodation, it was necessary. ‘Shacking up’ was just Not Done. You can find the details of this decision here. 

We have celebrated in many ways over the years, mostly quietly. A dear friend threw a fifty-first party to celebrate her marriage. Her husband had refused to countenance a fiftieth as he was sure it was bad luck. She rented a hall and invited the whole community, it seemed like, for a fine fifty-first time. My YD always said that she had no desire to be married, but that she would like a party. I have this in mind, D, darling.

As I was hauling clothing out of the closet to fold and donate, one thing that came out was a silk brocade jacket. This jacket was a garment that I loved and saved and wore for dress occasions for years. It was half of my mother-of-the-bride outfit (with a matching pencil skirt that I only wore once). My ED did get married – and unmarried some years later – and since she was out of the country working for a graduate degree, mother on the home front planned and put together the ceremony and subsequent celebration. My much-loved and clever sister-in-law helped me plan, having had three daughters’ worth of experience.

I got distracted looking for a photo of this jacket, and it is now the hiatus day between Valentine and Wedding Anniversary. We are celebrating this with steak; tomorrow the daughters are arriving with food and taking over. We have a galley kitchen with a small table at one end allowing the two chairs we need when eating alone. I plan to relax in one of these chairs and watch the show. The daughters’ mad ice dance in the kitchen is a treat to watch although there are no overhead lifts.

And yet another bra was just delivered. From famine to a feast.

Downsizing

 Reporting in. What have (read this word with emphasis) I been doing lately? Well, shopping, for one thing. I decided that my underwear situation was so dire that Something Had To Be Done. And, so. I ventured into a local shop that sells madly overpriced (to my estimate) underwear and got fitted for brassieres. I bought two, one of which has so much lace and twinkly bits on it that if I am hit by a car and end up in hospital, I hope I am not wearing it. However, it fits and is comfortable. I have used the sizing on it to order more bras online at a more reasonable price. This was not totally successful, as two of the lot I ordered turned out to have thick, foam-padded cups.

This extra shaping is not useful, in my opinion. Padding would have been useful when I was in my teens and stuffing Kleenex tissues into the cups of my bras. When you are completely without breast tissue and the ideal female body belongs to Marilyn Monroe, padding is a wistful thought. The thick padding would also have been a boon when we were building the house and I was carrying large, heavy pieces of wood around, balanced on my chest. But not these days. The dern things were hot as well as a nuisance and I think I looked weird in them. 

So, the padded ones have been packed into boxes and bags along with a lot of formal clothes that I will never fit into again or have occasion to need – things I bought to wear to weddings or parties. And anything more than two sizes down from what fits was also culled. There are a lot of empty hangars in my closet.

When we part with ‘good stuff’, we like it to go to a local organization that runs the Food Pantry Store. Donations go to it, the store offers it for resale at good prices and uses the money earned to fund the local food bank. As well as the clothes, I made one swoop through the shelves in the ‘back room’ in the basement where stuff congregates. 'Stuff' got sorted and boxed and I have some space on the shelves now. Much more needs to be done there.

As to how I am doing this, it is with hired help. A local woman, a musician, is trying to put together funds to go on tour. Like many musicians, she was really hit hard by the Covid lockdowns, and she decided to amass some cash by working at whatever came to hand. I was delighted at the chance to get things done that I can no longer manage to do myself. So far she has washed down my kitchen, walls, cupboards and the grotty bits of kickplate and corners that the bi-weekly clean does not reach. As well, she has packed and lugged off to the Food Pantry store all of this ‘stuff’ I am divesting myself of. The Food Pantry Store is reached across a parking lot and up a flight of stairs that I find really daunting, let alone trying to navigate carrying boxes and bags. So my helper is doing that, on hourly wage. A very reasonable wage, at that. I know what my daughters pay in the city and it is a lot more.

I have more spaces that I have not been able to clean or sort or divest of clutter, and so I am hoping this worker will stick. She will also do gardening, she says. At one time I took pride in a tidy surround to the house, and, if things work out, I may be able to do so again.

JG and I are now in or approaching our mid eighties, and so I am trying to line up what we will need to help us stay here and live well for as long as possible. Including having things to wear that fit. I have a little list. Expect a report on underpants in a later installment.

Fugit? Just a Bit.

 The ED and partner were out today, bringing us a varied and delicious lunch and, as well, doing a bit of housework and shovelling. The ED went for a shot snowshoe but found it hard going – no trail – and bitterly cold with the high wind that we still had. She said she worried a bit about frostbite. I  had to laugh, because the year that she and her sister got their own snowshoes for Christmas, the Boxing Day weather was a match for today’s in cold and wind, but it was sunny and the girls had to try their new freedom and so we went out for a walk. And I watched their small rosy faces like a hawk, looking for white patches that would signal a problem. I guess I make a point, because the daughter, today, said she was checking. And she will be 60 on her birthday in two month’s time.

