I will be injected with the first COVID-19 shot on Saturday morning. I hope it works. J gets hers this afternoon.

I no longer have any sense of what a pre-COVID-19 “normal” was. I fear the pandemic was a pretense to tear apart the world and its norms we had become accustomed to, like Mass with no preregistration, or swimming for longer than forty-five minutes at any one time, or seeing the face of a stranger.

The people who brought us this dystopian nightmare ought to be brought to justice, as in pay monetary damages for trashing the world’s societies and economies, but they won’t. We all know this. This unspoken reality affirms every notion we have about the inequities of power and wealth. Powerful people and nations, e.g. The People’s Republic of China, can do whatever the Hell they want and the rest of the world will play along, albeit begrudgingly. They can even get their demented hireling elected President of the United States.

The rich and powerful can dictate their desires for the world and governments will do their darndest to gratify those wishes. The Papacy will act as a lap dog, rather than a guide. The New World Order. That’s what Marx and every monster of the Twentieth Century wanted. Maybe Stalin should have worn those nice sweaters like Bill Gates wears.

I think I will eat some red meat today while I still have the chance.

I’m waiting for an Amtrak passenger train #84 to stop in Ashland. After that I plan to go back to bed.

I had oatmeal for breakfast, again. I found a recipe for steel cut oats, prepared overnight in a slow cooker. It makes enough oatmeal to feed the hungriest and largest Irish family in Southie, but for one old man on a weight loss regimen, it represents breakfast for a week. Or more. It’s redeeming feature is that it’s delicious.

It is muy importante’ to either use a lot of cooking spray, butter or oil to coat the inside of your slow cooker. Or use a slow cooker liner. This stuff sticks like you wouldn’t believe! That complete, you’re ready to move on.

Take 1.5 cups of steel cut oats( no quick cooking steel cut oats), no regular oatmeal. I use McCann’s in the nifty steel can. Add it to 4 cups water, 2 cups milk,. Add 3 tablespoons milled (ground) flaxseed meal, for healthy fatty acids, vanilla, cinnamon 2 teaspoons salt, and two mashed bananas. Stir it up real good, set the slow cooker on the low setting and leave it to cook overnight. (8hrs)

The idea is to create an oatmeal with the flavours of banana bread. It pretty much does.

It’s a fairly simple recipe. You can find more instructive recipes online for slow cooker oatmeal. Use them! I intended that summary as just an overview. This is a perfect breakfast for, say, Christmas morning or any other morning where a large herd of humans may be corralled in your domicile.

It is very tasty and reheats easily. I use my oven, putting the desired amount in a Corningware dish warming it for 15-20 minutes at 300F. Or use a microwave oven, if you have one (I don’t).

Other than eating, sleeping, housework, swimming, and enduring unrequited sexual longing, life is pretty uneventful.

Oh, and I pray the Rosary daily with the priests at Lourdes Grotto. Seems to help.

If one is Welsh, this is the Feast Day of the nation’s patron saint, Saint David. Time to put leeks in the band of your hat. Or you could just wait a couple of weeks and opt for the less embarrassing shamrock of your Celtic kin, the Irish (St Patrick).

It was a bit premature, but I watched an intensely Welsh movie, produced by Euan Lloyd, a Welshman, featuring Welsh actors Richard Burton (born Richard Jenkins) and, Kenneth Griffith. The film, Thr Wild Geese, is something of an action-adventure cult film, but I remember it for its ties to Wales.

Since my Christian name is David, I also remember that the Russians celebrate the Saint’s Day of one’s patron saint just as we celebrate birthdays. Now I don’t know if that means that, if you go to The Cheesecake Factory in Moscow, the waitstaff serenades you, but the Russians do sing in chorus an awful lot.

Interestingly, the Welsh are also known for their tradition of choral music. So that’s how I tied those two threads together, Russia and Wales. Pretty neat, huh?