Three O’Clock Musings
Part of the problem is that for a few days I am totally on my own – without AdventureMan, my life is more free-form. So if I fall asleep at 7 p.m. who cares? As long as I get seven hours of sleep, it isn’t a health issue, is it? Does it matter when you get your sleep? I awoke shortly after I went to sleep however, my bed was shaking – was it just me? No, my bookstand was also rattling, and it went on for what seemed like a long time. Got my adrenelin pumping, but maybe it was just my imagination, not an earthquake. It FELT like an earthquake.
AdventureMan calls at 9:00 pm, we talk, we say goodbye and I read until 10, but am able then to go back to sleep. And then, at 2:30 am, I am wide awake. I didn’t sleep all day yesterday, but neither did I go out – most of the day I was feeling that dopey-almost dizzy headachy kind of feeling when your body knows it is supposed to be sleeping. Not a good time to be out on the road. 😉 I don’t want to endanger my Kuwaiti friends!
So I make myself stay in bed, but I can hear a roaring sound. Is someone pouring gravel, because that is what I think I am hearing? After a while, because I can, I get up and make a pot of coffee, close the kitchen door so the Qatteri Cat can’t come in, and go out on the balcony. No traffic, but I can still hear that roaring. I look out – and it is the pounding surf, I am hearing, one of my most favorite sounds in the world. There is a chilly wind, it seems to be coming from the east, and the pounding surf. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.
AdventureMan and I laugh – we both relish our time on our own – but only for a short time, and then it gets old. We talk a couple times a day or more on the phone; it isn’t the same. We have such great conversations, when we are in the same room together, or even the same city or the same country! I wonder what my life would be like without him, and I can honestly say it would be calmer, less complicated, quieter . . . and that I would miss him terribly.
He tells me his life would be more chaotic – empty refrigerator, clothes on the floor, that without me (nagging) to remind him of things, his life falls apart on the domestic front. I believe it!
I think I get over jet lag faster, though, when he is around to provide my life with greater structure. I WANT to get back on local time, but I succumb to temptation when he is not around, I take the easy way, I don’t make so much effort to adapt. I have to admit, three o’clock in the morning is MY time. I’m not the kind of night-owl who wants to stay up this late, but I love sleeping early and getting up this early, as long as I don’t have anywhere to be or anything to do in the next few days that requires my attention. At three in the morning, the world is mine!
*shares the sound of the pounding surf*
The Qatteri Cat follows me around, so happy to have his house-companion (me) back. We watches for me to sit, and if I have been running around (doing inexplicable things like unpacking, doing laundry, etc) he complains, after all – who wouldn’t rather be snuggling up with the Qatteri Cat? When I sit to blog, he snuggles as close as he can and does his singing purr . . . it’s a normal cat purr, but with the added element of cat joy; it sounds like he is singing and purring at the same time. Life is sweet.
Is it it just me, or is the internet running slowly?
Mom, Please Don’t Leave Me!
I am taking care of my sister’s cats while she and her husband are on a short vacation trip. As they were leaving, Wally, the diabetic cat, begged her not to leave him with me:
He is one of the easiest cats in the world to take care of. He knows when he needs his shot and he doesn’t run and hide like my own sweet little cat used to do when it was time for her shot. Wally hangs out around the refrigerator, where his insulin is kept, around time for his shot, and purrs when you give it to him. What a sweetheart.
Once my sister was gone, he got along with me just fine. 🙂
Beware Thanksgiving
(photo from Squidoo Turkey recipes which has all kinds of good recipes)
Turkey meat, no skin, 1 cup 238 calories, 7 grams fat
Stuffing, 1/2 cup, 115 – 250 calories, depending on recipe
Cranberry sauce, 1/4 cup, 100 calories
Green Beans, 1 cup, 20 – 110 calories, depending on how they are prepared
Pumpkin/squash, 1 cup, 36 – 115 calories, depending on how they are prepared
Mashed potatoes, 1 cup, 170 – 245 calories, depending on how they are prepared
Dinner roll, 1, 76 – 399 calories, depending on how it is prepared
Pumpkin Pie, 1 slice, 270 – 316 calories
wine, 1 3 oz glass, 70 – 89 calories
(calorie counts from NBC News)
This does not include the gravy, the pecan pie (horrendous!), the ice cream, the Irish coffee, or any of those hors d’oeuvres you ate before dinner!
The average American will ingest between 4000 – 5000 calories on Thanksgiving day, according to news reports.
Beware!
Jail Problems in Seattle
When I was blogging about the upsurge of antibiotic resistant infections springing up in more hospitals, our son sent an article about problems in the Pensacola Jails. Arriving in Seattle, the Seattle Times published a report of jail violations in this area, including rising rates of MRSA related infections.
The U.S. Department of Justice has issued a sweeping condemnation of the operation of the downtown King County Jail, saying inmates’ civil rights are being routinely violated through physical and sexual abuse by staff and inadequate medical care.
King County officials released a 27-page letter from the Department of Justice’s Civil rights Division which says that the department has notified county officials of “life-threatening deficiencies in medical care” for some inmates at the jail and alleges that inmates were routinely pepper-sprayed by staff and subjected to “degrading” physical abuse, including hair pulling to force inmates to comply with guards’ orders.
The DOJ says the county has failed to adequately train its staff and has inadequate policies and procedures in place to protect inmates.
