Tag: food

Munda’s Wandering Thoughts

Here’s a hodge podge of things I’ve been thinking about this morning.

Food & Friends. We did our deliveries this morning. Half the route was canceled. That’s always worrisome. We don’t know what happened to those individuals. Fingers crossed, they’re okay. Okay is always a relative expression and has its own spectrum of meaning.

As I drove around, I wondered about the Big Beautiful Bill’s impact. The future is murky. Food & Friends is financed by a combo of state, local, and Federal coffers. Fed picks up the brunt, 65%. Fundraisers, private grants, and donations augment these monies.

From KFF and other online sources, F&F’s funds come via the Older Americans Act (OAA). This is administered through Health & Human Services and an agency called ACL, the Agency for Community Living . This is where it gets disorderly and messed up. Under Trump, the funding was withheld. H&HS is being reorganized. 10,000 positions have been terminated. I dislike using that euphemism, ‘layoff’. They were fired; terminated.

As with most things, the enshittification under Trump is striking here. “According to a recent HHS press release, ACL is releasing over $1 billion of Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 funding for Older Americans Act programs to state, local, and Tribal grant recipients – funds that had already been appropriated by Congress but withheld by the Trump administration.”

Researching my gall bladder issues, I realized I must give up yogurt and cheese. Sob. I’ll miss them more than steaks and burgers. Alas, I must also say farewell to pizza. And doughnuts. Lunch meat and bacon have been long gone. Butter is now gone, too. The list of what I can eat is getting short. I can still eat fruit and veggies, which I love. And nuts, as long as they’re unsalted, as my edema/lymph edema requires a low sodium diet.

A radio weather report said that thunderstorms were coming. We all reacted, “Oh, no.” Even the announcer was worried, adding to the report, “Hopefully, we won’t have a bunch of lightning strikes and fires.” Exactly. We’ve been fortunate so far this year.

Looking out the window, my wife said, “There’s not a cloud in the sky.” It’s a different picture, sixy minutes later.

‘Back home’ in Penn Hills, PA, a new plan has emerged for Mom. Mom is 89. She has multiple health issues. Trips to ER are regular as seasonal decorations being put up. She lives with her boyfriend, Frankie the Hand, 95 years old. At that age, he has problems of his own.

We the children have been agitating for her to move into assisted living and sell her home. Frankie’s children have been advocating the same. They have been adamant about not moving. Part of the issue is that Mom’s 1940s era home is three stories with narrow steps with steep rakes. A glide chair has been place between the main level and the upper bedroom level. To address that, Mom will move into the main level. The back deck will be converted to a bedroom. My brother-in-law, a plumber by trade, will do most of the work, aided by construction and electrician friends. Pat began the work today. It’s expected to be done in three weeks. It’s a noble plan but extremely flawed. It’ll buy some time but the fact is that Frank has cancer, he’s losing weight, suffering dizzy spells, blind in one eye, and getting deaf. That’s not a good description for a care-giver. We’ll see what happens.

As with everything, time will tell.

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Health Update

Spent Satyrda & Sun recovering from the gall bladder episode. I’m not a doctor. Don’t even play one anywhere. Not even in my mind. But I was too familiar with the upset gall bladders symptoms for the one previously experienced in July to mistake it for anything else.

So, watched telly on Saytyrda. Pulp Fiction and No Country for Old Men. Unfortunately, it was on Miramax, who are apparently squeamish about any variation of fuck and also disliked some scenes and left them out. Slept off and on Satyrda through that, but itched a lot. After going through a day when even drinking water nauseated me, I ate a bowl of oatmeal about midnight, which was the day’s sustenance.

Much better on Sunda. No abdominal pain at last but wary of eating, I searched the net for safe foods for gall bladder problems and gall stones. I resumed exercising. Had lean grilled chicken for dinner. Now aware that if I start feeling unusually full, as I’d noticed previous to both of the attacks, I reduced my intake and monitored myself.

Now the itching. There’s casual effects between being enormously itchy and gall bladder matters. They’re not sure what causes it, according to my net reading, but they think it might be something called ‘bile salt’. Whatever it is, man, places just suddenly exploded with itchiness. Breasts and chest. Scrotum, ankles, belly, underarms, wrists, palms, soles. It does afflict just one place at a time, like wrists, but it’s both wrists simultaneously, both palms, both soles, etc.

On the bright side, my other medical issues have taken a back seat to the gall bladder thingy. I’d say that’s mighty kind of them.

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Satyrdaz Wandering Thoughts

I’m sipping on a smoothie. Wild blueberries with banana, water, pear, and spinach, it’s a personal favorite. It is not going down well.

