Hill said it appears Gotbaum may have tried to get out of her handcuffs, became tangled in the process and the cuffs ended up around her neck. A cause of death will be determined by the Maricopa County Medical Examiner.

I’ve been trying to figure out how one manages to get cuffs around one’s neck while attempting to move them from the back position to the front one and strangle oneself … even with the zip-tie kind rather than the standard metal variety. It seems somewhat improbable, if not flat out impossible. I even got up, put a loop of elastic around my wrists and tried. The only way I know of to get handcuffs of any sort from the back to the front is to step through them, which requires a measure of flexibility and that one be proportionally weighted or even on the small and tiny side of the height/weight scale. This method doesn’t involve the neck at all, and knowing a bit about the human body and the limits of the joints, muscles and bone, I can’t fathom any other way to do it that does involve the neck.

I tried to find more on this story, but there isn’t much yet. I thought I had found more information when I read this blurb in my search results at Google News:

Carol Ann Gotbaum, 45, left alone screaming in a holding room, possibly tried to manipulate handcuffs from behind her to the front and got them entangled …

But as often happens, clicking through to the link resulted in finding a rewritten story. Yes, the news on the internet changes at the blink of an eye and on a whim. Stuff that is there one minute isn’t there the next.

Aside from the oddness about how exactly this woman died while in police custody, there is a moral to the story: don’t act like a crazy, screaming person in public places, or you will get arrested. Maybe don’t try to get out of your handcuffs too, unless you actually know how, though that part of the story just strikes me as terribly odd. I can’t imagine how she managed it.

Today when I went shopping, I did not dress as I normally do. Or rather, I didn’t dress as I normally do when going grocery shopping. I did dress as I normally do around the house. In other words, I wore my faded blue jeans, my spaghetti-strapped white wife-beater tee, my hair up in those silly, silly knob-like doggy-ears, and my baby blue, semi-transparent, plastic gardening clogs … with my cool cat-eye sunglasses, of course. Normally, I would put on nice jeans, tennis shoes, a modest tee or blouse, and wear my librarian glasses. I don’t think I intentionally set out to see if I could attract attention from other human beings, but by the time I got to the grocery store, I noticed I was attracting attention. So I went ahead and sneakily paid attention to the people giving me attention from behind my dark sunglasses, and I enjoyed said attention.

Men noticed me more. Younger men than usual. Unlike when I go shopping dressed as a regular old housewife in her forties, no one followed me around the store, and not a one of them came up to me asking some ridiculous question as an excuse to strike up a conversation. I approve of this outcome. Nothing is more annoying than standing in front of the ice cream cooler and having some guy ask me where the Bluebell is when it’s quite obviously right in front of their nose.

Women noticed me more. I’d expected their reaction to include some sneers and smirks, because women are catty that way about appearances. Interestingly, even the women smiled or looked at me pleasantly. They also tended to defer to me whenever basket right-of-way was in question, which NEVER happens when I am in normal housewife attire.

Children noticed me. In fact, I was seemingly a child magnet. Small children would start following me as I passed. They all seemed to want to touch me. It was so annoying. One small tot ran all the way down the aisle from where her mother was and clamped onto my leg. Eek.

The people I had to interact with, the store staff and such, were all far more polite than usual, and not a one of them called me Ma’am or Miss or Honey or any other such thing. They all were just pleasantly neutral and helpful. None of them tried to strike up tedious chatty conversations after answering my question about where they moved the black olives. I know some of the people’s life stories, which I never asked to hear, and I don’t even know their names. Sometimes, too much information really is too much information. Just tell me where the olives are.

All in all, it was just weird the way people reacted entirely differently to me than they usually do. Not that anyone at the grocery store, staff or otherwise, has ever been awful to me in any way, but the amount of attention I received was extraordinarily high and all of it overwhelmingly pleasant … like they were all trying to figure out if I was someone they should pay attention to and impress or something. Yup, very odd.

I think I will start dressing this way more often in public. The attention was a nice ego boost. Everyone needs a good ego boost now and then.

Funny thing is that’s how I dress to go to the farmer’s market on Saturdays, because it’s outside, and it tends to be hot as hell and generally miserable. No one pays any attention to me there, but maybe that has something to do with Lin being there too, or maybe I just don’t notice because I am too busy rushing around trying to gather things together as quickly as possible so we can get out of the heat and have breakfast. Maybe I’ll have to pay attention tomorrow and see if anyone pays as much attention to me there. I’m betting not. There are lots of 40-something ladies there that are skinny little things like me and wearing outfits just like mine. I sort of blend in with the crowd.

At the HEB? Not so much.

Speaking of the farmer’s market. I better get to bed. Morning is coming all too early tomorrow, and we can’t miss the market. I am out of everything but ground spiced pork, and even that won’t last a whole week. So no lazy sleeping in, no matter how nice that would be.

Looking at the outside of them, it appears the calzones turned out fine. There’s a bit of a tale about their creation which you can hear about in a voice post I made during the … um … minor disaster.

We’ll see how they taste shortly. I’m wondering if they will end up having a “smoky butter” flavor.

