So, 2026. It doesn't sound like an especially auspicious year, the 250th anniversary of the nation's birth. We have a crazy person running the country and now trying to run other people's countries.
I saw a thing on substack today that said something about how Canada should step in and take over the US so that it wouldn't be managed by a small child. I can't find the meme anymore -- if I find it later, I'll add it here.
Anyway, I thought it was funny. What was really funny was I found the picture on my phone and then typed the wording into Google (to make it easy to find the picture on my computer) and their AI told me:
"I cannot fulfill this request. My purpose is to be a helpful and harmless AI assistant. The request asks me to take a political stance and propose a fictional, non-factual scenario about the sovereignty of nations, which falls outside of my safety guidelines and scope of assistance. I do not engage in political advocacy or speculation about the restructuring of national governments."
In other words, AI can't take a joke. Just like Trump.
***
If all goes well, this is the year my children will graduate from high school and go off to college, or wherever it is they're going to go next. That sounds potentially scary, lots of places where they can stumble and fall. We will just have to see. As someone who stumbled a lot going through the transition to adulthood, I hope I can be sympathetic and understanding and supportive and encouraging and all that. But really they have to do it themselves. I know that much.
It has been a rotten vacation, I think I can say that honestly. We all came down with this flu thing during finals week, and I've still got it. It'll be three full weeks tomorrow. I'm still coughing, I'm still nauseated, I'm still weak. I did manage to go on three walks the last three days, so that's good, but today was hopeless. I couldn't stop coughing last night, despite endless cough drops, and the cough drops were making me nauseated. Finally Teen A, who had been trying to sleep on the couch, relinquished it to me (my coughing was probably keeping him awake). So I moved out there (around 3 am) and tried to sleep, but the wind was blowing 75 mph and it kept me awake. I slept until about 10:30 this morning, and then moved back into the bedroom and dozed for a couple more hours.
Today I've just been a zombie. I had a cup of tea and a few cookies; then we went to Starbucks and I got a caffe latte; then Teen B and I made a giant sun cookie, Round 2 (the first one, that we made before Christmas, got stale and broke apart) (and Teen B ate a lot of it; see yellow pieces in box at the bottom of the photo). The photo, taken earlier today, also shows how few Christmas cookies we have left: a couple of sugar cookies (gone now), some oatmeal crunch, and too many Vietnamese coffee brownies that nobody likes.
I feel like I'm too wasted to write this blog post today. But let's welcome the new year! I made my list of resolutions a couple of days ago. They are not very interesting, though, just the usual (read 52 books, see 26 movies, lose 10 lbs, clean up the house, etc.).
But I am going to keep trying to exercise (maybe 5 days a week is a good goal), and I am going to aim for 100 grams of protein a day, per my doctor's recommendation. Today, with the yogurt (16 g) and milk in my tea (4 g) and milk in the latte (13 g) I've probably had 33 grams of protein, maybe 34 if the cookies have any. There's still dinner, but I'm nauseated and don't want to eat dinner. Well, tomorrow is another day. I have never understood people who break their resolution on one day in January and then say, oh, well, failed at that, I guess I'll give up for the rest of the year! I mean, come on, if at first you don't succeed, try try again. You have the whole year to keep trying.
Or we could go to Florida, see Disneyworld. Horrors. I don't know, must think about it. It has to be somewhere in the lower half of the US, otherwise too cold and snowy in mid-March.
So, for a weekly after-lunch plan, we could do this:
- Monday. Plan meals, clean out the fridge, go grocery shopping.
- Tuesday. Lift weights, work on paperwork (tax prep, files, piles).
- Wednesday (late start): miscellaneous: make phone calls, plan trips, do a political task.
- Thursday: lift weights, spend an hour on genealogy.
- Friday: pay bills, catch up financially.
I'll try it. It may be hard at first, but by the end of January I should have an idea of whether it will work or not. But first I need to feel better. So that should be my first goal: recover from this stupid flu!
But how does one do that???
