I find the butter/margarine generational thing very interesting. We too only had margarine and called it butter. The only folks in my town who had butter were the actual dairy farmers and one “hippy” family. We even baked with margarine. I asked my mother about it and she was offended that I would think we could afford butter! Which is kind of funny to me, because we afforded Minute Rice and Potato flakes, which also were thought of cheaper than a) actual rice and b) actual potatoes. But maybe that was true in the 80’s? Maybe rice was a luxury item and not the cheapest way to get starch?

Did anyone else always have bread and butter at every meal?

We always had plain ucky white bread and "butter" at every meal.

We bought “hillbilly” bread, which was wheatier. [link] We were the only family (who were not the people who made their own bread) with wheat bread.

Mom did make bread fairly often, but with 6 of us there were always plenty of store bought loaves too.

I not only grew up with margarine, I grew up with Squeeze Parkay out of bottle. That's how I "buttered" my raisin bread toast.

Side note: my mom didn't call it margarine. She called it "Oleo."

We called it “oleo” too! My mom said when she was little they bought oleo and it was perfectly white like Crisco, and then came with a capsule of yellow coloring that you mixed in. Oleo was also a crossword clue for “mixture”!

Yep, oleo here too! I had forgotten about raisin bread. Yum!! Used to slather honey butter on that.

My grandmother called it oleo too.

Tim’s dad is in the hospital again — because he’s been confined to bed for a big part of the day (after his stroke), he got a bedsore, and it became abscessed, and last night the abcess burst. He’s being evaluated and might have to have surgery, but we don’t know yet. He’s getting lots of antibiotics and such, and apparently he’s in good spirits, but he’s also going to be in the ICU. So I don’t have a good sense of how serious this is. I think at this point the best assumption is that it’s serious but treatable, and obviously the hospital is the best place for him.

Right now the hospital only allows 1 visitor per day, and Tim's brother is there now, so he’s today’s visitor. Tim will probably go tomorrow. I’ve read so many articles about how hospitals are so swamped with Covid patients that they’re turning away people with non-Covid problems, even serious ones. So I’m really glad the hospital could treat him and has an ICU bed for him.

I'll be honest: I don't want to be a pessimist, but his long-term outcome seems bad. Because of his stroke, he can't be mobile enough to avoid bedsores, and the nursing home's staff is following best practices to prevent/care for them, but there's only so much they can do. This sucks.

Bedsores can be very serious. but he is in the right place getting the right treatment. Sending healing~ma.