Naps

My dad had a good long run after his retirement (35 years) but we all felt sorry for my mom. He didn't beat her. He slept. A lot. For the record, his daily grind when working in road construction was brutal. You start at 06:30 when the fuel truck arrives. Everything starts moving at 07:00. Coffee truck and a fifteen minute break at 9. Half an hour sitting with your lunch pail at 12:00. Coffee truck and fifteen minutes at 3. Park equipment, lock up, pack up and head home at 6. Tack on a hour at each end for travel and if you are lucky, that's a 64 hour week. He would occasionally take a day or two around a long weekend but never any formal holidays and and unless it was pouring rain all day, he did that for forty-something years! He taught me well and that is the sort of daily effort I put at the bank!

Tick tick tick ...

OK, my old work mates. Put that milk back in your noses. Do not hyperventilate. I agree that perhaps my commitment to finding more efficient ways to complete my assigned tasks occasionally might give the appearance that my daily duties did not constitute slave labour. Everyone OK? Onward.

This working from 6 to 6, or even 8 to 4 is unnatural? The mammalian body was designed to nap. Lions nap on the savanna. Tigers nap in the jungle. Horses can nap standing up. If they are not eating or making babies, they are napping.

Not all creatures are like this. The famous time-isolation studies conducted by a French geologist (Siffre) are instructive. He takes a group of people and puts them in caves deep underground with no access to natural light, no watches, no clocks, no time of days queues from the surface? Eat when you're hungry, sleep when you're tired. They were French so I am pretty sure I know what else they did. What happened? People's days got longer and longer, sleep cycles got shorter and shorter. People would keep a daily diary, log their perception of the passage of time and emerge thinking it was July. It was September. Awake for 48 hours, sleep for 7. Rinse and repeat. Weird eh? There is only one conclusion that can be drawn from these studies. French people are all reptiles (as we have long suspected).

My family is mammalian. Lions and tigers and bears oh my. Forget circadian rhythms. We are genetically pre-disposed to naps. When Dad got off that fifteen hours per day treadmill, he napped. One after breakfast. One after lunch. Maybe a quick one just before supper and off to bed early. I inherited that gene. I can sleep on the hood of a car in a snowstorm. At my mother in laws funeral. On the hardwood floor of my sister's house while the whole Christmas thing goes on around me. I just need to stop moving, close one eye (inside joke) and it happens. I get in two or three good naps every day and go to bed early. I understand that in hockey, they play three periods. Not at our place.

So, when you see me in the grocery store, or on the street and say, "How's it going?" and I respond with "staying busy", please understand that I spend an hour a day on coffee, and three hours a day on NAPS. Per day. Every day.

Quote Of The Week

"It used to be called The Straight of Muz, before; you know .... YO MAMA"

Our Optimum Week

So, my goal was to get to 1.8 million by June 1st. I'm five weeks early. Those 30% points deals at Shopper, add up fast! I am tempted to go for two million, but gardening season is upon us. Keeping in mind that for half of that time, I was working and doing less than half a million, these days we are doing four times that much. This year, not only will most items we purchase be on sale, but there will be two grand in free groceries on a ten thousand dollar spend. I am surprised when most of my subscribers tell me they like the content, but we will do our own shopping ... thank you very much. If you have less than half a million points, then I strongly suspect, you are leaving about four a grand a year on the table. Those chicken tenders that Zehr's gives away every time the Raptors win a playoff game are the best deal ever. You know ... free? SWMBO gets hers after a visit to the air fryer and mine gets chopped up, mixed with garlic, ginger, onions and gets a quick stir fry, then goes into a wrap with peanut sauce. My Zehr's has a little sign up in the RTE department. If they don't have rotisserie chicken, you can get a coupon for a free one later. I was in the other day and innocently asked if the kid had any chicken coming out? I never noticed that sign before. He looks askance at me and says twelve minutes, but if you can't wait, (nudge nudge, wink wink) I can give you a coupon for a free one. Now, whenever I walk in, the first thing I check, is how many are in the warmer. If there is only one or two, it is sometimes worth it to swing back past the spot just in case someone has snarfled the last two. Here's your list. I left in the long term offers but did not include them in the financial totals. You have three weeks, I would hit every one of these:

We Are Watching

Eastern Conference NHL Playoffs on Sportsnet - SWMBO won't have Tkachuk to kick around anymore as the Senators got smoked. The Penguins are trying t0 come back from oh and three. Then what? Root for Buffalo?

