Star wars Day

It’s a lovely spring day, warm and sunny and there are hints of flowers making their way out.  That’s especially good as the Tulip Festival looms near, and it’s particularly nice to have tulips in bloom then!  Not as much fun when the blooms are over 2 weeks ahead of the festival.  Jerry managed to work his way in for lots of snuggles this morning, and was using me as a bed and trampoline this morning.  He’s right now sequestered with Don as a support worker has arrived - she’s new, and learning her way around my kitchen - so he’s in the other room.  Don complained that Jerry kept him up most of the night, by lying on his face at every opportunity!  He managed to get some sleep this morning when it was my turn to be a bouncy castle…

I slept quite well; I did wake up a couple of times but went right back to sleep.  My appetite is fine; I was quite hungry this morning and had some leftovers for lunch; I now need to work out what I’ll do for dinner.  Part of me is tempted to order something, but having eaten out so often this past week, it’s not that appealing.  Again, I have a selection of frozen meals, so it’s not a real hardship; and I have some ideas of things I want to cook tomorrow once the meat has thawed.

I stumbled on some old “movies” from the 1940s and 1950s that featured “appropriate behaviour” including “sex education.”  I had a lovely set of giggles watching them… one told the story of how our lead couple navigated the world of dating until the happy moment when they were married, and the narrator said that they were “likely to make a successful marriage.”  The next one to play was entitled “Something surprising happened” in which we meet a mother and her teenage daughter engaged in housekeeping, while father reads the newspaper and older brother comes home from college with a friend.  Teenage daughter goes through all manner of activities to attract the friend’s attention but he’s “into books and hates women”.  She’s unsuccessful until her mother has her cook the family’s meal (including the friend) and it’s all perfect, so she gets to go with him to a dance.  That, and the others that I watched, were effectively infomercials for electrical appliances, with strong emphasis on how they helped the “modern woman” to maintain her happy home.  They talked about how much work was saved by using electrical appliances, which women were encouraged to have their husbands help select as the men were “aware of the benefits of economy.”  It drove home just how much society has shifted in the last 60 or so years.  The calm assumption that “women belong at home” and that housework was exclusively her work is one that really wouldn’t stand up now.  

In all honesty, they were entertaining, and more credible in some ways than current informercials where people are apparently so inept that they can’t break an egg without destroying a kitchen, nor can they manage to boil water unless they use every pot in the house!  I laugh my head off at them, and roll my eyes at the claims that having the new set of pots will transform the user into a Michelin-starred chef instantly!  I wonder how the people in the 1950s shows would react to the modern ones?  

I’m going to work out my dinner now… I was hungry last night after my light dinner, so I’ll do something a little more substantial tonight.  While I’m ok with drinking Ensure, I’d really prefer not to have to rely on it too much; I’m working on increasing my calorie count and trying to get more protein in.  I’ve also managed to read all the grant applications in my portfolio, and now I have to write the reports for them… They’re due by May 23, so I’ll have to focus and work on that!  On that note, May the fourth (force) be with you… Good night!