Question of the Day: Umbrella Day

I AM CAUGHT UP!![1]

4 – Ice cream For Breakfast Day: Have you ever eaten ice cream for breakfast (or for any other meal)?
5 – World Nutella Day: Do you like Nutella? How often to you eat Nutella?
6 – Chopsticks Day: Can you eat with chopsticks? If yes, how often do you use them?
7 – World Ballet Day: Have you ever been to a ballet performance? If not, is this something that might interest you? Have you ever had ballet lessons?
8 – World Opera Day: Are you an opera buff?
9 – Read in the Bathtub Day: Do you read in the bath? Have you ever been reading in the bath and dropped your book into the water?

I have eaten ice cream for dinner. More frequently I have eaten potato chips for dinner. Nutella is great on ice cream (with almonds!) but other than that I don't eat it much. I honestly don't have a huge sweet tooth, so anything sweet is a very occasional indulgence. I can eat with chopsticks and own a few sets. (I find the Japanese style easier than the Chinese.) I have been to a small number of ballets and enjoyed them. I took ballet as a child and was thoroughly traumatized by the experience. I have been to much larger number of operas and thoroughly enjoyed them. I have a friend who at one time was very much into opera and ended up taking a lot of his friends to (performances? recitals? Not sure of the correct noun here.) and I was the lucky beneficiary on a number of occasions. Thanks to him I got to see the entire Ring Cycle and some modern composers who were fantastic. I may have read in a bathtub once or twice as an experiment but never really got the appeal. This might be partially because I am long and don't really fit in bathtubs very well.

10 – Umbrella Day: Umbrella or raincoat? Do you carry an umbrella or raincoat “just in case” if the weather looks doubtful, or do you take your chances? What types of umbrellas do you like? Do you keep umbrellas in different places, e.g. one at work, one in your car (if you have a car), to avoid being caught by unexpected rain?

So here's the thing.

I have a vestibular disorder, which means my balance is crap. Most people can kinda grasp what that means intellectually. Walking on ice is harder. Parkour is right out. Probably not doing any... gymnastics? Tightrope walking? But that's really it.

In real life it is way more than that. Vestibular is associated with hearing so loud noise make me dizzy. (concerts) Vision is part of how we orient ourselves in our environment, so lots of movement in my visual field makes me dizzy. (crowds) Ditto flashing or moving lights make me dizzy (that fucking Scotiabank movie theatre downtown, which is also LOUD and CROWDED). I can't chew gum and walk at the same time, I shit you not, something about moving my jaw like that confuses my sense of where my head is located in 3D space. (Talking and walking I can do, (I guess because it's less mechanical? No idea.) I went to some spiffy catered work event a few years ago and I couldn't have any of the free coffee or breakfast because there was no place to sit down. And the food looked really good too!) When it first happened stairs were hard because I could no longer trust my body sense of where my feet were but also looking down made me dizzy.

So anyway, lots of physio and it's mostly under control now yadda yadda, BUT, gravity storms are still an occasional thing. So it is always a thing where I don't like to carry stuff in my hands. (I have never carried a purse, I think purses are devices for ensuring that you lose all your possessions all at once) but also now I actually can't carry something that means my weight is not centred. And I really really need to have my hands free because I just might need to flail around like an idiot to figure out which way is up and where I am in three dimensional space, and I would rather not do that with a pointy object in my hand. This goes triple if I'm on a bus, because the way they move makes it just that more likely that I need to hold on.

So that is a long multi-paragraph way of saying "No I do not carry an umbrella."

Often, I will wear a hat.

**

Today I have spam with the title "How to control your penis' mind..." and I keep looking at it and thinking um...

Also I have been getting SO MUCH spam for something that will make me pee more prodigiously. Is that really a thing? I can see it being useful if I can just do it once and get it out of the way for the day, but other than that I don't see the appeal.

***

I spent some time with the Old Man today.

It was not good.[2]

I have spent the whole evening chewing the inside of my own head about this, and I think I need to talk to my sister about contingency plans. Because I may have legitimately hit the wall in terms of how much I can do for him.

***

[1] This will not last.
[2] Not getting into details because the man has the right to some privacy.