You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2025.
What I do to make a living hasn’t really changed; what has changed is the working environment in which I do it. I was previously employed in a privately-owned and operated pokey practice, operated by a couple of aged hippies who took a laissez-faire approach to my industry. They retired and sold the place to a conglomerate that was in time bought out by a very large corporation, whom I christened The Overlords to protect them and prevent me from being fired for sedation.
I still think like a private practitioner and not as a corporate minion and this causes concern on occasion. I recently received an email from a vague but menacing department (possibly HR) informing me about PTO, which is Personal Time Off. I am not sure what this is actually although Someone (who has worked in banking) keeps trying to teach me. Apparently just by doing my job I accumulate hours like crypto-coins that I can use for – what? Sick leave? Vacation time? I think those are separate entities. The email conveys my PTO must be used by year’s end or it disappears. The email included a link to investigate this matter.
If I read this right, I have 182 hours of PTO. Patience above!
Doctors would sooner eat rats at Tewkesbury than take time off, as the world stops spinning when they do. Unless you have a very obligating colleague to cover you, patient matters don’t take time off with you but pile up and when you return to work there is a stockpile high as Fafner’s hoard. It doesn’t feel worth the time off. Taking eight hours off (which is a day’s work) is one thing, but 182 hours translates to nearly 22 workdays. I think I get paid for taking PTO (I am not sure) but can you imagine that much time off? I can’t.
The notion of losing something I didn’t know I had in the first place doesn’t feel a loss. Perhaps in December I will take a few days off here and there and in 2026 I will be more mindful to skip work from time to time so as not to accumulate such.
The email suggests I can donate unused PTO into some sort of bank for less fortunate minions to use. Works for me.
It strikes me as silly, but being a minion to The Overlords has a lot of things I don’t understand or am familiar with. I suppose I will learn in time.
Perhaps I can take some PTO to go online and learn the jargon.
Note: today is Guy Fawkes Day which is celebrated in England with bonfires while in The Time of Legends The Board of Directors Here at Spo-reflections celebrate by blowing public buildings up. I’ve gone along with them albeit a little more willingly than usual. I will make comments to the comments later today provided they haven’t thrown me onto the pyre with the potatoes. Spo.
What’s top of my mind: Getting the tarot readings delivered. They were easy to read and record, now I have to connect the photos in my phone with the emails in the laptop and get them out to the right recipient. Not to be worrying! This should be out by weekend.
Where I’ve been: The ultra-sound place. To appease the nephrologist (all docs is quacks) I got the ultrasound of the kidneys accomplished. The place looked to do mostly mammograms as the majority of the patients in the waiting room were female and the place was bedecked with pink breast cancer awareness signs. I am curious if the ultrasound was successful as last time my kidneys hid behind a wall of intra-abdominal adipose tissue.
Where I’m going: A 10K walk. Sunday is the annual 10K race/walk that Someone and I train for starting in August. I am pleased as Punch I have improved: I have a quicker pace and I feel less tired doing it. Mind! I am still in the back but not as ‘back’ as before. It is slow progress but progress nevertheless.
What I’m watching: My protein intake. I recently reviewed a lecture with recommendations for longevity/health. Diet is the least specific element as it varies from person to person. There is a general consensus thems over sixty should get 1.5g per kg of total weight of protein daily. The Personal Trainer points out if one is trying to gain muscle not just maintain it, one should consume more like 1.8kg per kg of body weight of protein. My math says this is about 144g of protein per day. I started weighing things and looking at labels. Indeed, left to my usual diet, I am not getting near this amount.
What I’m reading: Updates on endometriosis. What a messy and upsetting diagnosis is this one. Happily women and doctors are becoming more aware of the condition and are doing more about it other than dismiss symptoms or attribute to heartburn or hysteria whatever.
What I’m listening to: Spotify random tunes. The DJ on the app must be a little muddled what to play as in my playlist are my tunes (mostly from the 60s and 70s) and the tunes donated by my 16yo niece. What a couple! One moment it’s The Monkees and then it’s The Arctic Monkeys.
What I’m eating: More salads. The Most Austere Diet requires less carbs and more vegetables. Among the greasy spoons and fast food joints at the nearby mall in MESA lurks a ‘Salad-to-go’ place that serves only salads no entrees. The decor is quite spartan consisting of hard wooden benches and everything else is stainless steel. It’s not at all a comfortable place to sit and the salads are not cheap. However, that’s what’s needed for lunch these days.
Who needs a good slap: Thems who started decorating for Christmas already. Cheap Christmas trash shows up in the stores earlier with each passing year. I went to Uncle Albertsons on 1 November and the store was bedecked with Christmas candy where the Halloween sweets were two days ago. Mercifully they haven’t started playing ho ho ho tunes – yet. For once I am glad the HOA is there with its policy of no XMAS decorations until the day after Thanksgiving. At La Casa de Spo, we traditionally don’t put up the tree and things until 15 December, Someone’s birthday. We used to think that was a tad early to haul out the holly ho ho ho.
Are there Christmas things up yet in your neck of the woods?
Who gets a fist-bump: The new counselor at work. Finally! The Overlords hired a male therapist, something we haven’t had in ages. It’s not good to having only female counselors. I was keen to meet the man who arrived on Monday. He is well over four feet and he sounds experienced and qualified. There are some added bonuses that he is has some training in Jungian psychology and he drinks tea! Excellent! His schedule and mine overlap on Wednesdays. I hope he stays and does the place good. Perhaps if I make quality tea (no rubbish) on Wednesdays this will help him stay.
