Sunday sunshine… page 171

20 Dec 2020 Leave a comment

Day 280 – 12/20/2020

We weren’t far into the weekend before it started coming back to me how hard it is to ignore reality for more than a few minutes at a time. My major malfunction is that I’ve never found the off switches for my brain and heart, so they just go right on cookin’ and they convince me I’m at their mercy. Kim’s planning to play at Lyons Park in a while, so if the tears will stay put ’til then I can get it all cried out before he gets back and I won’t bring his day down too. The small wins count too.

The world is made up of contradictions… we hurt to feel better… tears are for happy and sad and everything between… we put our hearts in somebody else’s hands in the full knowledge that they could end us… the optimists among us wake up ready to wipe out the traces and start over every morning, only to see by evening that once again our best attitude has failed to have any effect on the world. It all accrues to a great loneliness for us humans… am I invisible, does anybody know I’m here, can anybody hear me? That yelp for companionship and understanding must be universal among feeling people – as solitary as some of us are, we weren’t meant to live in total isolation, even the scaled version we’re adapting to now. The suicides that have happened throughout this crisis should be counted as COVID deaths – they’re as much a result of the virus as any other victim. My heart hurts for the people who don’t know how to self-soothe, how to be their own advocate, how to say what they feel and ask for what they need, and have no one trustworthy to turn to for help. What, then, are they to do? The safety nets are almost nonexistent at this point, widely-spaced, and full of holes. Putting my faint whines down in words keeps me in touch with people whose lives are on the knife-edge and always have been, the people who are the front line of *expendable* when a pandemic hits, or a financial crisis, or a political crisis, or the gods forbid, everything at once. They’re without a prayer.

Always with the thinking, Diary, but you know the adage about the unexamined life… and also this bit of truth:

Jeez, what if I were responsible for more than just me through all this upheaval – pity the poor soul, young or old. This girl knew all about it, I’m sure…

Image by Judy Smith

Just saying… page 168

17 Dec 2020 2 Comments

Day 277 – 12/17/2020

I should stay off social media in the interest of good health… but who am I kidding, those are the only people I talk to outside of about three for real. So I’m romping through Twitter and I see that Tucker Carlson, who apparently has a BA from Trinity College and is therefore always right, has declared Dr. Jill Biden, our soon-to-be First Lady, a woman who earned two masters degrees and a doctorate while raising a family… to be illiterate, despite her having been a professor of English for the past couple of decades.

Tucker, I wish you could have a cordial sit-down with my friend Tanya, who says…

“Tucker Carlson is a hack who was so utterly eviscerated by Jon Stewart he had to disappear from public eye for a while (too bad it was not permanent). The utter fear these folks have for intelligent, educated, and kind women (and men) who use their privilege to better society vs tear it down for their own benefit is palpable.”

Meanness comes from a knowledge of your own inadequacy. And from stupidity. And from having your twisted goals thwarted by your superiors. If people like Tucker could realize how transparent they are they’d never step in front of a camera again.

This was out there, too, and the proverbial lightbulb over my head did its number because I see clearly how the term antifa… anti-FA… anti-FASCIST became an epithet. Anything conflated with a Democrat will eventually come to mean *enemy* and here we are.

A friend thanked me on Facebook yesterday for being brave, but I had to tell her it isn’t really about that… it’s that if you don’t speak up you start dying. It feels odd at first to be vocal about what matters, but once I realized that nobody on this earth holds anything over me that can hurt me it was obvious that I have to use the time I have left to say what I know. Somebody could take my birthday away, I guess, but that will eventually happen anyway and staying silent while I live would kill my soul.

It will all sort itself out and life will go on… for the living… but now Lumpy’s saying he doesn’t plan to leave the White House and I have to wonder if there’s anybody left on his side who will finesse the ending. Doesn’t matter, he’s going because LAW & ORDER, but just a bit of backbone would have gone a long way, long ago.

And then there’s this, no extra words needed… other than “those filthy immigrants.”

Some mornings I wake up and it simply isn’t worth chewing through the restraints. And then I remember that I have you, Diary, and the day gets better. 💋

Image by Judy Smith

Touching the past… page 167

16 Dec 2020 2 Comments

Day 276 – 12/16/2020

Kinda frosty this morning – Kim’s hands were icicles when he got back from walking, despite gloves. Now Frosty the Snowman and gingerbread are on my mind, not because I want to DO ALL THE THINGS!! again or go back to an era when that was a big part of life… I just want to remember it all for a while. There’s very little from those times that remains untouched, unsullied, unbroken, and I need to pay homage to that remnant of Christmas joy.

