“Remoted” Workday 182 / Day 273 (Monday)

Temperatures were in the 50s yesterday and today, headlines are declaring the "Biggest snow, ice storm in years set to wallop the eastern US" in the middle of the week. All a pretty normal almost-winter day in New England, really. I hope we don't get shortchanged like the last predicted snowfall when it was hours of rain and then a couple inches of wet snow. 

After work, it was a stretch of overeating that began with a last of the latkes supper and a baked sweet potato and the realization that, although the presentations were different, with the exception of some applesauce, it was a 100% potato meal. This was followed by Veggie Straws and cookies and a level of amazement at how much food can be stress eaten in 40 minutes. Thank you holidays plus pandemic plus absence of any Christmas gift ideas and a host of other stupid stuff.

Then there was TV, well, because, it's a safe escape. Life used to have other activities and interests, but now it's just TV. In December, I have my annual date with holiday movies and commercials. The brief hiatus from streaming reinforces why I spend the other 11 months with my Prime and Netflix subscriptions. In the past three or four days I’ve seen way too many commercials for pharmaceuticals. There are some medications with some crazy sounding names that the advertisers inform me I should ask my doctor about. I will not be doing this. Then there was the commercial inviting viewers to “explore the wonders of an award-winning blend” with “Menage a Trois” wine. Ummm, ok? It sounded nuts, so I looked it up online. The website claims that “We will bring you blissful pleasure when we're together.” That is a mighty lofty promise from a bottle of wine, indeed. I needed a cold shower after reading about the sexy wines.

Tonight’s 6:00 Lifetime movie, “A Christmas in Tennessee,” turned out to be annoying, and not just for the three-minute commercial interruptions every four minutes. Without the ads, this movie would be about 45 minutes long instead of two hours. In this one, the single mom main character runs the bakery her parents ran. She gets a big cookie order and after closing the shop for the day, she is baking the new order with her long hair down and loose. Yummmy hair cookies coming up. Also, she’s basically on a date and being very playful in her alleged business kitchen and her new potential love interest is eating the raw cookie dough and playing with the cut-out, still unbaked cookies for the big customer order. Ummm…. No. Stop. This is not flirty home baking, this is supposed to be a business. Are there no health department rules?

Movie dance studios are
always amazing.

The movie set in Tennessee pushed me over the edge with the mandatory precocious child and when it was finally over I hopped back to Netflix to escape the sugar-coated stories and annoying commercials. The alternative is a series about ballet dancers which opens with a dancer going over the edge of a roof. This show comes with a warning label about “self-harm – sex – nudity – language” and not a grain of artificial sweetener. Thank goodness.  A poorly acted show about ballet dancers in an elite boarding school with dance scenes in huge studios with a live pianist are what I need to get the aspartame taste out of my mouth.