Lagniappe 12/4/2019

Just some stray thoughts today.

* I have been very active today, but now I need to sit down and quit doing things to reduce the chances of having a migraine. I have to work at not working. Ah, the irony.

* My migraines have been a real problem for the last couple of months. About a month ago, I got bilateral occipital nerve injections - anesthetic and steroid shots at the base of my skull - and was put on oral steroids. I felt great for four days and then ended up in the Emergency Department with terrible head pain and vomiting. After that, I had a two week migraine. Seriously not fun. My headache specialist had me do a ten day course of olanzapine, an antipsychotic medication. It did finally break the headache, but, yikes! the side effects! It made me hungry, which was a serious problem over the Thanksgiving holidays. My ankles got swollen to twice their normal size and I had to wear compression socks. And, instead of making me sleepy like it does for the rest of the world, it made me not sleep! But, I'm done with it and my head is feeling much better!!

* Are you watching the impeachment hearings? I have been, although today's were not as interesting as the earlier ones. You probably know that I'm not a fan of our president. I actually think he should have been impeached a long time ago for violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. He has not relinquished control of any of his properties by putting them in a blind trust. Just because his kids have their names on his businesses does not mean that he doesn't have an interest in them. And, foreign entities are making sure to stay in Trump properties when they can. There is even evidence that US military and other employees are going out of their way to stay at Trump properties. Being president is not supposed to be a money-making venture. Our president is corrupt beyond belief. The Ukraine scandal is clearly impeachable and I'm quite distressed that the Senate Republicans seem to be weighing public opinion instead of evidence to determine their votes.

* I got a new laptop on Monday. I'm totally in love with it, but I've been having trouble with passwords. Supposedly, I have all my passwords in my browser, but lots of sites don't seem to recognize them. I can't tell you how many companies I've had to talk to in person to change passwords or get password resets. But, it is worth it. I'm loving the new computer. And I'm going to use this one for all it's worth - paying the bills, using it for displaying recipes in the kitchen instead of printing the recipes, etc.

* I have a new hobby - genealogy. I posted a couple of weeks ago that Ancestry retested my DNA recently and found out that I have some African ancestry. That got me interested in doing some digging in my family history. My mother-in-law is a genealogy fanatic and she's traced the Italian side of my husband's family well back into Italy. My cousin has traced the Irish side of my dad's family. Another cousin has traced my maternal grandfather's family and and enough of my maternal grandmother to disabuse us of the notion that we have Native American heritage. (Also, my DNA showed that I'm not Native American.) There's a good chance that I'll never find my African-American ancestor, but I'm really enjoying tracing things back.

* One thing I'm not enjoying about the genealogy is finding out just how many of my ancestors were slave owners. I thought it was just one or maybe two lines. But, no, there are multiple lines that I've found that owned enslaved people. They generally only owned a couple of slaves, but it's still disconcerting.

* I'm really interested in the sociology of the small slave-owning households. I was mostly just aware of the large plantations with many slaves, but a number of my family members just owned a couple of slaves. That must have been a completely different type of interaction. I'm going to get some books and do some reading.

* In conjunction with the ancestry, I'm finally getting around to trying to get some information about my paternal grandmother who spent a good bit of time in a mental hospital. In my work so far, I've met a woman online whose mother was in the same hospital during some of the same years that my grandmother was there. There's a chance that the two women knew each other!! Granted, the hospital had over a thousand patients at it's height, so it's not a super-high chance, but it's still neat to think about. Unfortunately, this woman that I met visited the hospital and was told that they didn't keep the records from that far back. I'm still going to look, but my hopes aren't high.

* Minh, our exchange student, is playing basketball on one of the JV teams. I got to go to one of her games last night. It was a lot of fun, if a bit noisy!!

So, what's up in your world? Inquiring minds want to know!!

Catherine