Feeling Combative

My buttons have been pushed.  Provoked by my synagogue.  Provoked by friends who ride on their high horses.  Imposed upon in various ways.  My responses have recently been more candid than cordial.  Not hostile, but direct enough to transmit a message of irritation.  

Even my recreation has fallen victim.  After supper, I retreat to My Space most evenings.  Having largely abandoned scheduled TV, I default to YouTube in search of some learning.  It seems Google, which owns the service, thinks I would prefer to watch a few Conflict Entrepreneurs promote their pet agendas.  A series of Oh My selections, though admittedly with contributions from both extremes of a political divide.  Never a discourse.  I know which sponsor is which.  My Recommended videos of Road Trips, interviews of religious figures by people seeking to enlighten viewers, some history or geography that I like to watch.  None recommended for me anymore.  Instead, I get how Florida, China, and Walmart are all on their last legs, so I should beware.  Made me testy.

Testy may be a good place to be as America's political overload becomes insufferable.  I know how I will vote, I know the limitations of who I select.  I know what an Islamo-Leftist alliance is and how much disdain I have for them.  My mind is probably combative for a good reason.

Despite this, I have legitimate distractions from this.  A talk that I am looking forward to giving needs preparation.  I can keep my distance from the synagogue for a few weeks.  Travel looms not too many weeks off, with perhaps a day trip before that.  And there's a doctor's visit.  These are usually disposition upgrades.

Various Irritations

My Daily Annoyance Log nears the completion of its ninth month.  It began with a suggestion by Arthur Brooks in one of his How to Build a Life column in The Atlantic.  He teaches a course on productivity at the Harvard Business School.  Arthur commented in one of his essays that he advises the class to mark down in a notebook daily something that irritated them that day.  Review the entry one month and six months later.  I'm past the six month review.  Most entries are incidents of something very transient not going right.  Amid the many are a few which illustrate more ingrained, repetitive, or predictable assaults on the good nature that I and many others strive to achieve. 

My state tells me they have money put into their custodial care that belongs to me.  I accessed what they were holding.  It is a mixture of funds that should have been paid to me as investment dividends, along with much larger payments made to my office for professional fees.  That office closed fourteen years ago.  They require documentation that I am who I claim to be.  My personal assets pose no problem.  My professional ones do, as I destroyed any documents related to it after the required seven years of retention. My accountant also destroyed tax records beyond their holding obligations.  I found a business card with my name and address.  Perhaps they will accept that.  Or perhaps the state licensing board, my old hospital, or the DEA will keep a record that has the old office address.  Once the funds are in my possession, the matter closes.

My bank annoyance is mostly moot except for its principal.  I wanted to close a dormant account. My financial advisor sent me forms, which I completed.  The account was never closed.  I drove over to the branch, closed it, then deposited the cashier's check they issued into an active account.  I did file an inquiry with the state bank commissioner, as my advisor assured me he had confirmation from the bank's main office that the electronic transfer would go to completion.

My synagogue annoyances come in series.  I owe them a measure of my skill, though some requests have become more of an insensitive imposition.  It irritates me.  I patch it up by rescuing some need, but never fully eliminate the resentment that gets generated.  Things that I want to do tend to get ignored by key people.  To be fair, their slow but steady depletion of members likely has its basis from creation of People of Influence who become People of Entitlement.  And the onus of saying No when I prefer No to a request falls with me, not them.

Lori Gottlieb, The Atlantic's Dear Therapist, summarized the advice requests she receives into two genres.  First, I'm Trapped.  Second, Help me get my tormentors to change.  Her advice:  You are not trapped.  You have to change.  I have to decline requests that I should decline.  I will going forward.  But those are the items on my Daily Annoyance Log that linger at the one month and six month revisits.

Treadmill Respite

At the transition of each month I grant myself a three day break from my treadmill schedule.  It is something I look forward to, perhaps even offering an incentive to push on as those off days approach.  The stretching component of my health program does not change, nor do I designate specific times to make major detours from a sensible diet.  But brisk walking, paced by the treadmill requires periodic recovery time.