The concept of *HOME* is extra-heavy on my mind today after hearing news from Dodge City, America, my old proving ground… (back-arrow returns to blog post)

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/i-do-not-feel-safe-kansas-gop-mayor-resigns-after-n1251334?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma&fbclid=IwAR0UVHatp9DkrPhRDOZo_PJVVVSCbb_m09DDzLdm_TykEPPZWaqbBx-8Oow

Things like this shouldn’t happen to people like Joyce and Bill Warshaw, end of story… and revealingly, the threats and ugliness are coming primarily from the church people. Warshaw’s Men’s Clothing Store was part of Dodge City from before my memory and I knew Bill’s parents, Max & Dona, who contributed to the life of the town in positive, memorable ways. America’s idiots are destroying what’s best in the country, and Dodge City is losing two stellar citizens. The sadness that grows from the giant rip in the fabric of our society feels like death, illustrated in macabre fashion by the relentless toll from the virus. Things are being carelessly shattered, with no avenues left open for eventual wholeness, no provision for healing. That’s scary – it kind of says there’s no way back. And after some of the comments I read, the only way I would ever want to see the town again is in my rearview mirror, which makes me sad – Ford County was home to the Wagners from 1905 when my grandpa, 19 years old, rode the train from Indiana to Dodge City, Kansas, bought a cow and some provisions, and walked the twelve miles west to his claim. That whole part of the country is in my DNA… but thanks bunches to my mom, the extremism and racism never made it past my skin. People we thought we knew are ripping their masks off now… and we see the faces of strangers looking back at us.

When this is your aim and you’re virtually run out of town on a rail for it…

We so easily lose sight of the most important things:

What was the pivotal moment when half of America’s population stopped sparing a thought for the other half? Was there some event? Has it been a gradual loosening of moral pinnings, too subtle for notice until here we are? Or were we always like this but never had to admit it until now?

This morning I’m saying thank you to every person working in a medical capacity during the pandemic, many of them since March – for hanging in, staying on the line, shift after shift, week after week, month after month, while they watch people die in spite of every effort to keep that from happening. They have my full focus through it all, and my arms are always around them. I’m grateful that they haven’t yet abandoned us to our own misery, although they must be sorely tempted every hour. I thank them for being who they are and doing what they do, head-on, straight through, because the task is in front of them, they’re trained for it, and they each started out caring mightily about ALL of it. I’m sorry the ignorant stubbornness of so many humans is kicking the care out of them for now. I’m sorry an already impossible job has been complicated and escalated by humans, the race they’re working to save. I’m sorry this has cost so many of them their own lives… I’m so sorry.

Each square in this solid mosaic is a photo of a life lost to COVID-19 in the medical community.

Relative to Mayor Joyce Warshaw’s experience with the anti-mask contingent, this would be my recommendation in all such situations:

Image by Judy Smith

Tuesday’s connected to the… page 166

15 Dec 2020 2 Comments

Day 275 – 12/15/2020

It was just as cold early this morning as yesterday, but Kim geared up and went walking anyway, bringing back this totally #lfk pic snapped in South Park, and a bagel. Quiet morning… he’s been playing guitar for the last hour or so… I’m spaced off reading and drinking coffee. It’s a Tuesday in December, pre-Christmas, pre-New Year’s, pre-resolution, a gray, cold, breezy day that calls for telling myself “Nothing’s really going to happen today, so just roll with it some more.”

The 2020 election has been certified by the votes of the electoral college, but unlike in any presidential race that I know of, other than Bush/Gore, that fact hasn’t settled the matter. While we wait and hope civil war won’t break out, I’m trying hard to peer through the windows on the other side and arrive at some state of comprehension. As usual, my Twitter friends are helping with that…

The Proud Boys were out on Saturday night, terrorizing Washington, D.C., but they met with a police force determined to protect the city, raising the obvious question, “What are the Proud Boys proud of? Being Meal-Team Six in skirts?”

His mama must be proud, but what time does he have to be home before she locks the basement entrance? That catchy motto clearly means with EACH OTHER.

Then there’s this. People really believe these things and it takes my breath away…

So yeah, I wouldn’t want Uncle Joe either if I thought he was all about THAT shit. A serious problem I see in all this is that the average American can’t define and delineate among the concepts of communism, socialism, fascism, and capitalism. It’s a fuzzy jumble in their brains and “the only possible right answer is capitalism, so just shut up about the rest and stop scaring us. Give us what we think we want.” Fortunately, it looks like they won’t get that, but we do know one thing…

All I want today is peace – from the knowledge that the nation is righting its course, the people I love are safe and well, and the future still holds possibilities for healing. That would be entirely enough for now.

