The only time that I have gone to a neighbour's door for help in my life was my car was stuck. It wasn't stuck in terms of ice or anything but I was backing it out of the garage and I did not seem to be able to manage it for some odd reason. I must admit I was getting concerned about my eyes at that stage but they had said I didn't need cataract surgery yet, But it just seemed that I wasn't seeing as well as I had been. So I did knock/ring the bell on the door next door just the one time to get help with that and they did back my car out of the garage. Which I said thank you for their assistance. My husband knew them well and they helped each other out when they were away or we were. I really didn't know them at all until my husband passed and then I did start speaking to them as my life was very busy helping my daughter and my son in law stayed in my house for half of a week with our youngest grandson as he needed assistance with his Autism (a very expensive process) so I did ask them to take in the mail which they did when I wasn't there but it was a short period of time. But mostly I keep entirely to myself except when my family is with me or I am with them. My daughters and son in law and grandchildren take good care of me.
I am finding though that the mail is very slow these days; some items I am expecting have not arrived. It seems really strange and it again makes me feel that virtual mailboxes would be so much better. All of these companies can produce electronic documents that the post office can distribute. It would be so much neater and no waste of paper. Even though my black bin was not emptied this week in two weeks it will barely have anymore than is in there now but with virtual I would have almost nothing and only need collecting every month or two. I simply do not use a lot of products. I never get parcels at the door as I do not buy anything except when family is here and we go shopping. But the Post Office would actually have a bigger business in parcel delivery if the mailboxes were virtual (especially in the country as well where everything could be delivered closer to home). Mind you I do not think the Post Office has to make money. It is a service to the public but it could be close to supporting itself with bulk mailing for business in a virtual way and delivery service for both government and mercantile. The number of in house workers and delivery van drivers would grow to offset the loss in jobs that a virtual system would entail. Running a virtual system requires management and workers along with AI.
I am also trying to reduce the plastic waste and metal from cans. I seldom open a can so that isn't very much but when my daughter is here we do have more cans. Plastic is a slow process as there are meat containers but I am thinking of switching to a butcher that only uses butcher paper to wrap the meat and just go more often when I have someone with me. My daughter found this company that makes a product in a Canadian cardboard box with a thin plastic container that is larger than I used to buy and that reduces the plastic somewhat but still there. I guess we need to go to powders but still you need a container but if it is cardboard which we produce a lot of then that does reduce the waste of plastic. We switched to powder for clothes washing and that is in a tin container which recycles very well much better than plastic (such knowledge from my own days in Chemistry at University). I usually have very little in the blue container but it has increased since we recycle all of the plastic freezer bags now.
I have had a large white plastic bag in my garbage for two weeks now and all it has in it is floss and it will take years to fill it with floss. The used kleenex is in a paper bag and goes out with the recycling along with the food waste which I put into used milk cartons (waxed cardboard) and freeze until the day of pickup. Again I only fill one of the 2 litre cartons once a week when I am on my own. When I have company I used the paper recycling bags not biodegradable plastic because we make the paper bags here in Canada.
Interesting really where all of that is going. I am verbose today but that happens when I am awake in the night contemplating how to solve whatever the current problem is. I may have a solution that I will work through over the next couple of days. I did find it inadequate to be told to just go to the store and set it up when I tried to set up a system online that I have used many times in the past but it took my money but did not set up the system I needed. I went through this call system that finally got me a person after two hours nearly the other day and was told that he couldn't do the work even though I had the charge number against my credit card for the government department. I find that weird really as everything is online and surely he could see that I had paid but not received the setup required. But maybe not. I didn't care for his solution which was to trek out to the store and set it up there. Why would I do that when I should be able to just easily set it up on line as I always have. But I do have a workaround in mind once my money comes back - no one is made of money to waste randomly trying to set something up. Plus I did not get a response to my filling in the forms where you mention the problem.
Having to change your work direction happens in life as my own husband graduated as a PhD Chemist and went on to do a Postdoc in Chemical Engineering as he wanted to be a working scientist not just an educated one. But no jobs as it was the time of the draft dodgers and they came north and took all the jobs for a bit and our PhD graduates taught high school (many in his PhD graduating class did that in that time period). So he did yet another degree masters in library science and got a job that he worked at happily for thirty years so I do not really have a lot of sympathy. Retrain and get a different job if your job disappears due to automation or political circumstance. Plus I do need a new vacuum cleaner and I want it to be all Canadian like they used to be; I will feel the same way if I am buying a fan or any other electrical device that is no longer made here and we import them from the companies in the United States that bought our companies out or simply out competed them and they closed. Those American companies in some cases made their products off shore eventually more cheaply in Asia and that is where some of them come from now first coming through the US to here. So retrain and lets get our industries back sooner rather than later. The shop vac works well but I would like a new Canadian vacuum cleaner and especially one that doesn't sound like a jet engine taking off.
Well must get some work done before church and eat my breakfast. The day is moving onward. The exercise this morning was excellent and it was 56 minutes (4 minutes faster than usual), 49 cardio load and 326 calories, step count 3306 which is still a little high as I did lose count a couple of time. Yesterday I walked nearly 17,000 steps. I get up and walk every hour for about ten to fifteen minutes which does bring that count up rapidly plus I ran for thirty minutes and did weight lifting for 22 minutes.
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