TUESDAY 26th MAY 2015 07:35 BST

Read my book - ENLIGHTENMENT FOR ORDINARY FOLK
 
Also available - EMOTIONAL MANAGEMENT FOR ORDINARY FOLK
 
WISDOM, HUMOUR, AND LOTS OF OTHER INTERESTING STUFF CAN BE FOUND ON MY PINTEREST PAGE and FACEBOOK PAGE
TO FIND OUT WHAT I DO, CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE

1. THIS DAY IN WORLD WAR 2 (26th May 1945)
Norway...
Free Norwegian forces arrive at Tromso aboard British vessel Largs Bay

Germany...
Allied headquarters relocates to Frankfurt-am-Main

Bougainville...
Australian II Corps are mopping up isolated Japanese around the Buin Road

Luzon...
Patrols of US 6th Army reach Santa Fe

Mindanao...
US 8th Army reaches the Pulangi River near Sanipon

Okinawa...
Japanese 32nd Army is gradually withdrawing from the Shuri area 
US 10th Army fails to capture Dick Hill
Admiral Halsey meets with General Buckner to insist on completion of early-warning radar stations to protect the fleet
Offshore, USN minesweeper Forrest is written off by kamikaze aircraft

Off Japan...
Four Japanese vessels are sunk and eight more damaged by mines
Japanese vessel No. 7 Kotobuki Maru is sunk by USN submarine Billfish

China...
Japanese forces withdraw from Yungning

Today's Air Raids...
Marcus Island by US 7th Air Force
Truk Atoll by US 7th Air Force
Borneo on military targets by US FEAF
Cebu on military targets by US FEAF
Formosa fighter sweeps by US FEAF
Off Japan minelaying by US 20th Air Force
China on bridges, rail lines, and other targets around Hankow, Lohochai, Kinkiang, Kioshan, Siangtan, and Paoching by US 14th Air Force

2. TODAY IN MY LIFE
Blogging
Meditation 
Me Time
Quality time with Missus

Twitter Followers = 1,968 (up 2)
Non-followed eliminated = 0

Unfollowers eliminated = 0

New Followers followed back = 1

@bixarreglom

Spammers not followed back = 1

@thvamprdiaries

3. TODAY'S SELF-OBSERVATION 

Most of the time I like to forget I'm a carer, but on school holidays I'm forced to confront the fact that I am. Missus is of course not aware of being in need of care. After all, she successfully holds down a job and has a diploma in French (which she insists on calling a degree). To the unaware, she seems normal on the surface.

You have to look deeper into her life to see that she has a serious mental illness. She is unable and unwilling to do any household tasks and has an OCD issue concerning locks, gates and taps, in the latter case using baby wipes to avoid using taps at all. The antipsychotic medication she takes gives her "tunnel sense" - she has no peripheral hearing or vision at all. 

She will never throw anything away, which means I frequently need to go through her stuff to purge the out-of-date and superfluous. She will watch the news channel for hours on end, watching the same reports as they are looped during the day. She insists that every birthday, anniversary and life event of everyone she knows is marked with a card, and often, biscuits by post, a subtle drain on finances.

Particularly notable on holidays, she is unable to innovate to entertain herself. Watching BBC-1, the news channel and reading magazines are all she can think of to do alone. I left her for a few hours yesterday and found her bored out of her skull, despite the wealth of in-home entertainment we have available. It simply doesn't occur to her even to channel-hop.

Most upsetting of all is Daughter, who far from helping, refuses to even acknowledge her mother's illness, and expects her mother to look after HER and give her money. Blaming me for everything wrong in her life, she then wants her mother to take her side and gets angry when she doesn't - the fact that in any case her mother's illness makes her mother unable to make any rational judgments anyway is an ignored inconvenient truth. 

Fortunately, most of the time, the life of this character is nonetheless blissful. Missus adores me and Son likes me, making home a happy place, and so long as I keep on-top of looking after Missus, she is not an unbearable burden. Daughter, too full of self-righteous hate to see how it really is, can be kept at "arm's length" and by my not wanting to know what she has said and done next.

Though it's more demanding in the school holidays, I generally have the freedom to self-develop and maintain my own happiness and wellbeing.

4. TODAY'S QUESTION FOR YOU
Are you taking all the necessary steps to maintain your own wellbeing?

5. TODAY'S WEATHER IN BRADFORD
Dry throughout with frequent sunny periods and a moderate north-westerly wind
Max Temp = 13 degC at 2pm
Min Temp = 8 degC at midnight
Sunrise at 04:50
Sunset at 21:19
Moon:

Weathertrack: The Azores anticyclone continues to extend over Britain and negate weather fronts crossing the country to cloud

Air Pressure: 1023 milibars and rising

6. TODAY'S ONELINER

I dress up my cats because playing with baby dolls is just weird at my age. :D

7. NOW THAT'S FUNNY!

Lee Mack oneliners

8. TRIVIA

The set of conditions required for complex multicellular life to thrive are extremely unlikely. You need a star just the right size, a planet just the right size at just the right distance with massive amounts of water, an iron core kept molten by just the right amount of fissile heavy metals that generates enough magnetic field to deflect the solar wind and preserve the atmosphere, a large single moon to prevent "wobble" and thus frequent massive climate change, and a large gas giant planet in your solar system to absorb and clear comets and asteroids.

Earth just so happens to have all these requirements, but unsurprisingly, it's the only planet we've so far found that does. 

9. ZEN WISDOM

Only when we learn to channel the energy we direct toward winning over others into winning over ourselves can we begin to develop our true humanity.