Image by Judy Smith

Round and ’round… page 163

12 Dec 2020 Leave a comment

Day 272 – 12/12/2020

In a world-changing pandemic, it’s a bonus to live with someone who likes to see me smile, and he hass hiss vays. Like this morning’s omelet extra-full of beans & cheese… and the flowers he brought me after yesterday’s errands.

Since he made the Saturday Breakfast on Friday, I lobbied for omelets for today and got to have it my way, of course. I mean, why not? Sunday could be pancakes, who knows?!

It’s 36º right now, feels like 27. Just gonna be a damp gray Saturday and we’ll stay tucked in. The omelet will take me to at least mid-afternoon when Kim could have a couple of smoothies up his sleeve, as sometimes happens.

Our two big crises are still hanging over our heads… and which one demands priority? In order for democracy to survive intact, DJT will have to exit the stage very soon. But more pressing hour by hour is that in order for our human population to survive he must turn the virus exigencies over to the experts immediately. Two crises, closely intertwined, each a threat to our existence on its own, and now doubled in adverse impact by the psychopathic efforts of seditionists in government.

Not even his having pre-packed the Court could force them to break the Constitution.

The other half of the nightmare is what coronavirus is doing to us every day without let-up, and it’s rapidly accelerating. This map is from two days ago, December 10th, and the numbers have only gone up since. It gives me a hint as to why parts of the country are seemingly blasé about the whole thing, and might I just add, check out Georgia. Damn.

The planet only grows stranger and more hostile while we humans try to figure out how to stay alive upon it. A lot of things are still waiting for answers…

But let’s paint a happy little bird right here and make it all better… and on with the Christmas spirit.

Image by Judy Smith

Saying thanks… page 160

09 Dec 2020 2 Comments

Day 269 – 12/09/2020

Woke up to a gentle sunrise, feeling grateful… just a quiet knowing that good finally wins out.

I’m thankful for the sunshine. This is our fifth day in a row of fair skies and milder temps, and that helps with absolutely everything. After today it’s winter again for a while, as is to be expected in December, but this has been good.

Kim took the photo above on his walk this morning of a window on Mass Street, and brought me a bagel, both of which made me smile and feel the thankfulness.

I just read through some of the comments on my blog and was teary-eyed grateful for so many genuine human beings who talk to me, here and on other social media. You’ve been my steady friends through all the crises, and I hope I’ve been yours.

I’m deeply grateful for writers, here and everywhere, who take me through the days in boxes filled with brilliantly-organized words. When you sit at your keyboard, and open a vein and bleed, it lets me into your world and all those beyond and I see you. You should feel seen.

I’m grateful always for Kim, in all things. His commitment to this household, formed from the two of us, goes above and beyond. I don’t deserve him but if he weren’t here I’m not sure I’d be ANYwhere.

I’m very thankful that Rita lives just across town, listens to my rants, loves me unconditionally, and is THERE. I’m undeserving of that after all the crap I pulled on her when we were growing up.

My gratitude, appreciation, and love for John know no limits. I can’t find words for the magnitude of my respect for him, and my deep thankfulness for his caring. Best. Ever.

I’m thankful, grateful, indebted to the people out there who’ve been fighting both coronavirus and their fellow citizens for nine months, with no good end in sight until truly effective vaccines can be delivered and administered in such numbers as to slow the roll and finally stop it. We don’t deserve those people at all, and without them we mos def would not be around much longer.

Kim’s psychic photo reached out and grabbed me this morning. Some people call melancholy souls *feelers* and on occasion feelers have been known to know things. You don’t really know… you just KNOW. It’s a curse because when you feel in your bones that something’s going to happen and nobody believes you, what are you supposed to do with that?

So you write, you spill all of that between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place angst onto the page and leave it screeching in its death throes while you walk away… and pity the poor soul who happens upon the steaming pile. For an anxiety-ridden little lump of flesh, practically from birth, it’s possibly odd that I prefer to deal in nothing less than truth. Hit me with it straight on, I’ll sort it, and I’ll do what has to be done. And having put it out there that way, I see that dealing with life head-on is how I handle my built-in anxiety – just do it. There are facts hitting us in the face every day now that we can’t run from and they aren’t going away, so I look, absorb, adjust, and carry it ’til bedtime. Thank the universe I sleep like the proverbial dead.

Since this was created the events of 9/11 have dropped at least two places and within a week will no longer be on the graph at all.

Image by Judy Smith

Taco Tuesday… page 159

08 Dec 2020 4 Comments

Day 268 – 12/08/2020

Sunshine again today and we’re soaking it in. Kim gets to play at Lyons Park this morning, and he’ll probably pick up Mexican food on his way home. Meanwhile, maybe the light pouring through the blinds will inspire me to great heights of… cleaning off my desk? … writing something? … doing laundry? … anything could happen.

A couple of people have asked me why my staying in does any good if Kim does things outside the house, and I’ve been giving it some thought…

  • It automatically cuts our risk of contracting COVID-19 in half
  • Kim is swift in his rounds, always masked near people, and instinctively careful
  • Anything that gets him outside adds to his overall good health
  • Circumstances keep me from being similarly active, and home is the well I draw from
  • Since I’m privileged to be able to stay home, this is what I can do to help the cause
  • Somebody has to go out and do the things
  • We knew this pandemic for what it was early on and made a conscious decision to follow the protocols
  • *Safe Zones* are like a peeing section in a swimming pool – we’re all still floating in the same atmosphere
  • It’s far from over, so if anything our resolve to help beat it has been magnified
  • And at this point I’m sufficiently disillusioned with the idea of human kindness to stay in my cave forever
For the record, it’s not me I’m concerned about.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the current administration has blood on its hands, is in fact up to its neck in it. If ALL LIVES MATTER, then an obscene number of them have been sacrificed to ignorance, incompetence, denial, hubris, arrogance, and greed. It didn’t have to be this way…

Pollyanna always has to end on an up note or surrender her Optimist card…

He-he…

Image by Judy Smith

The sweetness… page 158

07 Dec 2020 2 Comments

Day 267 – 12/07/2020

Another nice day so Kim played at Lyons Park and I went over to Rita’s for a few hours. Fun time and good to catch up again – she’s still sorting out from the events of the summer and fall but making terrific headway. Preston and Jade both slept the whole time I was there and her cozy house was welcoming and Zen – just what the doctor ordered.

Home now, settling into the evening groove, watching the cars and foot traffic below my window, wishing it wasn’t going to be dark in an hour, tiptoeing through the dusky limbo, waiting for something to pierce the shell and present itself as real life. Kim’s here and he’s real. His 49ers are playing the Bills tonight and that’s real stuff. Life gradually breaks through again.

Reality is sometimes overrated, but I vastly prefer it to delusion even when it hurts. Today we mark the 79th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, where almost 2500 Americans died in a single day. For each single December day leading up to this commemoration, U.S. coronavirus deaths looked like this:

Reality intrudes despite all efforts to drown it out, and sweetness and light can’t exist without it, so when there’s no way back to what was, you go with what is – the good stuff – and the lights start to come on again. A steady hand to hold is a sweet gift while you wait.

Image by Judy Smith

Sunny Saturday… page 156

05 Dec 2020 Leave a comment

Day 265 – 12/05/2020

Some morning in the next year… or the one after that… I’ll wake up and check the news and not cry. That’s going to be a good day. Second story I read today was about Kansas health officials walking away from their careers, not because of the 80-hour work weeks but because their families are being threatened with violence. The Reno County Health Director resigned in July after having local police watch his house while his wife and kids were home alone, saying the stress and worry simply weren’t worth it. And he isn’t the only one – in the past nine months 27 Kansas county health officials have left their posts, many because they’ve been physically threatened or politically scapegoated. To quote Nick Baldetti, Reno County, pictured in a red MAGA cap, “By the end of the day, you just felt like you were on an island by yourself,” he said. “Whatever decision I made, 50% of people were going to be upset because it was too ‘restrictive’ and the other 50% were going to be upset because it wasn’t restrictive enough.”

That’s the same ratio that says Joe Biden either did or did not win the presidency, despite the facts, including that the popular vote margin has now exceeded 7 million:

Oddly enough, the half of the country that wants to believe Donald Trump won is the same half that’s threatening not only health officials but medical doctors and other personnel for requiring measures against the virus, and simply for representing something they refuse to deal with. That’s so beyond the pale I can’t believe it’s happening in America’s cities and small communities. So I cry. Every day. I guess it helps… I eventually put on my big girl face and get on with it. But I no longer know, nor feel I can trust, about half the people in my life because of the visceral hatred I’ve seen in familiar faces, along with the lack of any willingness to address what’s happening to us as a nation, a people, a family of humans. The pandemic and political divide are breaking us.

