Quick! Is there a Placebo in the house!

I recently read an article on the effectiveness of placebos, even when one knows the treatment in question is a placebo. It has something to do with ritual. The author of the article got a prescription from his doctor for pills to alleviate writer's block. Had them made up &--warned that they may not take effect immediately--had some success with them.

I think perhaps my Oura ring helps me sleep. Knowing that it's on my thumb--the best-sized digit--& ready to monitor heart rate & determine wake-ups & REM sleep & deep sleep gets me tuned in to sleep mode before I even lie down. Or before I lie down to sleep anyway. Frequently I'll read or watch TV or play poker on my tablet (play chips only, but I've got over 20 million...) before I yawn & roll over & put on the eye mask to keep morning from deciding I should be up.

Blog alternative:
318. Think of some issue you just wish you could take a pill for. Then make up a pill. Scrunched up bread perhaps, if gluten doesn't bother you. Figure out a good dose & tell yourself, hey, it can't hurt. Might even be beneficial. After all, it's a placebo!

The View From the Grave

This is a picture of me sitting on my own grave. Grin. It's in the cemetery at Nye, Montana, where sister Shelly's ashes were interred. Two to a plot for ashes, so voila! Mom & Dad will be next to us & my brother Mikol & his wife Amanda on the other side. Sister Tracey & her husband Mike will hang out at the Rancher Cemetery with a bunch of other relatives. It's practically spitting distance from their farm.

My mom is not the most adept cell phone picture taker & besides it was blowing like crazy & we were freezing, so we didn't linger to take a better one. But the view is great!

Blog alternative:
317. Pick out a few places you might want for a final resting place. A teaspoon at a time, you could spread yourself around--or, rather have someone else spread you around.

Brought to you, in large part, by Henry David Thoreau

In going through my books, I unearthed the copy of Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau that I read & reread & underlined & circled while I was in high school. If I had to pick one book that made me who I am today, it could be this one. Fortunately, I don't have to pick one. I gulped down so many with my hungry eyes.

But Walden was special. I was going to be a poet & a hermit. I even had a place picked out, a cabin with green tarpaper on the walls, on the east side of the mountain. I was going to run a bucket down to the Stillwater River to haul up drinking water. Once my sisters & I swept about a billion dead flies off the floor.

The cabin no longer exists, being part of the tailings of the platinum & palladium mine. The house I grew up in was right where the main adit for the mine went in. Goodbye big front room. Goodbye patio. Goodbye Secret Garden. Goodbye Pete's house. Goodbye guest house outhouse & garage. The pink house still exists, in another location, but the others are only in our memories.

Blog alternative:
316. Think about the books (or movies or songs, if you're not so much of a book person) that created you, challenged you, blew the top of your head off. Reread if you dare. Some of them hold up & some of them, well, you had to be there, & you were, but you aren't any more...

Closet versus Duffle Bag (the battle continues...)

I am back from the holidays in Montana. I packed super light going there & super heavy going back. Earlier this year, my mom & sister & some others got together & cleaned out my sister Shelly's closet, so I knew I was coming home with some very nice clothes. (Sister Shelly was one stylish chick.) I wore one shirt out here & a pair of (what turned out not to be very comfortable) jeans. Besides that I just did your basic socks & undies & black leggings/long johns. (A base layer, I believe, is the technical term.) The jeans did NOT come back with me, but a duffel bag full of other wonderful things did.

Except my closet was already pretty full, so---

--some of the results you see above have already been dropped off at GoodWill. Still more sorting to go, but I didn't get back until Monday night & it's only Wednesday, so I'm feeling productive. I took ALL my clothes out of the closet (I don't use dressers) & started with ginormous piles in the living room/dining room. Still some on & around my table, but the others to be evaluated are in one neat stack on the painting table, which is right next to the closet.

Had a really lovely time in Montana, part of which was caused by bad roads & nasty weather. I played a ton of pitch (a really good 3-person card game) with my folks. Dad ended up our lengthy series 9 games ahead of me & 4 games ahead of Mom. (But hey, we made serious progress. There were times when he was 25 games ahead of us...) He also finished 9 games ahead of me in cribbage, & absolutely slaughtered me & an aunt (first Aunt Juanita & then Aunt Carol) in pinochle, with the help of Uncle Will. Shoot! But so much fun.

We hunkered down over New Year's & held a belated party at my sister's farm, which was really delightful & didn't require staying up late, since the rest of the country didn't delay the holiday.

I also discovered that I hadn't properly scheduled my blogs to post while I was gone, so bing bang bong, here are 3 at once, even if a couple of them claim to be Decemberish.

Blog alternative:
315. Take something out of your closet & do something to get it into someone else's hands. Or throw it away, if it's no longer useful. My red leopard print tights will hit the trash, as I discovered (while wearing them Christmas Eve) that the waistband was shot & they had the unfortunate tendency to head for my knees. Fortunately, my dress was longish & I could hit the restroom & pull them up. Grin. What could you possibly get rid of? Things that were more appropriate to a past version of you.