By Elaine Carlson

Dairy Entry 1: Yesterday when I got home I drank a cup of eggnog I had saved from New Years. I wanted to make it special so I added a shot of spiced rum. It was a pleasant treat.

When I finished the eggnog I had four cups of hot tea --- a Lemon Ginger, two Orange and Spice, and an Earl Grey. In an hour I had a glass of orange juice.

I had gone to Urgent Care sure I had a Urinary Tract Infection but the doctor said I didn't. He said in the test they had given me "There were no white cells in your urine." He said I was dehydrated and to be sure to drink more fluids.

I feel satisfaction I did what the doctor told me to do.

Diary Entry 2: Today is the day after Christmas and I really feel the oppression of the Pandemic. Before on this day I would go out to see the crowds – the people packing into stores intent on not missing out on the After Christmas Sales. I especially liked to see people wearing their new clothes --- you can see the creases created by having been in a gift box.

Diary Entry 3: When Jonas Salk was doing his research on polio at the University of Pittsburgh he needed a way to grow cultures of the polio virus. The local hospitals agreed to give him the skin they had taken off the baby boys in their circumcisions.

Daily an employee of the lab drove to all of the Maternity Wards in the local hospitals with a square carrying case. I learned this fact of medical history in "Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine" by Jane S. Smith.

Diary Entry 4: One of my cousins sent me a message, "Grandmother was wrong to say you couldn't write because you couldn't spell."

I told her I was writing for a local newspaper and sent her a few of my columns. I was happy to get that praise. I was also glad to know someone in the family remembered how our grandmother treated me. She always told me I couldn't write because I was a poor speller. And she wanted me to know I would never be able to write.

Diary Entry 5: Ye gads is this the fourth time those folks are sending me this bill?

It is for a $25 charge from a medical practice I went to in Las Cruces. When I called the billing office the person who answered said it was for when I didn't show up for an appointment. When she gave me the date I told her I did too make it to their office that day.

She said, "No you didn't." Then she went on to tell me tests they were going to do. I was there but they didn't do the tests she described.

I guess it is possible the lab people set up everything and when I didn't go there they contacted billing to say I was a no show. When the doctor decides not to have me take a few tests it isn't fair to expect me to pay a Missed Appointment Charge.

Diary Entry 6: I just finished reading "The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust" by Diana B. Henriques. The author told how that man was able to cheat people out of $65 billion in "the biggest Ponzi Scheme in history."

Madoff didn't use the funds he raised to purchase stocks but put the money into an interest-earning savings account. He would make withdrawals to pay people who were closing their accounts and enough to provide a nice lifestyle for himself and his family.

Henriques tells how he started out committing an "affinity fraud" in which "one member of a close-knit trusting community exploits that trust to steal from others in that group." He was Jewish (he died April 14, 2021) and at first his victims were Jewish.

It didn't take him long to reach out to non-Jews to invest in his Bernard L Investment Securities. This was a fascinating but sad story.

Diary Entry 7: I have been thinking it might be a good idea for me to make a New Year Resolution to only read mysteries written more than twenty or thirty years ago.

At New Books at the library I picked up four mysteries. I sat in one of their over-stuffed chairs and read the first one or two pages of each one. For three I said nah. But for that fourth one I went ahead and read the prologue and the first chapter. I was hooked.

It starts with a scandal --- an important man in town is accused of sexually assaulting women for twenty years. There is not a detective but two main characters trying to figure out what is happening --- an interesting twist on a detective story. They hack into each other's computers. One of the bad guys (there are two) is a sensitive man who all the feminists in town insists "gets it" regarding the issues women face. Oh my lally.

Diary Entry 8: Today is Thanksgiving. My husband Brad said he wanted to prepare the dinner and we decided we would have corned beef. He cooked the meat in his pressure cooker and got me a prepared salad while he was out shopping.

All I had to do was to make sure I got to the table. This is the kind of a meal I like. He's insecure and keeps telling me the corned beef was not tender. I kept saying it was tender – that the corned beef is in fact perfect.

Then the dessert --- Cheese Cake. It was a perfect, glad to be alive, Thanksgiving Dinner.

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