My abdomen aches from the bottom of my sternum to an inch below my belly button. Last night, I had a mini croissant. Freshly baked frozen thing from TJs. Ate it about seven PM. At 3:30, my gall bladder spasmed, telling me it didn’t like what I’d done.

Fortunately, the emergency room had given me meds for this moment when I visited them on July 6, 2025. I did a pain killer and an anti-nausea pill and then rolled with it back in bed for several softly groaning hours. I sometimes dropped into a sketchy, uncomfortable sleep. Deeper sleep came after full sunshine was lighting the yard.

Awakening, my esophagus felt raw and burning. Bile’s taste pushed into my throat. I sipped water. That made it worse. A small spoon of manuka helped ease all of that. Then back to bed, where deeper sleep comforted me for a while.

Finally at one thirty, I got out of bed. My wife and I made the smoothie together. Now I sit, trying to coax it down. Another pain pill might be in order if I’m gonna get any writing done. I’ve been taught a lesson, again: be more mindful about what you eat. I’ve learned it before.

I better hold onto it this time.

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Fridaz Theme Music

Frida, July 25, 2025, landed on Ashlandia with a gently familiar thud. Weather is a relaxed blue-sky & sunshine state of being. 70 F now, we’ll be clicking on the low 90s by daylight’s end, which is about our average. No smoke bothers me. The Cram Fire is the largest, 95K of acreage, 77 % contained, north of us. South, in California, is the 19,000 acres Butler Fire. Prevailing conditions are keeping us safe, knock on wood.

Being Frida, the news front is slow and lazy. A shooting at a college in New Mexico results in more gun violence death. Couple police officers were ambushed elsewhere, shot and killed during their lunch break. This will all generate more handwringing but no action. Another handwringing moment hangs in the air as it was revealed that under the guise of ‘shipping out criminals’ during the Venezuelan swap, the United States imported a convicted killer of three. Terrific. Yes, the Trump Regime is always sloppy about vetting the details. But hey, he’s white and male, so it’s okay, right? Beyond that, the story still smokes about how Trump lied to Jerome Powell at the Fed, was called on it, and just blew it off. Lying is what he does, along with posting and sharing fake information, and splashing the world with bellicose hatred. This is the current face of the United States.

Today’s song is an ode to the cat. When he was served up and chowed down, he purred and chirped like, this is just what I needed. Which, yes, compelled The Neurons to serve up the 1978 ditty, “Just What I Needed”. Whole thing gives me a happy smile. A new wave pop song, it was part of the regular FM radio cycle for a while. So easy to hear, easy to understand, non-offensive and easy to sing along to, the cat gets it.

A smoke smell pesters my nostrils. The windows are closed for the day, to be re-opened tonight. I don’t see any discoloration in the sky. Air quality remains good. It’s just me and my olfactory processes working overtime.

Time to advance into the fray. Hope your Frida meets your needs. I’m gonna do my best to fit it to my needs, starting with coffee, I think. Cheers

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Frida’s Wandering Thoughts

I was shopping at Trader Joe’s yesterday. As I considered blueberries and wondered how much I was willing to pay for my fruit, a loaf of bread fell to the floor to my left, about six feet away.

Nobody was anywhere near it. I walked over, reshelved it, and returned to the blueberries where I cursed high prices and selected my berries. As I did, a tub of yogurt jumped from the shelf to the floor on my right, about six feet away.

WTH? Nobody was there. I walked over, reshelved it, and headed down another aisle. As I did, a box of pasta leaped off a shelf and landed on the floor about six feet ahead of me.

WTAF???

This time, as I went to pick it up, a TJ employee overtook me. “I’ll take care of that, sir,” she said.

“Okay, thanks.” I then explained, “This is the third thing that fell or jumped from the shelf to the floor in front of me today. Some of it does seem like it jumped and didn’t fall. It’s like I’m following the ghost of a klutzy Trader Joe’s shopper.”

She chuckled. “Well, you never know what you’ll find at Trader Joe’s.”

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Figs!

My spouse is a fignatic, a figinista, a fan of high magnitude of figs. She loves figs. Through her, I’ve come to enjoy them. Knowing this, a friend has been supplying us with figs. I snapped this photo Wenzda; we have three bowls of figs like this. Or had, as we’ve eaten a few.

This is the second go round from this fig supplier. These are huge beauties. So delicious, so nutritious, and a good source for calcium, potassium, vitamins C, A, K, and B6. We just eat them rare, although I’m cautious, as they’re high in oxalates, and can cause kidney stones. I already have that issue.

Figs been hard to come by at the stores and have become expensive. The last pint we purchased was $11 and had five small figs. None were in good shape, so my friend’s largesse is happily accepted.

Good to have friends like this.