Mudtown on BritBox - A pile of cash goes missing during a drug deal and a judges' daughter is up to her neck in it. Pretty good first season! Four stars.

... and finally

Virtual Signalling Bingo - I will have no truck with just about every aspect of the political right these days. I used to agree with them on deficit spending but as we all know, that is out the window now except for cuts to foreign aid, health care and social programs. Unfettered access to guns has proved to be a disaster and trickle down economics has been tried for forty years. It doesn't work. Stop talking about it. There is, however, one aspect of bleating from the right that I find myself in total agreement these days, and that is virtue signalling. It happens on the other side (watch any pickup truck commercial), don't get me wrong, but the left has it down to a science.

There was a mealy mouthed example at the Academy Awards last year where Julianne Hough delivered a native land rights admission while thanking the Tongva, Tataviam, and Chumash peoples for the land where Hollywood now stood. Bill Mahar summed up the reaction of most poeple: "Hey Hollywood. You own thousand of acres of the best land in the state. If that's the way you feel, then GIVE IT BACK ... or shut the fuck up!"

Where I am getting tired of this political correctness, is within television advertising. Take any two minute commercial break these days and you will see four 30 second commercial posts. Let's say one for laundry soap, some drug that nobody needs, a PSA and of course gambling (the new growth industry). Print off the attached Virtue Signalling Bingo Card, get your dabber out and play along?

• The first commercial comes on and you will instantly note that it is a mixed race couple. I know 100 couples. If you know what science knows about paleoanthropology, all couples are mixed race. Most just don't look it. That is not what they are going for? They are working you. Dab the I for interracial Uncomfortable yet?
• The very next person or couple you see, one will include an Asian. Perhaps a token Filipino or Hispanic? You can smell the people who create these commercials going down the checklist. It stinks. Dab the B for brown.
• The next entry will be a little more subtle but Lord knows, we need to recognize the sexually diverse. Three guys standing on a VRBO porch. They are just standing there? Staring at each other? What are they planning? Two gals singing along with the radio while driving along in their Subaru Forester. One has very short hair. Everyone knows what they are signalling right? Dab the G for gay. Oh and a Canadian politician (Leah Gazan of the NDP) rhymed off this little ditty last month and got her fifteen minutes of fame. For all the wrong reasons. Apparently, her party supports the em, em, eye, double u, gee, two, es, el, gee, bee, tee, queue, queue, eye, eh, plus ... community. Yup, that's MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+ If you are visiting us and want to save your cell data, it's my new WIFI password!
• A commercial for any political party of government initiative? Local, provincial or federal, you are going to get some buckskin and beads. Maybe some dancing and that close-up of those muffled drum beaters keeping time for you. Dab the N for native. Oh wait, there will also be a Canadian flag in the background somewhere. No bonus points, but it will be there.
• Others? A relatively new entry in the field. I saw a golf shirt commercial with a midget thrown in for good measure. And you can always count on some wheelchair basketball and a quick flash of someone with Down's Syndrome. This is considered de rigueur these days for anyone trying to sell dish soap or minivans?

Inclusion is good. I am all for it. No one knows better than me the stigma of looking a little different or having a disabled child. Just don't stare and for the sake of all that is holy, stop using any of the tropes listed above to try and sell me a seven game parley on Fanduel. Or dish soap. Thanks.

Mitch & Maddie

... scroll down for your complimentary bingo card: