Abundant August rains have brought us to a lush September, and fall should be a show of color. I love all of autumn but I may be prejudiced toward the month of September since it contains my birth date (today) so just know I’m doing some extra thinking. I staggered into a Facebook site last week called WDNC, populated by women WhoDoNotCare, and it’s as therapeutic as you might already imagine. In that vein and a spirit of celebration:
IDNC that I’ve never, in all these years, managed to fit the mold. Full disclosure, I still don’t even know where and what it is, so I guess that gives us the pertinent information right there, hm.
IDNC that on the little things I’m wrong more often than right, that’s just bad luck. On the BIG things I’m far more often right.
IDNC that I alone can say what qualifies as large or small in life.
There are many things I genuinely no longer care about and most of them are things I should never have cared about at all, so passing birthdays are good for perspective and a few other concepts like longevity, which reminds me… I’m not old. Not yet. Both of my grandmothers saw 96 with their minds in working order and I call that incentive. My mom had me in the same September in which she turned 20, so I always knew exactly how old she was. This year she would be 98 and likely still wouldn’t be “old,” so there’s some more perspective.
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The state of human existence being what it is, I offer one piece of advice from this vantage point: Whatever it is, do it NOW.
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And everybody still gets one special birthday wish, right?
Soooo, we’re into yet another new month, for good or ill. It’s still summer, it’s still gonna be hot, and the world is still in a wackadoodle state of mind, but happy August, boys and girls, the countdown to Christmas has begun.
Our summer skies have been just this side of eerie, and I finally realized that we were getting smoke from Canada’s fires. At times we can smell it in the air and it hangs heavy over the river. This is fair trade, considering that Canadians must feel like they’re living in an apartment above a meth lab most of the time. Thank you for your grace, northern neighbors.
It’s been a summer sprinkled with small discoveries of great import. I learned that choosing a new doctor just might provide fascinating (i.e. life or death) tidbits concerning certain meds and their dosages. I am now acing the test on that chapter. A second discovery has to do with people and their faces. Most everyone with distinctive features reminds me of someone else, and I finally realized it’s because I’ve been roaming the earth long enough to have seen those features in endless combinations on a never-ending succession of faces, thus making them all seem somehow familiar. It’s comforting except when it isn’t. Full disclosure, there are a few faces I’d rather not see again in this lifetime.
A key summer discovery was that coffee and herbal tea are not the same animal, and that caffeine has much more to say to me on a daily basis than I knew. Got a wild hair to see if I might feel more serene internally without the influence of coffee, so I quit cold turkey. Started drinking a delicious herbal tea. Felt somehow healthier. Cleaner. Let’s face it, righteous. By the time I’d slept away five afternoons in succession I was pretty disillusioned about the whole thing, so caffeine it is, at least for now, just less of it. I am not above accepting a little help with daily living.
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These are hard times, so do what you can to entertain joy, which is mostly found in the simple things. Good coffee, lovely tea, excellent food, kind and astute friends, love shared… it’s all joy. And there are always flowers somewhere.
“Wildflowers” by Aoife Dowd, Irish artist. Oil on canvas.
This week we’re celebrating our 21st wedding anniversary, a number that might confound the skeptics but makes us happy. Yesterday we had lunch in the Rozelle Room in the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, a space that lends itself to retrospection… perspective… and projection. I wondered out loud if we might have another 21 years in us and neither of us laughed, so we’ll see. I’d be 99 years old and Kim would still be the kid he’s always been, but what’s life without the challenges, right?
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The Rozelle Room. It’s casually elegant and the museum is a 3-day experience, so we’ll be going back soon. Yesterday we primarily saw the Egyptian exhibition and the one for Photography, half of which is currently closed for renovations. It’s a pretty wonderful place and good for getting steps in if you’re counting.
Once upon a time, strange as it may sound, Christmas happened in a world that wasn’t ready for it, making things discombobulated and odd from the start of the season. Planet LOOK.AT.US. was out of sorts and feeling aloof from the whole affair. Things were not right in the kingdom and no one knew how to fix it. Such a different holiday it was shaping up to be, with far too much sadness in the mix.