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Sunda’s Wandering Thoughts

I baked for the Independence Day festivities. I’m not usually the house baker but my wife thought I should bake as a blow against the patriarchy. So bake I did.

My baking was the modern kind: a brownie mix, egg, oil, water. Everything except the water was purchased at a store. The water came from my faucet, part of our city’s water and sewage systems.

I made circular brownies with M&Ms in a silicon baking pan created for that job. We have a gas oven with a timer and all that. I added the ingredients into a bowl per directions, preheated the oven to the temperature they told me to use, and doled the rich concoction into the waiting little cups built into the silicon ‘pan’. Then, see the timer for the time the instructions recommended, wait, watch, and test to see if they’re done, using the honored toothpick test.

The process allowed a lot of free time thinking. And that becomes my point. Baking has been around about 10,000 years. The earliest evidence of baking comes from Egypt, and not the United States. While it may have started around the Meditarranean Sea, it grew. Many peoples, cultures, and societies contributed to its growth and the lessons learned in what works. Then they passed it on. People took it up, tweaeked and refined it, documented it, and passed it on. People from many religions and ethnicities had a hand in it. Men and women, along with people of less certain genders baked, regardless of their sexual orientation, regardless of nationality or religion, until we reached this point that baking is a well-refined and understood process, simplified enough that even a neophyte like me can gather stuff and bake.

Here is my real point, something the Trump Regime and its half-assed backward, racist, sexist supporters want to dismiss. We live in a world of developments built on the shoulders of others. We’ve stacked advances and helped consolidate, perpetuate, and spread the gains. Name an industry and explore it, and amazingly, you’ll probably discover that it wasn’t all done by white Christian American men. Now the Trumpettes want to pretend that no one except white Americans did anything worthwhile, especially in the United States to deliver the success we’ve achieved as a nation, trying to bestow as much credit as possible on men and Christianity, even if they need to lie to make their case, which they do.

America First! Hell, the United States wouldn’t exist without immigration — and shall we talk to the peoples who lived in North America before the waves of explorers, settlers, and armies ‘discovered’ the land mass? America First! Our form of democratic government is derived from other nations, as is our mercantile system, which also depends on other nations for success.

Trump’s willful, deliberate ignorance won’t stand, although it will do serious damage. Progress comes from unforeseen developments as much as planned advances. We don’t know who will make a critical, game-changing insight. Trump is trying to pretend otherwise. He can successfully fake it for a while, but eventually, his willful stupidity will bite us all in the ass.

As always, time will tell when and how. Meanwhile, we grit our teeth and resist his ignorance as best as we can.

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Sunda’s Theme Music

I begin my Sunda with the summer morning ritual. I step out to rebalance my circadian rhythm, feel the air temp, and give it a sniff test. How hot is it now and how much smoke is polluting the air are the dual concerns. Today it’s now 80 F, up from the 71 F holding when I first went out. We’ll be at 103 F today, a few degrees above yesterday’s 99.8 F. The smoke isn’t bad. I water things and close windows, sealing us against whatever nature is plotting against us today. I have learned that by closing the blinds and windows and keeping everything shut, we’ll be 13-15 degrees cooler than outside. We like to use fans to move the air when it warms, as the air conditioning, while cooling, makes our noses run. My wife is one who needs heat anyway.

This is Sunda, July 13, 2025. It’s a cousin’s birthday, but she passed away. Cancer. Cheery morning thought. Then I ate a lucious moderate-sized fig, savoring the experience with a slow chew, trying to be mindful. I don’t think I’m mindful enough. At 69 yo, can I become more mindful?

I jogged yesterday morning. It was a whim and I wasn’t prepared, just testing myself to see how far I could go before my body rebelled. The Fitbit says that was 2.5 miles, surprising me. It felt good. I jog walked home, thinking that I should combine those words and create a word: jolk. Yes, I jolked home, letting my sweat drip dry. No aftereffects strike this morning, knock wood. I thought I’d hurt somewhere.

ICE and wildfires dominates our news feed. Nextdoor reports an ICE vehicle was spotted in Ashlandia yesterday morning about 9:30 on Ashland Street by the cemetery. People advise others to report it on the app. A judge blocked random ICE raids in LA. We’ll see if this is appealed to the Roberts Court and swatted away. A man died from a fall during a chaotic ICE raid.

Getting news of the local fire plaguing us, the Neil Creek fire, is problematic. Something like 72 fires are burning in southern Oregon and northern California. The Neil Creek fire is closest to us but isn’t threatening anything (last heard) and is not large. Media focus is on the big burners. I understand that but my understanding doesn’t alleviate my frustration over lack of Neil Creek fire information. The last updates were days ago. Also, I haven’t seen or heard tankers since yesterday morning. Surely all this must mean good news, right? I finally find a Neil Creek fire update on Watchduty from fourteen hours ago. It’s five percent contained. Then there’s a summary:

Despite increased fire behavior, crews held fire lines with the help of helicopter water drops. Firefighters continue to strengthen lines and expand mop-up around the fire. Along the south end of the fire, crews removed hazardous standing dead trees to allow firefighters to access the southern perimeter safely.

