[Begun Friday past: ]
I am not turning on the TV till this evening. I spent most of the past two days allowing myself to surf the tube: the limited stations we get with our basic cable, which you have to have to get any reception here in Winona, because of the bluffs. I am down – nay, flattened – with a virus, onset early Wed. morning. This hardly ever happens to me, and I’m a little out of my element. Of course I have several books/magazines I could be reading, but nnnooooh, my brain would rather veg out. So I started flipping channels.
If you’ve been “grounded” for any reason, you probably know about this: daytime television is one of the strangest places on the planet. You have your soap operas, your game shows, your talk shows, your day-court shows, and your Dr. shows (Oz, Phil). And now thanks to Decades, we are treated once again to such gems as Donna Reed and Petticoat Junction. MeTV gives us Saved by the Bell, and Mama’s Family, which I didn’t watch, and Matlock and Diagnosis Murder, which I did. There are two or three channels full of all manner of Westerns (who knew there that many of them?). I saw a Gunsmoke and a Wild Wild West. Can’t recall where I ran into Real Stories of the Highway Patrol, but I’d much rather watch Broderick Crawford (Highway Patrol, late 50s)!
It’s probably just as well we don’t get any of the Movie channels.
There are a few bright spots – I can always watch an episode of I Love Lucy or M*A*S*H, and Laugh-in is still a hoot, but one a day is plenty. And for some reason I can still watch Dick Cavett… he was one classy interviewer. PBS has some episodes of Home Fires, one of my favorites, Last of the Summer Wine (for Clyde), plus cooking shows, some Rick Steves travel, some crafts like origami, and Paint This with Gary Yarnell, that I would watch any old time.
What do you do with your down time if you’re laid up for a while?
Trail Baboon 
Because the prone position is my least painful position, I am laid up a very high percentage of the day. but since there are things that must be done and only I can do the greater share of them–dishes, laundry, meals, floors, tubs driving–I am, like wives and women have been forever, never laid up. Two days ago I heard Sandy say on the phone with some degree of dudgeon, that I am not her caregiver, which I am not, but yet I am. today she is 78. Thursday she sees the neurologist. She is in panic that she is going to be diagnosed with Altzheimers. She would never think that soothing her over again every day was caregiving.
So what do I do with my downtime? I watch some Netflix, Prime video, Acorn video. I doze, nap, lie awake. This time around I have seen very little of Last of the Summer Wine, which I would watch, despite having seen every episode at least 5 times. I used to be on from 2 to 3. This time it is on from 3-4. Sandy goes out most days, usually to the mall. 3 is the best time for her to do so. I drop her at Target and she wonders through the mall, with her walker talking to all the clerks she knows in all the stores and then meets me in B&N an hour or so later, “or so” being a large part of that equation. It is very important for her to get out like this.
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12 days ago I had two sets of shots in my back. In two days I send in a form telling how and to what degree I have returned to normal activities. It is easy to answer because the shots have done no good. But the question makes me aware of what “normal activities” might be. How many years would I go back.?
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I love Acorn’s selections of programs – we see the previews when we check out Miss Fisher…
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I’ve been working my way through Time Team again. I’m finding that many of the episodes I’ve forgotten altogether.
Have you watched “The Detectorists”? Low key but I quite like it.
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I think that all my time is–in your phrase–“down time” now. That’s been true for a decade. So I’ve had time to work out ways to amuse myself without spending money.
The best trick I’ve found recently is YouTube. YouTube reminds me of what what I felt in the 1980s when I first was able to access the internet. I can explore an incredible array of topics through little films that are usually ten to twenty minutes long. I think the variety of YouTube content is exploding now. When I connect with YouTube I often spend hours cruising new material or revisiting old favorites. (I’m currently in the grip of two Stevie Nicks video clips that I have to hear several times a day.)
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Are you aware of thi=s book?
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/border-country
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No, I hadn’t heard of it before. Thanks. It looks great, and I’ll consider getting a copy. Two weeks ago I read Eric Sevareid’s book about his epic canoe voyage in 1934. Thanks for the tip!