But wait… since the task of Christmas is to lighten hearts and gladden the soul, I must give you, instead, the story of The Four Farmer’s Daughters… have you heard this one? Get another cup of coffee and pull up a chair, it goes like this:
Long ago, in a previous century, four daughters were born. Two sets of sisters, farm girls all. After high school came the usual endeavors that send people their separate ways… college, extensive travel, careers, partners, children, life. Circumstance and the passage of time eventually conspired to bring the four together again some years into this century, hours spent realizing how alike they are in their world view and code of living.
These four women, now mostly past 70, have not lost touch since, and won’t. In the midst of this barren-feeling lonesome Christmas season, everybody listened to their inner angel and they spent hours… again… sharing food and conversation and knowing nothing’s changed. Oh, out there in the world, everything’s changed, but real friends don’t. That’s a supreme gift to open, one that makes everything seem possible. Keep it real in 2025.
Holidays are hard. There… I said it. As kids we rarely pick up on the nuances of family gatherings, we’re just there to see our cousins and eat fun stuff. And then life changes, as it is wont to do, and we learn how to celebrate on a different scale, how to hold room for our memories and feelings, how to appreciate everything. It’s a lot.
Some years ago we stopped trying to live up to the noisy food-laden holidays of yore and brought the house down a little with simple, and simply wonderful, comfort food, the National Dog Show, football, the chill weather, and much laughter. So as it turns out life is in great part about taming expectations. Kim and Rita cook and bicker in the kitchen while I keep myself available for mindless tasks, and behold, a luscious meal appears. It works seamlessly, and we’re appropriately thankful for various things all day, no stress required. I love it. The mood couldn’t be more comfortable.
Still. Our hearts remember the old times, and we think of them as having been magical… everybody happy and full of love, hugs all around, nothing but peace and goodwill. With everything hanging in the balance this year, we yearn for the unity and unconditional love we think we remember, and we try to go back to a place that was never really there… kind of like Brigadoon. Silly us.
If you’re still with me, thank you for indulging this minor fit of melancholy, which I shall now attempt to put back in the box with the double-secret code on the lock. Nobody needs that stuff on a day we’re just grateful to spend together, alive and well, so tomorrow will be about the right-now, the life we have, and the people we love.
I wish the same for you, complete with everything you need.
Now that Jabberwocky has been anointed king, we must familiarize ourselves with the language and culture that attaches thereto, by which I mean catch up or get trampled. This is a new thing, a “fresh” experience, a mystery ride… are we buckled up?
In the aftermath of the election, a lot of us are still caught in that “a second plane just hit” moment of cognition, staring at the smoking ruins and silently thinking about our short list of options. Mexico’s newly-installed woman president has said that Americans are welcome in their expat communities, but that if somebody here sends them 200,000 Mexicans they’ll send an equal number of Americans the other direction across the border. Obviously turnabout is fair play, and why would Americans simply be accepted at face value after turning most of the nonWhite world away? Are we special or something? Moving sounds a little iffy for personal reasons, and I’m not real cranked on giving up my right to live here to a bunch of bullies anyway. They filed for divorce, why should WE move out? I saw yesterday, though, that Americans are fleeing the country like the “vermin from within” that we’ve been labeled, and I wish them nothing but positive results, it’s just that I think I’m too tired to follow them, depending on how this goes. I do know the survival instinct is strong. So, yeah… thx for listening.
I was reminded this week that during the COVID pandemic I used this blog to document the daily journey, and now I’m slipping into journal mode for the current trip into the unknown. Just a heads-up on that, although I write for me so it is what it is.
So… after the heavy silence that followed the voting, we’re starting to get a look at the “team” at the top, and here are just a few highlights:
Attorney General: Matt Gaetz, who was under investigation for sex trafficking until his nomination
HHS Secretary: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose views on both health and humans are bizarre at best
Defense Secretary: Pete Hegseth, a “television presenter” for the FOX network, who will no doubt be brilliant with all those thorny defense issues
Secretary of Homeland Security: Kristi Noem, who rewards lack of obedience with a bullet
Director of National Intelligence: Tulsi Gabbard, friend and possible side piece to Vlad, and challenge to the term “intelligence”
Department of Government Efficiency: Elon Musk AND Vivek Ramaswamy, otherwise known as the Department of Redundancy Department
Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Adviser: Stephen Miller, who stands alone in the lineup for his ability to morph from Jewish human to Nazi
Can you say kakistocracy, boys and girls?
noun
a state or society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens.
