lex loci

Another day of feeling sluggish and sleepy. I did take advantage of a brief combination of hunger and energy to make a batch of lemon-cranberry muffins. I ate half of one... Jerry decided that a damp and chilly fall day must be spent curled up on laps, and was happily snoring the afternoon away during the football games. Full disclosure, although the TV was on, nobody actually watched the games! I'm trying to keep my mind occupied so I don't relive the events of 9 years ago-I am very thankful to be alive and to have survived all my surgeries, especially the first one that started it all. That doesn't alleviate the fact of my brain replaying the events. My therapists suggest various exercises to cope, but they are ineffective. Although  I can control the levels of panic for the most part.

I've noticed that I've got new anxieties that have cropped up lately. I'm suddenly claustrophobic when doing an MRI. I never liked them, but I could usually cope and angle my head enough to see out of the tube. Since the start of the pandemic, though, I shake, I can't breathe or swallow, and I feel trapped. I've had to resort to pills to cope! Plus, I noticed that if I'm watching a show when someone has to enter a narrow tunnel, or if I even read about it, I feel panic rising. Very unusual for me. Even more to discuss with my therapist.

I have a question for conservationists/ environmentalists. It's something that has disturbed me for a long time, but nobody has been able to answer.

Every year-well, every few weeks, to be honest-there are news stories horrifying us about the proliferation of items in landfills and how damaging the garbage is to our habitats. I receive floods of email ads for "zero-waste," " "sustainable," "eco-friendly" products and recommended lifestyle changes.

These products are usually quite pricey They're marketed as being reusable - you know what I mean. That's all ok; I mean, people should be aware of the available options. But many of them are packaged and shipped in non-recyclable material. They, themselves, are not easily recycled, so they add to the garbage in me when they are at end-of-life. (A quick check of what's recyclable shows that bamboo toothbrushes aren't. Just as an example.)

1hen we have holidays like Halloween and Christmas where we decorate our homes, often with shiny items that are not eco-friendly. Wrapping paper is mostly not, nor is cellophane, nor the packing materials still used for many things. Then we bring in live trees, fresh pumpkins and other plants, which are on display for a few days and then consigned to the garbage- Painted pumpkins, or those using glues may be toxic, so can't be composted. Thousands of food-grade pumpkins are simply discarded, while there are multiple appeals for food donations to help an ever- growing number of people needing assistance. Trees - often with tinsel still entwined, or with fake snow sprayed on-are taken to a landfill. And so on.. _ Isn't there a better way? Can't we decorate sustainably? Perhaps, if you must have a live tree, use one that's potted, so it will continue to grow year after year. That's actually not a new idea; it appeared in an Enid Blyton children’s short story from the 1940's where a small tree was decorated for birds, and was planted for reuse.

I know how lovely the scent of a live fir tree is, and how it fills the air with a festive scent. And I understand the fun of carving a pumpkin. But surely we could do better at being eco-friendly? Why aren't the pumpkins eaten after they're carved? There's enough demand for pumpkin-spice flavoured stuff to suggest that the gourd itself should be popular. Garlands and mistletoe are similarly discarded; surely we can do more? How about some ideas to reduce waste and you decorate were?