To best assure that I will walk the walk on scheduled days, I've also set a reasonably fixed morning time to step onto the 3.2 mph belt.  It's not first thing in the morning, more typically after coffee and after checking my email and social media messages.  Having a stretch of days off frees up three mornings to do other things.  Sometimes I go out to breakfast.  More often I do not designate the newly captured time for any particular purpose.

Those three days pass quickly.  While the purpose is recovery from leg muscle strains, that is often incomplete by the next scheduled exercise session, though always adequate to resume my program.  New calendar month, new schedule resumes.  

Staying Cordial

I find myself slipping into a combative disposition.  As much effort as I put into following Micah's guidance in Haftarah Balak, recited around the world, deferring to rules, defaulting to kindness, and humility in every action seems different from how my frontal lobes and amygdala were wired together.  Irritations and annoyances occur with enough regularity, that at the close of 2023 I took Arthur Brooks' advice and started keeping a daily log of something that annoyed me each day.  Rarely I have to grope for an event, but most days something pushed my buttons.  Or somebody pushed my buttons.  His recommendation also included a revisit at one month and six months.  As he predicted, none of the daily entries proved enduring.

A sense of fairness and what is just is also probably ingrained into our individual cognitive functions.  These are easy to violate.  People pushing ahead of the line as a personal experience becomes people sneaking across the southern USA border while others wait their turn as a communal experience.  Consensus to stop it is pretty widely accepted.  Cruelty as a technique is probably not what Micah had in mind but it registers as just response to a major infraction in many minds.

My Mad At list has permanent and transient entries.  My Bank, maybe The Banks.  My Shul expands to The Machers.  Expectedly subpar encounters at the grocery checkout expands to all companies that hire people I really would prefer not to cope with.  Specific encounters generalize too easily.  We live in an era of mistrust, much of it deserved.  Unfortunately, we are not left with a good way of separating out what should be embraced from what should be dispatched.

My medical community probably had the right idea when it established universal precautions early into the AIDS era.  Just put on the protective gear.  Assume every encounter is a risk.  It is easier to remain hospitable when there is no threat, or at least its potential has been contained.

Or keep the combative signals, no matter how appropriate the hormonal-neural connections find them, without a public expression.  Follow the rules myself, be kind, and don't self-promote.  Part 1 of most Honor Systems.  Be Good.  Widely implemented.  Part 2 is harder.  Turn in the Cheaters.  Not as well implemented, but essential to a functioning Honor System.  I don't know how well Micah would have done with that.  

Erroneous Algorithms

They keep coming.  Pictures of mansions I cannot afford, mostly owned by celebrities who I recognize.  Pictures of excessive sandwich plates from deli's I would not eat at.

It's not that I object to mansions.  Not at all.  On my travels, I often seek out the grandest of the grand.  Hearst Castle on my first trip to California.  Winterthur and Nemours near my home.  A few days in Newport.  The Biltmore when I go to visit The Great Smokies next month.  FDR Home and the Vanderbilt Mansion on a short stay in Hyde Park.  At one time I aspired to having a McMansion of my own, even visiting a few for sale at Sunday Open Houses.  Nearly all the grand estates I visited depended on inherited wealth, monuments to the self.  Forms of  look at me and visit when I am dead but not invited when I am alive sort of wealth.  While I can never attain a large fortune, and in late life I really don't want one, I do the same things in my very ample suburban development house that they do in theirs, though on a smaller scale.  I have a kitchen, though I produce from it what I want to eat without delegating anything to staff.  The public mansions I visit have no wastebaskets on display.  They have no paper scattered.  They have little open storage, other than elaborate bookcases.  My house has all these things.  I entertain, though less frequently, less elegantly, and on a smaller scale than the Grandees who built their estates more to impress than to enjoy.

FB feeds me something much different, and something not terribly appealing.  The sprawl in Florida or California by tech moguls or TV celebrities or athletes shout look at how much I have for myself.  Unlike San Simeon or the Newport Mansions, it is much less a shout of let me share with my guests what I created.  Undoubtedly, the Beautiful People have intense travel schedules that keep them from their pools or tennis courts.  They are displays, and an ostentation that FB thinks will have me coming back for more.  I try to Hide them or Snooze them but to no avail.  Their algorithm, I think erroneously, doesn't take the hint to try something else.