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The Former Guy is either baffling us with bullshit to keep us from noticing that Elon bought in as co-president, or he’s hoping everyone will be so inept he’ll look like a genius by comparison, then he can fire them and run it all himself, or quite likely both. None of which takes into account what the voices in his head will be telling him by inauguration time, so as I said up there somewhere, it’s gonna be a trip.
Nothing puts us in our place quicker than events over which we have zero control, so those are the most disheartening and therefore damaging. Things happen, we register the shock to our psyches, and then, because we’re human and it’s in us, we start trying to process the whole thing. Unfortunately in this case (post-election) there are big chunks missing from the narrative, unwieldy boxes full of things we don’t know, power loose in places we’ve underestimated, so we’re left to piece together the governmental and societal cataclysm that’s been set in motion, one which will eventually change every aspect of life in our nation if allowed to run unchecked. Figuring out exactly what’s happened to us and what the everliving hell we can do about it is like assembling a 5,000-piece jigsaw puzzle in the dark.
We don’t know how deep and wide the corruption is, but apparently it’s become the end-all-be-all entity in this situation, and we regular peons have no weapon against a concerted determination toward total control. Lots of “regular peons” are actually saying they WANT to be ruled, WANT to be told what to do, and we’ll see how long that attitude holds. Those same regulars think they’ll be immune to the downside of oligarchy, and that’s just sadly laughable. We aren’t all in the same boat, but we’re all floating on the same crowded pond.
I’m not old, but at 77 most young people (under 30) would consider me ancient. Still, I have yet to make any such noises as: “life’s too hard, I’ve been here long enough, time for me to shuffle off to Buffalo and leave it to the kids,” because I’m not finished living. Somewhere along the way I asked for a long life, and I did at the same time think to ask that my life not turn ugly and scary before it reaches its end, but here we are, we rarely get everything we ask for.
If we survive this era, it will be because we remembered how to love and care for each other. What I’ve seen to this point makes me a skeptic. Prove me wrong, world.
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Something Americans traditionally have a difficult time with.
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Your life, my life, the life of the nation. We’re really here.
You know… if we hang around long enough in life it’s possible to learn a lot and pick up crucial perspective in the process. Some of the lessons are painfully, embarrassingly slow… some hit us between the eyes and demand immediate remedy. Life isn’t always a supreme challenge, but I admit to being shocked by how consistently it’s the same ol’ stuff over and over ad infinitum. This year has brought a succession of skin cancer surgeries, the most recent of which is still receiving scar therapy from the comforts of home. Other physical taunts, presumably related to the aging structure inside this skin suit, have raised their cheeky cries for attention to such an extent that I’m getting used to them, while not thrilled by their existence.
I’ve recently been reminded that some twenty-five years or more ago I watched my dad’s first cataract surgery on closed-circuit TV in Garden City, Kansas, with pioneer in the field Dr. Luther Fry, whose techniques at the time were cutting edge.
This week it was my turn and the technology has only improved by leaps and bounds since my experience with my dad. One eye down, second next week, followed by weeks of light therapy to fine-tune my vision. Meanwhile, until at least past Christmas, it’s my job to keep sunlight from invading my eyeballs, which in a 4th-floor loft with top-to-bottom east-facing windows is a challenge. The wooden blinds leave lots of leeway for sunshine, so until the sun makes it past the peak of our building every morning I’m schlepping around in here in my Official Old Person Post-Surgical Giant Black Glasses. I know Karma when I see it so I’m sure this is payback for all the times my friends and I giggled about the sweet lil’ oldies in their Double-Secret Agent glasses, but this seems a little excessive since our intentions were pure.
Everything feels slightly discombobulated at present, which will pass. The operative eye is nearly clear 3rd day post-op, but I’m caught between glasses and no glasses, so neither eye is 100% at the moment. Stuff that lands on the floor has to stay there unless I want to do deep-knee bends, which would no doubt benefit my skeleton. There’s laundry waiting to be folded, and my desk is looking very lived-in, but I can’t be bothered. I’ll get to it all when the disorientation fades a little more.
Our eyes and the rest of our senses are too precious for words, as are the brilliant dedicated people who help us keep them for as long as possible, which prompts an astounding realization: Somehow we humans have managed over eons to fashion a world that’s more good than bad, more joy than sorrow, more sweet than sour. Mostly. Sort of. Anyway, all things considered, it’s a place I’m not pining to leave, and I’m looking forward to seeing everything these eyes have been missing along the way lately.
Okay, having reached my max word-count on NICE, here’s this…
Remember the night of November 8, 2016? Remember the tears and how sick with dread we were, knowing life was about to become very difficult… and indeed it did. We were aghast that someone so awful had been placed in the White House… and he STILL refuses to go away and leave us in peace.
And now, running for president again, still, ad infinitum is this 2x impeached candidate with 34 felony convictions, how insane is that? As a convicted felon, he can’t vote. As a convicted felon, he can’t join the military, but as president he would be its “leader.” Makes my head swim. He’s a rapist, a pedophile, a career criminal, a friend to Putin and others like him. How did we get here?
After years of angst and concern, we’re within 21 days… three weeks… of knowing whether there will be a peaceful transfer of power this time, and who will hold what used to be the most important office on the planet. We have three weeks to climb down off the “undecided” fence and state with our vote whether we choose democracy or fascism, the only question on the ballot. As Americans we tend to think we’re fairly untouchable… magically blessed somehow. We aren’t used to facing stark reality the second we open our eyes in the morning. Reality, however, has come to roost on our doorstep and demands to be faced NOW.
The MAGA party is confronted with a classic bait-and-switch. The corpulent reeking hulk formerly known as King Drumpf is crumbling and decomposing before our eyes. Try watching and listening to one of his most recent rallies, which are now being held in the afternoon before he starts sundowning TOO badly. Even then things aren’t going smoothly in any way, and there was a credible report that he soiled his diaper during one recent speech, necessitating the spraying of a strong scent in his vicinity. This is a potential U.S. president. His diet is awful, his drug use rampant, his exercise nonexistent. Whether he’s drooling on his french fries by January, or face down in them, everybody gets JD by default, a fascist to the core and far more dangerous than the orange clown. It’s likely that JD or someone synonymous with him was the plan from the get-go.
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Since I’m not a compliant lil’ ol’ lady, and have said my piece all over the internet, I have to wonder if it would even be wise for me to stick around if the party of revenge were to win. JD says they’re going to send the military out to round up everyone who didn’t vote for them, so my voting record, let alone my words, would likely damn me to their version of hell. Crazy to think about, but they simply ARE crazy, so we’re on our own if they win.
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In my late 70s now, I have no urge to relocate and start over yet again, and leaving loved ones behind would be a bridge too far, so here we are. I would benefit at this point from a conversation with my great- and great-great grandparents who left Germany to keep nine young brothers from being conscripted into Kaiser Bill’s army and made a good life here in eastern Kansas. Even more, I’d like to talk with a German contemporary from the 1940s. What were the vital signs, both early and late? What kept you from leaving your homeland? If you could do it over, would you choose to stay or flee?
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This being no time to fall apart, I’ll pray for a dry spell and keep on keeping on, bearing in mind this admonition from a wise man…
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The idea that there are “others” who are not like us is what keeps hate simmering. Are we ready yet to turn off the fire?
It’s officially fall and the weather has been changing for a while now, by which I mean every day into something different from the day before. Apparently we’ve just emerged from a season called False Fall and are now into Second Summer. We’ll see where it goes from here, observing as spectators while Weather does what it will do.
Fall is always a melancholy reflective season, and true to form my thoughts have been a concoction of things heavy and light, happy and sad, profound and sublimely ridiculous. In the midst of all that I started a list the other day of personal do’s and don’ts in life’s third trimester. There’s no place I yearn to return to, so life has just one direction… forward. And I needed a little self-help with that, thus the list. The points are for me, not for advice, but if something resonates with you don’t hesitate to claim it for yourself.
So, in no special order, as they popped into my head:
I’ve stopped going to funerals, for all the reasons. My all-time personal hero oncology nurse showed me I’m not a bad person for skipping out. Do life while it’s here, no regrets, because if you’re not careful the ceremonies will overwhelm actual living.
I don’t give money to politicians unless they’re running at grassroots level and don’t have big resources. The rest start with kajillions and then ask ME for money? And then for MORE, repeatedly??
I try not to schedule morning appointments because they’re an unnecessary assault on my senses. There’s a window between lunch and dinner when I’m fully awake and human, so life outside my door is best if it happens during the afternoon hours. You know, if possible.
I don’t take advice from people whose moral code I can’t respect. People say lots of words, but when they give legs to their coldheartedness I walk away.
I don’t chase people. If you’re my friend you just are, end of story, and we always pick up where we left off.
I don’t argue online or anywhere else except for the shit I give Kim. Arguing is a demeaning process and rarely produces anything positive. People think what they think, me included.
To save misunderstandings and exhausting back & forths, I spare most people my presence most of the time. This Pollyanna has gotten over the delusion that we’re going to land on the same page and feel comfortable together again, if we ever were.
After being around older people forever, and taking care of six of them for twelve years, I had a pretty clear idea what aging would involve. Ha, ya’ think? Every day brings a surprise you weren’t waiting for, every year new challenges, things aren’t static, they change constantly, your body betrays you and so does your head. You can experience these things second-hand without absolutely KNOWING them, so expect the unexpected.
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9. Very little anymore requires my complete and undivided attention. I can still pull it up when necessary and I take it out for the occasional walk to keep it in shape. It’s on reserve, just behind the lala-life I prefer. But since complete and undivided usually denotes a problem of some sort I avoid it every way possible.
10. Mail is the bane of my existence. Doesn’t matter, snail mail or online, I can’t stick to my resolve to open every piece of information every single day, so I’m left with bulk mail that means nothing to anybody… except for THAT ONE PIECE that can’t be discarded on penalty of law!!!
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11. I have no energy for trying to convert people to a life outlook that begins with kindness. Those are the people who will talk their hair down trying to convince me how Christian they’ve always been, while fearing and despising everyone and everything not like them.
12. I’ve loved people all my life who have silently hated everything I care about while also finding me an entertaining source of gossip. That’s okay, Karma knows. The true challenges come when people I care about hate people I love. Simply a bridge too far, so adjustments have to be made.
13. If everyone suddenly liked learning new things and putting new ideas to work, the world would look shinier overnight.
There. A baker’s dozen, take or leave.
And one more: Everyone who doesn’t want fascism to replace democracy on American soil should have a current passport at the ready because we can’t see the immediate nor long-term future. The German population, right about now, thought everything was going to be okay. It wasn’t. Things are changing rapidly across our nation, which has been instantly reflected on social media, but all optimism has to be tempered with the memory of past horrifying October surprises and other killing disappointments.
The United States may continue as an intact entity or it may not. Either way, the election will be over someday, we must assume, and I’ll revert to Ms. Nice Person Who Doesn’t Talk About Things We Simply Don’t Talk About. And if the good guys win I’ll be a more accessible, less irritated old girl, more inclined to entertain the lighter side of living. What I will never be able to do is forget what so many people showed me and the rest of the world about themselves, people we once thought we knew and identified with.
It’s been an unnerving era, with ugliness abounding and hate winning out a lot of the time. I’ll open the door to my 80s in three years… how many of the wounds, how much of the heartbreak, do you think we could heal in that time frame, just for starters? I so hope the world won’t feel as cold and lonesome as it has over the past ten years and more. I’ve learned this much: being a nice person doesn’t cut it anymore, the world has changed. I’ve changed too… but I was raised to be nice and it feels okay as long as I don’t forget what truth looks like. Does America remember?
Favorite kind of Saturday. Soft, quiet… rain showers moving through. Muted conversations below us as people go back and forth to Farmers Market all morning. We sat on the balcony with our coffee at 6:30, counting the seconds between spectacular lightning flashes and their answering thunder, guessing how close we were to getting fried. I mean, if you’re not livin’ on the edge you’re takin’ up too much space, amirite?