What I’m planning: My insurance coverage for 2026. This is always a pain in the drain to do. First issue is signing in. I recall last year The Overlords wouldn’t let me do this at home using a device that wasn’t theirs. This made us have to search on the computers at work, which are being difficult anyway. It will be a miracle if I get in smoothly. Figuring out where to go, which name/password/device to use drives Someone to distraction and by the time we figure that out we are tired and cross and not yet begun to figure out the insurance options. Oh the pain.
What’s making me smile: A quiet month. The Halloween decorations are down and the house looks less cluttered. I know of no plans or events for the month. It should be a relatively quiet time. Lovely.
What does your month look like?
53. Which piece of media do you feel most represented or “seen” in: a timely play, an old-school movie, a thoughtful poem?
It is hard if not impossible to pinpoint down one book, play, or movie that most represents me, as I can find myself in almost everything I read or watch, if I look for it and the author does their work well. A good piece of art (whether play, movie, or poem) has a character (or characters) who the viewer or reader can identify with. Maybe not entirely but at least some, enough to relate to what the protagonist is going through. We feel this could be us, or maybe part of us we don’t like and thank goodness it isn’t us. I am nearly done reading ‘War and Peace’ (!) and for two-thirds of the book I couldn’t relate to any of the characters, until war comes along and complacent lives are altered from outside forces. That I can relate to. I recently saw a play I found boring that I wasn’t connecting with any of the characters until the end when the one who had the happy ending we were told she would soon loose all through a sudden change of health. I can relate to that as well.
I hope I don’t bore the Spo-fans when I bring up (again) Milo the boy protagonist from ‘The phantom tollbooth’. He is about as spot-on as I can find myself in a book. A lad who is disenchanted with the world stumbles into a land of fantastic beings. He is transformed into a life-long learner. Afterwards Milo doesn’t need to return to The Lands Beyond; there is infinite wonder all around him to last a lifetime.
‘The never-ending story’ has a similar lad Bastian who like Milo longs to escape the world and he does so through a magical book to visit Fantastica. There he meets and saves The Childlike Empress to recreate Fantastica in his own image.* From a Jungian point of view Male and Female merge, as well as Reality with Fantasy to transform the boy into a better being.
What these two stories have in common is The Hero’s Journey, the story of transformation through Journey. And these two boys do through Fantasy.
Any media that has this in it is likely to hit home for Urs Truly.
What book or movie or TV program captures your essence?
*In the second part of the book, the protagonist hears of others who have come to Fantastica and have grown for it, a young lad with the name like Shaxpeere. The line is easy to miss but incredibly noteworthy.
We had forty beggars on All Hallows Eve, which was not bad. I keep track of these things; last year we had sixty-three but the years before it was only twenty to thirty. Friday night’s “A” candy was a full-size set of “Chuckles”. It was supposed to evoke glee for receiving something large and unexpected – like my men. Mostly it evoked puzzlement and a few said tactlessly ‘what’s that?”. I couple of times I made the offer of a Chuckles bar or a scoop of miscellaneous sweets and the latter was always chosen. There was plenty of leftover candy, which I put into Ziplock bags at the bottom of the freezer. It was a fun night but rawther exhausting. We went to bed without making dinner; we made the steak, soup, and noodles over the weekend.
For thems who requested Tarot readings I will email them throughout the week until I get them done.
I got a splendid holiday treat in the form of a book. I remember in grade school getting a book of ghost stories through Scholastic orders.* One of the tales was titled “The Demon of Detroit”. Having grown up there, I was thrilled a bona fide haunted house nearby; I wanted my parents to drive me to the place. After all these years I can still see in the illustration of the demon. I read this book every October. A week ago I tried another online attempt to find the author. Normally when I search I get all sorts of unrelated rubbish. Lo! This time I found it and got the title of the book. I immediately knocked on Mr. Bezos’ door to ask did he have the book. Hot puppies! He did! It arrived on Hallowe’en afternoon. Have you ever opened a book you haven’t read in ages but instantly remembered the picture and stories? I fell asleep reading it. Admittedly ‘The Demon of Detroit’ wasn’t at all scary (or that well written) but it was a thrill to read it nonetheless.
Yesterday the new kitchen chairs arrived. They replace the ones twenty-five years old whose arms are threadbare beyond belief. What to do with the old chairs is to be determined. When I lived in Chicago one only had to put things in the alley and within an hour it was gone. Alas, Babylon! We have nothing of the sort here in HOA-haunted Arizona. Unlike mattresses, the deliverymen (who were well over four feet) were not obligated to take away the old ones. I am half-tempted to put plastic coverings down to keep the new and quite expensive chairs as fresh as possible. Has anyone every done this?
November ought to be a quiet month. It looks like Someone will work the weekend of Thanksgiving. November sees the return of The Most Austere Diet; I’ve been quite negligent last month given holiday treats. By December I hope to have lost lots, at least enough to get back into my trousers. Oh the embarrassment.
I have two weeks to sign up for next year’s health care. Rumor has it one of the options offers no deductibles. If that is the case, I smell a rat – a big one. Someone and I will do what we can to discriminate the options and choose the one less noxious.
That’s about all the Sunday Spo-bits there is. I still have to put away the Halloween decorations which are now piled up in the garage, high as Fafner’s hoard. Pretty soon it will be time to haul out the holly but not before Thanksgiving thank you very much. I was walking about the neighborhood the other day, taking in the yard decor, when I saw behind a yard full of ghosts and skeletons into the front window to see a Christmas tree. Oh the horror.
*The book was published in 1971. This means I was eleven years old when it was purchased. I don’t think I’ve ever again matched the euphoria of buying a book as I had in grade school through Scholastic Books. Teacher opening the box of delivered books and giving the students their order was better than Christmas morning.
Spo-Reflections 