It misconstrued my fondness for Jewish deli's.  Every day I get photos of overstuffed corned beef on rye originating in multiple cities.  Virtually never kosher.  Perhaps I undermine myself in their algorithm placement by looking up the named restaurants to search their menus.  Always with a Reuben option, not kosher.  Katz, the granddaddy of them all, from its founding never made any pretense to being adherent to dietary laws. They promoted ethnic, and to be fair, avoid products inherently non-kosher irrespective of preparation.  

But not only are the pictures of the sandwiches lacking the standard I would set for myself, but they are excessive.  It would be unthinkable for me to pretend that a mound of pastrami, yes I am a sucker for kosher pastrami, would have the slices of rye bread as an afterthought.  Instead, when deli is available to me, I make my variations.  Sometimes mustard on the bread.  Often coleslaw atop the meat.  Never been a fan of Russian dressing but that was one of the most ordered options at the kosher Psychedelicatesin of my university years through the 1970s.  Those were sandwiches for a Sunday night treat, even a Sunday night destination or study hiatus.  And always amid people I knew.  The destination was never the pile of sliced cold cuts.  It was the ability to choose from a Kosher menu without restriction for a satisfaction that would not reappear for another week.

Facebook misjudged my likes.  I don't like ostentation.  It is not enjoyment.  I don't like envy, whether I wish I could have a house or a sandwich like that.  My pleasure is in making the most of what I have.  My house with its lawn, deck, kitchen, comfortable bed, climate control, and suitable guest areas.  For as often as I use a pool, or probably the celebrities are able to use theirs given their travel obligations, I can bundle the dip with my hotel stays.  I have enough food, maybe excessive food.  As much as I relish kosher pastrami, the barrier has been my willingness to choose that as my luxury, and to a lesser extent its availability.  I once lived in a place that had kosher delis. It's not like I've never experienced one.  I would not go there on a whim or very often.  FB photos of ostentatious heaps of corned beef don't change that.  

I don't know why their algorithms think that it might.

Asleep Atop Bedspread

I never tucked myself in.  When my internal clock awoke me at about 2AM, as it usually does, I had no recollection of the hours that preceded it.  Likely four hours, from my habitual nightly activity.  And I had changed into nightclothes.  I remember putting a hard-cover book checked out of the public library earlier that day onto the floor beside the bed.  Nothing else.

I fall asleep readily most nights, sometimes after using my smartphone when I shouldn't, sometimes after reading, though most commonly taking a supine position with dangling elements of the cumulative day's thoughts for a short time.  Sleep tracker use invariably puts my sleep onset time at about fifteen minutes from the time I turned on the app, placing the phone to my right.  I do not remember using the phone, although on my second nightly wakening I found it next to me with its light off.

At 2AM, awakened for no obvious purpose though always a convenient bladder emptying opportunity, I strolled to the bathroom and back.  I likely turned the bathroom light on and off, as it was off when I returned at my usual 7AM wake time.  When I returned, I realized that I had not removed the upper pillow with its sham that matched the bedspread.  I dislike that pillow.  It leaves my head too high.  Before tucking myself under the down comforter, I invariably place it next to the bed, where I had placed the library book.  And the cell phone either goes in the charger, where it should have gone based on its battery level, or on a ledge behind my bed.  It remained atop the bedspread, as did I.

My next awareness came after 5 AM, as it often does, with a target arise time of 7AM.  Now for the first time I realized that I fallen asleep atop the bedspread with cell phone at my side.  Sensing no need to get under the blanket, and with my preferred pillow securely beneath my head, I relocated the phone to its customary place on the wooden landing behind me.  Then a final snooze with some clock watching resuming at 6:30AM.  I arose at my appointed daily hour, not feeling dragged for having missed my blanket the entire night.