Kim went over to the Market at the crack of 7:30, which is opening time, so he could be first in line for the flowers. So competitive this man, which is reassuring. He’d save me from any oncoming threat, no hesitation, so I’ll take it. He said the lady hadn’t unpacked yet because of the rain, but out of three or four crates of flowers there was only one bouquet with a sunflower in it, which of course had his name on it. Mission accomplished, home to make breakfast. It’s been twenty years of the same old Saturday morning breakfast, same old incredible flavors, same blessed comfort food, every single week, thank you Universe! I’ve signed up for another twenty, with option to renew at any point in time.
This week was the “time to pay the piper” kind. Had my sixth MOHS procedure yesterday and am waiting to get a look at my surgeon’s handiwork after enough hours have passed. They’re all the result of childhood sunburns and each is a unique challenge. This one will likely leave a decent pirate-slash scar, but it’s where I’d have to call someone’s attention to it or they’ll never notice it. Likely. Hopefully. Doesn’t matter. Slings and arrows are proof that we’ve lived. Stickin’ to that story.
Since most of life involves zigzagging between the whizzing arrows and tossing off the slings, I’m sending kudos, hugs, love, and respect to all the brave women of every age, wherever you are, who are doing just that. Don’t stop, girls, we’re earning our stripes with this one.
A lot of things have taken place over the past couple of weeks, one of which is that smiling and laughing are suddenly de rigueur again, praise be! For someone who was unceremoniously told, decades ago, that she laughs like a chicken, it’s like being let out of the henhouse to roam free! Be YOU, you crazy lil’ bandy-legged chick, nobody CARES!
So while our Sister in Joy and Laughter was busy making history, this girl here turned double 7s, which I believe is highly lucky. If you know otherwise, please don’t spoil my illusions, thx. I love the fact that I’ve made it this far, but already being within binocular range of 80 is messing with my head a little, so adjustments must be made and you know what THAT means… she’s thinking again.
I started blogging some 15 years ago on another platform in response to my son’s suggestion that it might be therapeutic. He was right, I loved it immediately, and when the original site folded I found Word Press and kept cranking out whatever was on my mind on any given day. Obviously, over that many years changes have taken place… and age has joined the chat. Profound shock. There is absolutely nothing other than being old on the inside (a tragedy) that could truly prepare a girl for her third trimester of living, nothing. But I’ve been here sharing insights for a bunch of years now, and been painfully honest with you in what I’ve said, and that won’t change… so buckle up.
“These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call.” P. Simon
These are the days of the medical Rolodex, the recurring appointments with doctors and their teams, keeping the vehicle running. These, if you’re lucky and spoiled, are the days of pedis and haircuts and massages that truly do extend life by making it better.
These are the days of steroid shots in the joints, extra attention to the chompers, and various other things which, much like the Spanish Inquisition, NO ONE EVER EXPECTS.
These are the days when your optometrist skips most of the preliminaries and says “Let’s talk about your cataracts.”
These are the days of skin cancer paybacks for those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer. The ones we thought would never end.
What gets your attention is the acceleration. One day you’re like “Well, not too bad so far. Doin’ what I can,” and the next you wake up to major mayhem that apparently occurred while you were sleeping. This spiral of crepe here when I turn my arm… when did that start? And these bingo arms! There are jowls in progress? How rude! The supreme sense of languid laziness every single morning when I’d planned to be a ball o’ fire for a change… it’s ubiquitous, as is the faint whiff of guilt that attends my daily existence. Welp, girl, that’s the way it is, walk it off.
After an incredible nine years of turmoil and division as a people, combined with the introspection it has sparked, this is a true statement:
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Kids, here are the facts this morning as I know them. Our world is getting better not worse. Joy and laughter are not buried forever under the rubble of political correctness and planet-wide catastrophe. We’re still HERE! That means hope is alive and well. I’m catching this bus.