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I have read several books of this type/content. Amazon has it for $38 or so. My local library will never order it. I scanned it at B&N. Great format with exceptional sepia pictures.
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Amazon has it for twenty eight, not thirty eight.
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Bill, I spent a half hour sifting through the book today at B&N. I believe you would find it a treasure trove. all those wonderful photos of another age doing what you did. Plus good text, or what I scanned.
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I’ll check it out. Thanks, Clyde.
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hennepin county library has several copies (this is for Bill not Steve). there is a waiting list, however, but not too bad since there are 20 copies.
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I can imagine how a person could get WAY lost in YouTube.
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I read or do cross word puzzles.
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I love how I can be watching news 9r something awful like that, while doing a crossword or Sudoku… cushions the incoming stuff a bit.
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A few weeks ago I was hit with a virus that was respiratory in nature and produced a lot of prolonged coughing and, for a week or so, low energy. It was not enough to lay me up but it certainly slowed me down. I didn’t watch any daytime television but I finally got around to reading David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. I know it’s been made into a movie but I don’t think it got much praise. It’s hard for me to imagine that it could translate to the screen well.
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And what did you think of the book?
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It was engaging—I read the whole thing in two days—and it stuck with me a while but it was one of those stories that I suspect s better in your own imagination than in the imagination of some director’s.
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Bill, the book arrived. Thank you. I did not realize she was the author of the Granite Islands, which people were recommending to me awhile back when my eyes were so bad, and which I did not read as a result.
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Having read this one, I look forward to reading her others. Amazing that the book arrived so quickly.
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OT: here’s a little candy Easter egg from YouTube.
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Wow!
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Delicious! Thanks, Steve.
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Total. Netflix. Binge.
Otherwise, we found a fun channel on TV called Heroes & Icons, which runs all the Star Trek series, NYPD Blue, Xena, Hercules, etc., etc. You get the idea. Watched for a bit and saw Star Trek episodes from different series we didn’t remember seeing, so that was fun.
I wonder if there’s a channel with all the old Dean Martin Roasts when I need a good laugh or The Carol Burnett Show. I could watch the Carol Burnett sketches forever with Tim Conway and Harvey Korman doing everything possible to crack each other up during live filming. Such a hoot!
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I love it when they crack each other up and try not to. : )
As it happens, Carol Burnett shows up at 10 pm Mon-Fri on MeTV.
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OT Overheard on House and Garden channel today. First person: “It IS Unique.” Second person, in disgust: “Unique? It’s not unique. It’s the only one like it in the world.”
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Uffda.
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NorthShorer I think it is rare these days to hear the word “unique” used sensibly. Almost every time that word comes up the speaker is asserting that something is “very unique” or “amazingly unique.” Ugh. It’s like the word “literally.” I rarely hear that used appropriately. “Things got so bad they literally made my head explode!”
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You are one of the many people for whom that is unique.
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I’m a lay-around kind of person when I’m ill. Luckily this is pretty rare. The last go-around w/ the flu I was only truly sick one day but I felt so awful that even watching tv was too hard. I mean I had the tv on, but I wasn’t really following any of the programming, it was just on. And way too much work to read that day.
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It depends on how sick or how much pain I’m in. If it’s pretty bad (like the throwing up kind of illness), then all I can do is lie down and be miserable and hope I fall asleep. But for most other times of being laid up, it’s mainly read. Sometimes I stream something from PBS or watch a video but it’s usually reading. And it’s always books that are easy to read – might even be fluffy. If I have some energy, I might do a low-key project but I usually can’t focus enough to be very productive.
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Yes, nothing heavy duty.
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I’ll occasionally watch a movie if it’s bad enough that I feel I have to lie down. But I rarely get that sick. Mostly I get up and make some coffee or tea, and do puzzles and listen to the radio. Put a little Aretha Franklin on.
Hope you are feeling better, BiR.
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Speaking of another abused word: IRONICALLY on her 78th birthday Sandy decided to turn over management of our finances to me. But, you see, of course, that isn’t ironic at all.
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