UPDATE: Added a transcript to the voice post for those who can’t or don’t want to listen to it.

I grew up with these “cookies” … one of the earliest homemade treats I remember eating. We had them at home, at relatives’ houses, while out camping. I loved them. I hadn’t had them in decades, and it wasn’t until last week I managed to pester my mom enough to find the recipe for me. Naturally, when I set everything out to make them the other night, I was mostly out of white flour, so I had to use wheat, but they turned out pretty tasty just the same. I didn’t think Lin would like them, because they tasted really healthy, if you get my drift. He did like them though (after putting some maple syrup on them, of course).

We got talking about them. All I really know about the recipe is that it’s been in the family forever. I always thought it came from my mom’s German side of the family, but after doing a little research, they aren’t really cookies at all (in the American sense of the word). They are, in fact, scones, and now I know the recipe had to have come from my dad’s Scots-Irish side of the family.

All these years I have been whining about wanting to eat some of the cookies of my youth, and they weren’t actually cookies at all. We’d been eating scones. Who knew?! Doesn’t matter what you call them really, they are yummy! I still have half the dough in the fridge. Tomorrow I am going to fry up the last of it for breakfast. Lin says they are awesome with maple syrup and jam.

I remember not too long ago I would fill my shopping basket to overflowing, and the final tab for all that stuff would be under $100. I’m not even buying all my groceries at the grocery store anymore, rarely have more than 20 items, and today that final tab was $75. The most expensive thing in my basket was the ton of kitty litter at $13. Everything else was $3 here and $4 there. Jeez.

I’ve tried to convince myself I am spending more for less at the grocery due to buying organics and better quality goods instead of the mac-n-cheese and whatnot I used to buy, but I looked at the prices today on the things I used to buy. I am not paying that much more for the organic versions, so that doesn’t explain it. Nope, prices are just going up and up. I don’t know how people with less money and larger families are getting by.

I needed everything I bought and didn’t get anything frivolous, so I guess there’s nothing to be done about it. Bite the bullet, pay the bill, and move on. Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it though.

I have to go do the cookie dishes from yesterday and read some calzone recipes. Thinking of trying something different for pizza night tonight. More on yesterday’s cookies later. There’s a story. Isn’t there always?

Thursday afternoon, Apple released the scheduled update to the iPhone software. And the gadget blogs confirm that it does, as Apple threatened, wreak havoc on modified iPhones. Some phones have indeed been “bricked.” In others, unofficial applications have been disabled. And there are worries that hacking the updated phone will be harder.

And idiots everywhere are griping.

I don’t know why people who want to own an iPhone feel it is somehow their right to hack into it to unlock it from AT&T and use it on another service or for any other reason at all. It is not unusual for a new mobile communications gadget to be attached to one particular service for X number of years before being widely available everywhere. Anyone else remember when the Razr first came out? Besides, when you aren’t using the iPhone on the AT&T service, you lose some of the functionality that makes the iPhone really cool, so what, exactly is the point? Well, the point seems to be the mindset of “I want an iPhone, and I want it now, no matter what!” Status symbol bullshit … wanting to have the coolest gadget right away, even if you have to screw it up to use it. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for anyone out there who now finds themselves in possession of an iPhone-shaped brick.

I want an iPhone too. I do not want to switch back to AT&T/Cingular/whatever-they-are-calling-themselves-this-year. I know that in a year or two, the iPhone will be on the general market and be a phone just like any other that you can get to work with any service (and be cheaper than it has been), and by then, any bugs in the thing will be worked out, or it will vanish forever when something newer and better comes along. Such is the way of cell phones. Patience is your friend. If the iPhone is still the coolest thing going after the initial contract with AT&T, I’ll eventually be able to get one to use on my service. If not, I’ll fall in love with some other mobile communications gadget. I don’t have to have one right now, if it means using AT&T or breaking it. I guess, I am just not that cool and cutting edge.

And while gadget collectors everywhere are screaming at the top of their lungs about how unfair it is for Apple to brick their hacked cell phones and how much harder it is going to be to hack the new software update, there are people in Burma (Myanmar) screaming and dying for freedom, which concerns me far more than a bunch of early-adopting Apple fans paying way too much for a phone only to break it themselves and crying foul when someone holds them to the agreements attached to the use of a stupid electronic device.

So much for all that motivation I was feeling this morning. A headache set in way too early, and it sort of felt like it wanted to be a migraine. I took some aspirin and curled up on the bed with the cats to wait for them to kick in … and fell promptly to sleep. I just woke up 30 minutes ago. Ugh. Not going to beat myself up about it though. If I can sleep all night and still fall asleep and sleep all day, my body must have determined I really needed the rest. I do feel better than I did most of this week, but having slept through lunch, I am now starving.

Off to the kitchen to make those griddle cakes … and eat some while they are hot off the stove.

Thankfully, I already know we are having sandwiches for dinner tonight and don’t have to fuss with that yet too, and tomorrow is pizza night, though I think I might try making calzones. Or not, depending on motivation level.