… are myriad, and we’re blessed by the universe every day, especially if we were to do some kind of comparison study. I mean, the planet is in the throes of change and humans are historically opposed to that sort of thing, therefore chaos. Me too, I’m opposed to the direction this current change-up is taking because I’m selfish and I prefer that life simply continue in a positive vein. Is that too much to ask?
UNIVERSE: Far too much, sorry.
Mornings this week have been cool, perfect for walking, striding, strolling, shuffling, wandering, and wool-gathering. Yesterday I did the above for an hour, this morning for half that, improving my outlook immeasurably.
Another fav comfort is that of sitting down to write and watching the words flow onto the screen. It’s always fun to see if I have anything to say. Lately I have far too much and can’t really say ANY of it, so I’m missing that security blanket. The only way I know to write is flat out, no masks, no gloss, all truth if possible, and that’s a challenge now because veering off into truth turns the floor to lava. That leaves the weather report and bird watching, both of which are fine but less than cathartic to write about.
Reading is infinitely comforting to me, but it requires an attention span, so there are caveats. Plenty of reading does take place, though, and I have a bottomless well of gratitude for the people who opened those magical doors for me. Books literally roll back the curtain that separates us from the rest of the world, which has been a delightful ongoing gift for this farm girl.
A comfort that never fails… and a gift that keeps on giving, apparently forever… is Kim’s cooking. He’s never content to simply “make food.” He starts with ingredients we both like and hones the combining thereof into a dish that would have anyone’s palate craving more. [Except those who genuinely prefer bland, boiled ’til it can do no man harm, innocent, what IS this food. To each his own.] Good food made with love is like a nice long hug. Pure happiness.
I take great comfort in having a safe place to live, excellent medical people and facilities, clean water, abundant fresh food, people who care about me, and the freedom to live the life I’ve been given. Much of the planet has little to none of that, so a shoot-from-the-hip comparison study I just did shows we’re doing pretty freaking well under all the whining and fighting and gnashing of teeth.
I know this much is true… if we can get through whatever’s coming our way… survive it and come out the other side with something left… something of substance… WE’LL NEVER HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN. A cloak of naiveté didn’t suddenly drop on my head, I know SOMEONE will be faced with all of this again because the war between freedom and fascism never ends. But if we do this right, a few generations may get to age out before it all starts to crash again.
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Let’s all keep a good thought as upheaval reigns: It’s entirely possible that climate change, disease, nuclear war, or some other factor will wipe us out first, and we can finally stop thinking about politics.
Good morning, my fellow round-the-bend players, how’s July shaping up for you? Okay, yeah, kinda what I thought. A lot going on, huh. There’s such a general upheaval in progress at all times now, it’s tricky to keep things sorted out. What’s important? What really matters? How can I be helpful instead of simply in the way? We have an incredible array of life or death issues in the air around us at once, none of which we hold any real sway over, and it’s fairly mindnumbing.
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Having spent the past week on the knife-edge of mortality, in the throes of Martian Death Flu, I’m back better than ever and ready to tear a chunk in the space-time continuum. Today, Monday, in a surprise fierce attack, it’s List-Making Day, and we’re in great shape on that so far, Alex. The determination and sense of purpose fairly leap off the page and the ecclesiastical “we” can’t wait to get started. In fact, we’ve already ticked two things off the list, including one from yesterday just to double up on the endorphins.
In light of what we wake up to every morning, we need all the good endorphins we can get, mainlined into the system. There are strange dichotomies at work that we aren’t used to dealing with, and that turns normally-mundane things very weird. I’m not Catholic, so no dog in the fight, but for the first time in 600 years two popes are alive at the same time. That raises chain-of-command questions I’m not sure anyone really wants to address, so I’ll just leave it here for posterity.
By somewhat the same token, we’ve basically had two presidents simultaneously in the U.S. since 2021, and I do have a big woolly-bear of a dog in that fight. The legitimate president calls the shots and gets things done, the pretender shoots wildly in every direction and keeps his cul… um, base, on fire. His own family, including niece Mary, a Phd in clinical psychology, calls him batshit crazy, but a percentage of people in the country think he’s better than sex, which is worrisome on every level.
