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(December 1, 2025) —- I bought myself a slow cooker today— from Amazon —- It will be here Wednesday and I am on anticipatory pins and needles.

I will now be able to turn beef pieces into a lovely gelatinous softness —- great for my recovering gut —-and perhaps a lot of other interesting and delicious things as well. I like the fact that it has an automatic timer and shut off feature… set and forget…

I have been working to increase my daily protein intake… I fear I have been somewhat protein deficient for the last Six weeks…but I can do 90 to 110 grams each day now that I have charted it all out…..Once I am fully recovered, I can up the ante on the protein to 142 grams per day…..the 90-110 grams is the safe low limit for my body weight and for recovery purposes.

Learning to love Greek Style yogurt, Tempeh and Kefir. (Not.) Cottage cheese is a non starter for me —- can’t stand it —but fish and chicken and pork and beef—- well that is another story….. love them all when i can reduce the collagen content to a lovely managable mush….. well almost anyway ….very masticatable …..I have stopped the awful downward body weight slide and have stabilized at 218 pounds without clothing ……I always find it interesting that when I visit a doctor office, they always chart my weight complete with clothing…..an extra 4 or 5 pounds that I did not come into this world with …..strange things that doctors do sometimes.

Right now it is 8:30 PM where my friend, Jim, and I live… and having finished washing the dinner dishes, I am here on the computer and Jim is parked in his recliner in our cavernous living room, in a reclining chair that virtually swallows him, with a throw blanket pulled up to his nose — he is somewhat cold blooded —- and, of course, to save a few bucks (dollars), we keep our thermostat at 67 degrees ……keeps the pipes from freezing in the manse and gives us an excuse to wear sweaters and jackets in the house…..As for me, I recently purchased a large blanket with 100% wool fleece on one side….warm as toast —- but I need a sheet between me and the fleece……It can be a bit itchy.

I would be commenting on the national events except for the fact that all of it is so damned crazy and disjointed and sometimes, in my opinion, even somewhat demented ….so why bother stirring a pot of excreta …..only causes malodorous conditions in the psyche.

Memories Of School Daze

Some time during my Fifth year of life, my parents began “Preparing” me to start school. School was a mysterious place to me. It was far, far away and was described to me as a place where wonderful things were happening and from which there was no apparent escape.

I look back now and am confounded because if you look at it properly, I was undergoing my first parental brainwashing session. I guess all parents do that. I did it with my own kids.

I was torn between the emotions of wonder and dread at the prospect of getting a good start at this new thing everyone was calling, “School.” I somehow sensed, deep inside, that it would mean the loss of my endless freedom and would begin the long process of learning something my Grandfather referred to as “Responsibility.” By the time the inevitable confrontation rolled around, I guess I was more or less properly conditioned to accept the idea of “The First Grade.”

I got the point where, even though I had no earthly idea of what I was saying, I would loudly declare to any adult who would show me the slightest bit of attention, “I’m going to school next year.”

There were a lot of side wise glances and some approving looks and a few pats on the head by old ladies. Those attentions and the smiles that accompanied them made the concept ever so much more pleasant for me. There was a lot of encouragement and moral support from the adult crowd.

It was especially nice when some kindly lady would chuck me under the chin and declare, “Oh, you will do well…you are a smart kid.”

Being “Smart” seemed to be some kind of prerequisite for successful launch at school so I began to search for ways to become…”Smarter.”

Enter my accommodating Father who had completed Third Grade at a local one room school back in 1913.

It seemed that my Dad knew everything about everything and would “make Up” facts when the real facts were unclear to him. He began the process of preparing me for First Grade with a kind of “Home Schooling” of his own design and invention. His stated goal was to “Git me smarter in what was necessary in life—Readin, Writin’ and Cipherin.” (Arithmetic). To my Dad, these were the only necessary requirements for acceptable and complete education.

So, my days underwent some changes.

After supper, instead of romping with my dog and my pet pig, I was obliged to sit with Dad at the dinner table and learn to do Arithmetic….on my fingers!

As to the art of Multiplication: We never ventured beyond the Twelfth Table (12×12=) and Long Division wasn’t even in the educational loop for my Dad.

Dad would take a long draw on his ever-present filter-less cigarette and exclaim, with great satisfaction, “Now One plus One equals Two.”

When I paralyzed at that revelation, he placed two vertical hash marks on a piece of paper and demonstrated how 1 + 1 equaled 2.

All this advanced education took place after I had demonstrated my ability to count to Ten on my fingers. I often wondered why toes did not enter into the process. It dawned on me that it was probably impractical to stop and remove one’s shoes whenever it became necessary to count or to add or subtract.

After a few weeks of this intensive struggle, I got pretty proficient at adding columns of single digit numbers, but the need to “Carry” across to another column of figures was absolutely foreign to me.

Dad’s preoccupation with Addition and Subtraction was simplified for me by his explanation, “If you learn to add and to subtract, you can always tell if your paycheck is short.” (Or if there were actually a dozen oranges in the grocery bag.).

My confusion about Math deepened on the day that my Dad explained to me how One rabbit plus One rabbit ends up being Three rabbits.

So, my first days of school were not uptown at the giant red brick structure with the school buses out front and the play equipment in the side lot.

My first day of school was at home with my Dad, my dog and my pet Pig with Mom hovering in the background mumbling some indistinct phrases from time to time to which my Dad would impatiently respond, “Now hush up, Old Woman, the kid has got to learn something so he won’t be lost when he gits to school.”

I always appreciated Dad’s willingness to help me launch successfully but, as it turned out, he was behind the times somewhat and finger-counting no longer would cut it with the teachers.

I had to re-learn everything.

One thing I learned very early on was just how much a teacher loved to get a fresh red apple each morning from some student—like me. (There was an orchard next door, after all.)

But all that is another story for another time.