The Department of Adult and Juvenile Corrections’ internal investigations unit is also inadequate and routinely fails to follow up on reports of inmates complaints, the DOJ alleges.
Jail Director Reed Holtgeerts said the jail is addressing many of the issues but that the county disagrees that inmates rights are being violated.
“We strive at all times to provide safe, secure and humane conditions for the over 50,000 inmates for whom we are responsible each year,” according to a written statement released today by the county. “We disagree that the constitutional rights are being violated, but we are in complete agreement with DOJ that there is room for improvement in the areas they evaluated.”
Holtgeerts said the county has and will cooperate completely with the DOJ.
The DOJ says a lawsuit could be filed if the county fails to address the issues.
The DOJ’s Office of Civil Rights opened an investigation into the King County Jail in November. Much of the investigation focused on jail health issues, including the spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, a highly contagious bacteria that can lead to severe infections and even death. At least one jail inmate has died from a MRSA infection and hundreds of others are diagnosed every year.
Other issues the DOJ said it would look at included jail suicides and sexual abuse of inmates.
You can read the entire article HERE
Saudis Uphold Rape Victim Penalty
Several bloggers have brought this situation to public attention; BBC provides the full update HERE:
Authorities in Saudi Arabia have defended a judicial sentence of 200 lashes for a rape victim.
The justice ministry said in a statement that the sentence was justified because the woman was in a car with an unrelated man.
The case has aroused controversy at home and condemnation abroad.
The 19-year-old, who has not been named, was travelling in a car with a male friend last year, when the car was attacked by a gang of seven men who raped both of them.
She has become known as the “Qatif girl”, a reference to the largely Shia town which she comes from.
Four of the men were convicted of kidnapping – but the court also sentenced the woman and her friend to receive 90 lashes each for the crime of “illegal mingling”.
Last week the court increased the woman’s sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison.
It also banned her lawyer from the courtroom and took away his licence.
Most of the world was outraged when the penalty was doubled because the victim went public.
Stroller Brigade
People laugh – or worse, look like I am crazy – when I tell them living in Kuwait is not unlike living in Alaska in terms of climate. When the climate gets extreme – too cold has the same impact as too hot – people stay at home more, going from their heated/chilled homes to their heated/chilled cars to the heated/chilled stores and malls or theatres. When the milder weather comes, everyone spends every minute they can outside.
In Kuwait, there are groups that head for the malls early in the morning for some serious walking when it is too hot to walk outside.
In Seattle, I ran into another group of serious walkers, but here, they are avoiding the rain and cold. When you see the stroller brigade – and there were between fifteen and twenty women with their babies – you had better get out of the way! These are some serious strollers!
Fast Food To Feel Good About
I’m still adjusting to the local time, and there are odd times when I am suddenly starving. Delighted to be in Seattle, I know where all the Ivar’s restaurants are. Some are go-in-and-sit-at-a-table kind of Ivar’s, with waiters and fabulous entrees, and then there are the fast-food Ivars, where you can get fish and chips, salmon and chips, halibut and chips, clam chowder, crab cocktail, and my favorites – smoked salmon chowder, and grilled salmon Ceasar. Oh, yummmmmmmmy!
Most of all, it delights my heart to see so many people eating fast food that might even be good for you.
Amsterdam Sights
Walking into the airport in Amsterdam was – for a change – fun. They have Christmas decorations up, and my eyes are starved for Christmas. Well . . . . looking now, I see the huge Camels banner through the decorations. Bah! Humbug! These are “holiday” decorations.
And then these! I have never seen such large packets, nor such enormous warnings:
Ken Follett and World Without End
Oprah has just chosen the predecessor to this book, Pillars of the Earth, as her monthly book club choice. I am so glad! Ken Follett and I have a very mixed relationship; I used to think he was brilliant, and then he wrote one book that just disgusted me so much I stopped reading him altogether until he wrote Pillars of the Earth, which has to do with the building of the very first cathedrals in Europe. It was one of those books that you hated to have it end, and you remember years later.
World Without End follows up Pillars of the Earth. We follow the lives of several people we meet as they are children, and we discover that their lives are intertwined in intricate ways. Two of the characters, Caris and Merthin, love one another from childhood, and we wonder throughout the book if they will ever find a way to be together. Merthin is a builder, descending from the main character of Pillars of the Earth, and shares his way of being able to look at problems from a new perspective and build in new ways based on stepping outside the box to solve problems.
Ken Follett is good at describing the lives of his characters in the 1300s, as farmers try to survive the rainy summers and crop damage, as laborors become independant from the abuses of feudal overlords, as the plague strikes rich and poor alike, as spiritual leaders cope with the demands of daily life and needs. We learn about the living conditions in England in the 1300’s, we learn about the early trade guilds and merchant guilds, we learn how disasters can be an impetus for social and political change, we learn how women used what little control they had over their own lives to their advantage. World Without End is a book rich in texture, sensually layered and visually vivid.
I have a strong feeling that people are pretty much people, and that we haven’t changed too much over the centuries. We HAVE made some advances, we have carved out rule of law, and ways for communities and nations to function together in relative peace, but I still feel that some of the interactions between men and women have a feeling that is too modern. I could be wrong. A few of the the scenes just didn’t ring true to me; it was as if modern people were transposed back to the 1300’s and thinking in modern ways, and it just seemed . . . well, I guess anachronistic!
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