At the SAME EXACT TIME we have two hugely influential generations aging out… the Silent Generation and the Boomers. Every day my Facebook feed is sprinkled with stories and cool photos of people from my parents’ generation, all the celebrities I grew up knowing about. The vast majority are in their 90s and past 100, still doing that thing they do, which is generally to make life feel better to the rest of us. They’re leaving a very large void as they slip away one by one. I’ll wake up one of these mornings to find that Willie Nelson is no longer a citizen of this earth and I don’t know if I can bear it.
I remember people saying that as we age time speeds up. Yes and no. Twelve straight hours of daylight can seem like a week, but the weekends arrive and depart in double-time. The Silents and we Boomers are reaping the benefits of better nutrition as it came to us along the way, and it’s showing up not only in longevity but also productivity. A whole lot of us still have all our faculties, strange as that may sound coming from someone out of the 1960s and 70s (if you remember it, you weren’t there), and we’re still a force, but the world has no idea what to do with us. The law writers and hangers-on DO mos def want to get their hands on all the Social Security monies we’ve paid into the system our entire working lives, and let’s just say it, to do that they need us dead. I mean, how else? These and other realities keep me awake for whole seconds at night before I slip into my own “little death” and shuttle my brain over to dreamland. And hoo-boy, there have been some bizarre scenarios lately, what’s up with that.
While I’m rolling, imma say this too: Any way we slice it, however it turns out, the presidential election of 2024 is not simply that. Change is coming regardless, the question now is how much and how fast. Will this be the year America turns its broad backside on our WWII defenders and simply strolls into fascism like it’s a Sunday picnic, or will we wake up in time to take a shot at doing it right? America willingly sauntering into Christian Nationalism, hands behind our backs, sounds ridiculous. I hope we won’t do that, but I don’t draw up the plans. No one ever even asks me, despite dedicated years of opinionated observation. Someone who does know what the plan is, by the name of Kevin Roberts, should be checked out and taken seriously, though. He means it.
Please avail yourself of a copy of Project 2025 to see what the end of democratic rule and beginning of religious oppression looks like.There’s also a documentary called “Bad Faith.”But let’s focus on Project 2024 so we don’t have to worry about 2025!
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One thing we’ve discovered is that Joseph Heller was a prophet:
“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”
A note of hope writ large today: England and France, both leaning seriously right for a worrisome time, managed to rein it in and lean the other way in their recent elections, both putting left-ish moderates in office. That’s two first-world nations bucking the global trend toward Christian Nationalism, let’s make it three and start a wildfire. And since I’m likely already at max friend-loss on the day, here’s this. She did everything she could to warn us about every bit of this.
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It’s a lot. I haven’t written much lately because I can’t do it without getting into the truth. Turns out I can hoard my thoughts for only so long, however, so take ’em as they’re meant. And survive the long hot summer.
Word on the street growing up was that as you get older time accelerates, and it’s utterly true. Weekends now arrive every three days, and seasons are but a blip on the calendar. A short while ago I was whining about the cockamamie time change and now it’s settled into my DNA again. Life simply rolls on. Case in point, David and Darlene Dove, who are back for another round of babies, making our crusty old hearts glad.
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The other unmistakable sign of full-on spring here is Farmers Market, whose busy Opening Day 2024 was last Saturday. Through our open door the sounds of conversation and laughter made it almost as good as putting on my sandals and going down there, which I didn’t do, although I have intentions, so check me on it.
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As you might surmise, we’re back to balcony afternoons here, which are vital for health and wellbeing. I sit within a few inches of whichever parent is on the nest, they never move a feather in protest, and that feels sweet. So glad for the sunshine and the sounds of life. So glad for benevolent walking weather. So glad we stay continually educated by living until it’s done.
At this point, after 76 years of it, life in the U.S. has never felt more threatened, nor more tenuous to me, even through the debacle and angst that was Viet Nam. We’re on the precipice of losing everything democracy has afforded us, and that’s for real. And yet HOPE is still my first go-to. We can get through this. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it. Check me on it.
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Welcome to my weekly blog on life's happiness. We are all human and we all deserve to smile. Click a blog title or scroll down. Thanks for stopping by.
Creative humour, satire and other bad ideas by Ross Murray, an author living in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada. Is it truth or fiction? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.
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