How does this happen? a small voice in my head is babbling. How do small rosy girls in so short a time turn into highly accomplished adults with stellar careers behind them, life choices worked out (well, sort of), capable senior women who arrive to look after their aged parents. Wasn’t that Boxing Day walk just a few years ago? There’s a Latin tag that says it all. Provided you were squashed through high school Latin, that is. Otherwise, it is almost always translated. “The most common Latin phrase for "fleeting time" is Tempus fugit, which literally translates to "time flees" or, more commonly, "time flies". “

In fact, what I was thinking of was Horace, not Vergil. “Eheu fugaces labuntur anni is a famous Latin phrase from the Roman poet Horace meaning "Alas, the fleeting years slip by," a poignant reflection on the swift passage of time and the transient nature of life, often used to encourage living in the moment, much like the modern "YOLO" (You Only Live Once). It comes from Horace's Odes (Book 2, Ode 14) and serves as a reminder that life is short, urging us to appreciate it before it's gone.” 

I do love the internet’s ability to patch the leaking holes in my aged brain this way, I really do. Both these quotes are from Google’s AI summaries.

If I were to be honest, and I made a pact with myself to be honest here, I liked Latin. Or, I did until I got in over my head. High school Latin was finite, memorizable, and I got fine marks and thought highly of myself. And so, I selected it as a minor in my university course, a teachable second subject for a Type A teaching certificate. And I ended up, because the subject was very specialized, in small classes with the Classics majors. Who were much better at it than I was. Where the breadth of the course was too wide to allow of my memorizing the translations. And I struggled. Got bare passing grades. But I still loved it by times, especially a course in Latin drama where we got to read aloud. Pure fun. Of course, I never taught it because it was almost out of fashion by the time I was teaching. 

Very occasionally I get to mention that I studied Latin in university for four years and the amusement in watching the face of my listener is worth a lot.

Anyone want to take a selfie? But , come on, you always knew I was a bit weird.

Doomscrolling

 

I like words, the more precise, the better. And lately I have been coming across “doomscrolling” and thought it was pertinent to how the world is watching itself implode. So, I looked it up. My usual and helpful place to look is Wikipedia, and here is what I found, edited.

Doomscrolling or doomsurfing is the act of spending an excessive amount of time watching short-form content or watching large quantities of user-generated content or news, particularly negative news, on the web and social media. The concept was coined around 2020, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) observed that the pandemic was accompanied by widespread misleading information, conspiracy theories, and false reports, which it referred to as an "infodemic".

Origins: The practice of doomscrolling can be compared to an older phenomenon from the 1970s called the mean world syndrome, described as "the belief that the world is a more dangerous place to live in than it actually is as a result of long-term exposure to violence-related content on television".  Studies show that seeing upsetting news leads people to seek out more information on the topic, creating a self-perpetuating cycle.

In common parlance, the word "doom" connotes darkness and evil. In the World Wide Web's infancy, "surfing" was a common verb used in reference to browsing the web; similarly, the word "scrolling" refers to sliding through online content.  After three years of being on the Merriam-Webster "watching" list, "doomscrolling" was recognized as an official word in September 2023.

I don’t think I am doing this myself, since I use a small number of what I hope are reliable sources and don’t spend a lot of time on them. But the odd time I wander through links, and find both interesting and devastating content.

Interesting? Maybe only to me. I just ran across an interview with the Princess Royal done by CBC at around the time of Charles III’s coronation, and found it to be a fascinating look at a person we usually only see in photos. I found her answers to be intelligent and very, very careful. I ended up wondering if she had managed the interview to the extent of vetting the questions ahead of time. Obviously, very much attached and a support to her mother. Maybe less so to her brother. 

The other thing I found was a post about Christia Freeland on Facebook. I looked at the comments, thinking I might add one and, to my dismay, found over half of them to be from ‘trolls’ (or worse, but the name is useful) dumping on her for giving money to Ukraine or wrecking the Canadian economy. (And those were the better spelled and worded; many were  illiterate.) I was quite surprised at the extent of the vitriol. It was a good example of what I have also seen discussed, the vulnerability of women in the public eye to the worst sorts of misogyny. 

I do not think I will become a doomscroller, other than taking in what the daily dose of American misbehaviour is reported to be, but I found this exercise to be a good reminder of what I don’t know and an exercise I should do more often.

 (If they only spelled it correctly!!!)