1.5 Liter Wine Bottles

Soda has been banned from my house with rare exceptions.  Seltzer, plain or flavored, offers substitute fizz with fewer noxious additives.  So does beer, which I now usually keep on hand.  It is consumed one can or bottle at a time, rarely more than two in any week.  I keep canisters of lemonade and iced tea mix.  The manufacturers need to prod their food scientists to improve the speed at which the sugar dissolves.  It is possible, as Turkey Hill cold beverages in one or two-liter plastic containers never have sugar sludge on the bottom.  Fizzy soda on Passover, when the yellow top to the 2-Liter PET bottle designates cane sugar.  And when I go on a road trip, and rarely on an especially hot day, the WaWa or Turkey Hill dispenser with its endless customization tempts me to a liter of iced soda I would not otherwise drink.  While intended for health, measured as weight control, my weekly weigh-ins have not ticked downward.

Wine remains a special occasion beverage, purchased by the glass at a restaurant or bottle for when toiling in my kitchen created an elaborate dinner.  Guests, birthdays, Mother's Day.  They get a 750 ml bottle of wine.  As a beverage for an ordinary supper, as a late evening sip, or as a pre-supper wind down, wine is too expensive.  Its shelf life expires before I can finish a bottle's contents.  Beer, seltzer, lemonade, and iced tea serve the food wash-down function better.  Swigs of high volume do this better than sips designed to distribute smaller amounts on the oral surfaces for flavor appreciation.

At one time I bought mass-produced wine as a beverge.  It came in 1.5 liter bottles.  Popular brands.  Mondavi, Gallo, Taylor from NY State.  My default when I could not decide was Almaden with its lightly tinted green bottle, flattened front and back surfaces, and replaceable cork caps.  It's been decades since I even looked for these.  At the time, screw tops meant cheap wine, but also wine that could be stored for later.  Home devices to rid the bottle of noxious oxygen had recently come to market, but for this, a replaceable cork or screw top would do.  Sometimes they announced the grape.   Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Merlot though I hardly ever opted for red.  More commonly it had a generic identification.  Chablis, White Blend, Rose, Red.  Use whatever grapes could not be otherwise purposed to minimize a winery's version of Shrink.

I would drink two stemmed glasses of my selection with dinner on consecutive days, or rarely have one glass as a nightcap.  I worked long hours in that era, raised a family who drank soda nightly without fail, and could use an excuse to not drive anywhere after supper.  It generally changed to a much less pleasant taste for the final third of the bottle, though never vinegar.  Sometimes I suffered through to the end with nightcaps, sometimes found a cooking purpose, rarely spilled the remainder in the sink.

Now older, retired empty nester, introduced to bourbon on a road trip through Kentucky to Mammoth Cave a few years ago, and soda avoider.  Maybe get another big bottle of wine to replace the brown distillery liquid that I sometimes pour myself at 4PM or offer an alternative to lemonade from a 4C Mix at supper.  My preferred liquor outlet is a mega-mart.  My state and the one adjacent to it restrict alcohol sales to places dedicated to that purpose.  They had an entire aisle devoted to large bottles of 1.5 and 3L as well as boxes.  And I knew from many dinner purchases previously that technology of bottling has improved.  A screw top no longer doomed the liquid contents.

I roamed the aisle.  Almaden with its unique bottle gone.  Taylor nor more.  Gallo no longer a default.  All bottles were now cylindrical.  Some had screwtops.  Many had non-replacable corks, with the expanded size likely intended for parties where guests would consume that amount in one session.  There were wineries I never heard of from places I am unlikely to ever visit.  They replaced the mass producers from California.  Some specified a grape, some went generic.  Nearly all cost $12-15.  A bargain adjusted for inflation that has occurred since the era when I sought out Mondavi and Almaden. 

I wonder why the American mass producers withdrew from that market.  In the end, my half-case of the Moosehead and Squirrel that prompted my trip already secure in the bottom of my cart, I added an Australian Chardonnay, Martin's Pick-Up brand with what must be an outback vehicle as their logo, to the cart.  Roughly the same price as those twelve beer bottles.

I opened the bottle with supper the next day.  Not bad.  Two stem glasses.  Food pairing, Gorton's Crunchy Fish Fillets heated in the oven and peas.  Intended to be a beverage more than a fine stimulation of taste sensors.  And that's what it was.