1. Aldi’s paper bag says something about no longer providing plastic bags, which causes me to ask this: Hey Aldi’s, why is all your produce pre-bagged in plastic?

2. To “prate” is to bloviate, to chatter endlessly about inconsequential matters.

3. I learned how to block email addresses of people I’ve never heard of—so many of those advertising emails have a non-working Unsubscribe button; not sure that Unsubscribe does anything even when it is working. It seems that many of those “people” just resubscribe you after awhile, hoping you will change your mind. Or they sell your eddress to another crowd of unethical moneygrubbers. So, I block them as they arrive.

4. GARDENING: sweet potatoes grew in knots, so next year I will make a great big gopher cage instead of using individual cages; all lettuces vanished—both cheater-starts from the nursery and tiny sprouts from seed. I haven’t learned what ate them, only that lettuce is almost impossible to grow. (And the broccoli is alive but appears to be comatose.)

5. TUBING MASCARA: Never heard of it but it definitely sounds like a better cosmetic improvement than fake lashes. Prolly not ever going to buy it, but found it curious.

6. A friend sent me this quote, amended and paraphrased by me: “We have a candy holiday, followed by a pie holiday, followed by a candy and cookie holiday, followed by a booze holiday, with another candy holiday on its tail. We call this ‘flu season’, but shouldn’t it be called ‘sugar poisoning?'”

7. Three random thoughts from the bathroom: a. It is a good sign if your toilet plunger has spider webs, but not the brush; b. If you think your shower is clean, put on your contact lenses; c. If you get mascara on your bangs, they need to be trimmed.

8. All the reasons that I avoid medical offices were verified in December; the level of incompetence, chaos, and confusion defies all logic and tests the outer limits of human patience. You will be told that an appointment isn’t needed/is needed/isn’t needed/is needed. You will be given wrong addresses/no addresses and wrong fax numbers. You will listen to many robot switchboards run through long spiels in Spanish. Your insurance will be denied and you will be told that a fax about it has been sent multiple times although no fax will ever be received (see previous—wrong fax number) You will drive to Woodlake, Lindsay, Exeter, and Visalia, all to gather information which will lead to many other appointments, phone calls to verify and correct and remind and question. You will wonder if you will be dead before anything is diagnosed and treated. You will be thankful that all the people you have spoken with are very nice.

9. All of the same sort of chaos and confusion and contradictions from the Medical Circus apply if you experience multiple internet/phone/teevee outages and try to get your bill lowered (looking at you, Spectrum). You will be told that you will/will not get a credit, that the credit has/has not been applied, and that you need/don’t need to call back to verify an amount which continually changes depending on which “helpful” person you are speaking to. The people who answer questions with confidence rarely come up with the same numbers as those who read your bill back to you rather than answer questions. Some are smart and quick; some are stupid and slow; all are polite. You may conclude, as I have, that everyone is trained to say what you want to hear while actually doing nothing to credit you for all the outages.

10. A website called “Bored Panda” is an enormous waste of time along with being highly entertaining, if this post is any example. Funny Vintage Costumes Book. I didn’t look any deeper because I was able to exhibit remarkable restraint and self-discipline.

11. Did you know  that there is a Botkin Hospital in Moscow? It was something else until 1920, when it was renamed Botkin Hospital in honor of the founder of the Russian therapeutic school – Sergei Petrovich Botkin. It is the biggest multispeciality hospital in Moscow. The name appeared in some novel I was reading (chewing gum for the mind) called “Our Woman in Moscow” by Beatriz Williams.

Important question: have I been prating at you in this blog post??