There was an incident in the night. The neighbor’s dog erupted with furious barking. Bear or cougar, my wife thought, hurrying to the back door. She flicked on the lights and opens the door but stays in, leaning out to look around. I get a flashlight. By then the dog’s owner has talked the dog down and quiet has reclaimed the world.

“Overkill” by Men At Work is in the morning mental music stream. It’s all about the line, “I can’t get to sleep.” I awoke sometime in the night a few hours after the barking dog, mulled and dissected a dream and then the writing muses took over. I wrote for a while in my head before I managed to shut them down with a meditation process I use to induce sleep in myself. But the song remains in the morning mental music stream. While looking for a video to use, I found this accoustic version by Colin Hay, the band’s vocalist, where he’s backed by a choir. I thought it a cool difference maker and offer it to you.

Coffee has been sucked up. Time to press on. Hope your day answers your needs. Cheers

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Munda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

If you have a brain, and some thinking skills, the full Trumpasy is all revealed. Just check out the Trump Regime’s actions. Look at the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’. Read again Project 2025.

  1. Redistribute wealth to the wealthy. They need it to ‘build the economy’. This is called trickle down economics. It has been decisively proven not to work.
  2. Start shredding the welfare net. Cut Medicaid. Force people to work more.
  3. Cut all assistance contributed by the Federal government to the states and local communities. Downtrodden existences lead to downtrodden morale. A sick people is a desperate people, and are more easily manipulated.
  4. De-construct the education system. An uneducatd population is more guillible. Indoctrinate young people into right wing values via vouchers and private schools.
  5. Manufacture and reinforce negative stereotypes of other citizens, people who ‘are different’, i.e., people who are not heterosexual and white. This is useful for blame games and distraction, and helps neuter political will.
  6. Weaponize ICE into a paramilitary force. While laws limit what the US military is authorized to do to citizens, it’s a more wide-open field with ICE. Under the guise of rounding up ‘illegal immigrants’, the Trump Regime are also undermining due process and the concepts of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. People are being disappeared as the right-wing social media machine provides cover by declaring that the Constitution isn’t meant to be applied to ‘non-citizens’.
  7. Establish concentration camps. The first one has been built in Florida, of course. Don’t be surprised if Texas eagerly builds one in the race to be patriotic by refusing others equality, rights, and freedom. Disappearing people and creating concentration camps stoke fears and can be used to threaten political opposition.
  8. Build a right-wing Supreme Court bias that’s willing to overlook history and precedence, one which will used flawed interpretations of the U.S. Constitution to empower the Executive Branch and wipe out the checks and balance system provided by three equal branches.
  9. Weaponize trade. Try to force manufacturing back to the United States, even though the raw materials are obtained elsewhere, and even though the capital investments needed for new factories are astronomical. This provides a false hope of new jobs; there will be new jobs but they won’t pay wages needed to live in this ever expensive land, forcing people to work more, no matter their health or situation. This will also increase people’s desperation to work and make money to pay for basic goods and services such as food and housing, as prices see tariff-based inflation bound upward.
  10. But — also cut limitations on child labor laws. Encourage poor poeple to have more children to provide a larger and cheaper work force.
  11. Cut or waive environmental laws and regulations to reduce the cost of building new manufacturing facilities.
  12. Nurture confusion among facts and distrust of the news media. Confusion helps the Regime maintain control by undermining grass root organizations’ ability to effectively organize and protest. It also allows the Regime to turn citizen against citizen in a cold war that favors the Trump Regime’s heavy hand.
  13. Distract, distract, distract. In this endeavor, natural disasters are your friend; they pull focus from the political arena. Reduce the Federal government’s effectiveness in predicting disasters and helping states and communities. Again, chaos, confusion, and low morale are useful for controlling and manipulating the population. As a bonus, when a natural disaster levels a region, it opens up land and opportunity to rebuild. People with next to nothing can be more easily induced to take less pay for bad jobs.
  14. Attack other nations; encourage aggression among other nations. Make the world a scarier place.

Yes, this is cynical. It’s not my thinking, but my interpretation of what the Trump Regime and the Republican-filled Greedy Ol’ Trump Party, also known as the GOTP, is doing. Show me I’m wrong. Point to Trump’s actions and demonstrate otherwise. Parse that OBBB for clues that this is not what the Trump Regime pursues.

Time will tell. It’s already told us a great deal in the first six months of 2025.

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