But it’s Saturday, the sun’s shining, we just had The Breakfast, and Kim might get to play at SPL or Lyons today. Our little neighborhood is full of dog-walkers and a tiny house finch is perched outside my window. Time to adult-up and savor the weekend…

Image by Judy Smith

Friday… page 155

04 Dec 2020 Leave a comment

Day 264 – 12/04/2020

Never know what mood morning will deliver after a night’s sleep full of murky but seemingly significant dreams. I slept well last night but woke up near tears, so who knows. We have sunshine and low 50s this afternoon and Kim’s out west playing PickleBall on SPL’s outdoor courts – and temps through at least next Thursday say that could happen a few more times, depending on wind. I’m never so happy for him as when he can be outside living his best life.

Meanwhile, I’m here looking at a desk that needs attention and hoping today’s energy allotment hits soon. May have to fall asleep to TV news while I wait…

Yeah, that happened. Still don’t hate the condition of my workspace enough to fix it.

Some days, Diary, are just days. And yet not, because life is still out there and things are happening and I can’t stop thinking about ANY of it. I was struck yesterday by this quote:

“Joseph Campbell said that the command to love our neighbor is obviously one of the hardest of all religious concepts. But to recognize our connection to others goes to the core of life’s mystery, and when you live as if it’s so – you are threading yourself into the long-train of history and the fabric of civilization. Perhaps the simplest way to say it is that ‘We’re all in this together. We are all first responders to one another.'” – Bill Moyers

Ended my afternoon with this – joyful, amazing, incredibly moving. Powerful therapy.

Image by Judy Smith

Loving everybunny… page 154

03 Dec 2020 Leave a comment

Day 263 – 12/03/2020

For so many reasons, Christmas has been a non-event in my life for the past 25 years or so (other than that first magical one with Kim in 2004 which we decided we could never top), but today is December 3rd and my immediate world needs some cheer, so holiday mode it is. It was fun to have a mini-blizzard to start things off – a few minutes of tiny snow flurries – and my space heater’s keeping my toes warm this morning. ❄️❄️❄️

When I walked over to the barbershop at 8am it was below freezing, but no wind so no biggie. Says we might get rain today, with low 50s and sunny through the weekend. Sounds just fine.

The Jayhawks have been playing every couple of nights and we have a televised game to look forward to again tonight – Washburn here at 7pm. We’re 2 – 1 so far and the team’s coming together the way it happens every year… essential players leave, FNGs come in and learn the ropes, you gradually get a whole new team and life goes on. Sometimes it all gels into a beautiful thing and it’s always worth hanging around to find out.

Still taking our distractions where we find them, even though in a world loosed from its moorings things like sports and TV require a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to enjoy. Even the parts based in reality are sometimes a bridge too far alongside knowledge of what the pandemic and sedition in government are doing to us.

Aiming for holiday happiness, though. Pollyanna’s no quitter.

Image by Judy Smith

Perspective… page 153

02 Dec 2020 2 Comments

Day 262 – 12/02/2020

Passivity has taken me to a severely rudderless point… how ever will I right the ship again and head for true north? Some days it simply isn’t worth chewing through the restraints, and that’s not even a whine, just a fact. So I’ve been on a hunt this morning for things that take me outside my ridiculous self and break the ennui, this first of all for its x-ray vision:

This from an Australian beach. Wha… ?
Mothballed cruise ships and other vessels, in Greece I think. Some look quite longterm.
Whoa, gotta go!
Christmas joy in the U.K.
HOUSTON, TX – NOVEMBER 26: Dr. Joseph Varon hugs and comforts a patient in the COVID-19 intensive care unit (ICU) during Thanksgiving at the United Memorial Medical Center on November 26, 2020 in Houston, Texas. According to reports, Texas has reached over 1,220,000 cases, including over 21,500 deaths. (Photo by Go Nakamura/Getty Images)

The year 2019 was dicey and 2020 has broken me. So grateful that music and its people still heal us.

Credit to Kim Smith for photo at top – 12/02/2020

Image by Judy Smith

Taco Tuesday… page 152

01 Dec 2020 Leave a comment

Day 261 – 12/01/2020

First day of December and it remains to be seen whether or not it’s really taco day here or if we’re having stir-fry. Either way, we’ll be golden.

Twitter thread this morning says what I can’t find words for, and that’s comforting. It isn’t just me…

Helps to figure out what’s hanging me up so I can move on and stop carrying a load of blame that isn’t mine. Life just is, and it’s very quick about it, so it seems a crime not to fully appreciate it at every turn. Ready to dance with my people.

Image by Judy Smith

Black Friday… page 150

27 Nov 2020 2 Comments

Day 257 – 11/27/2020

Can’t remember why it’s called Black Friday but I’ve never done one and this year would be an incredibly stupid time to start. Kim said Mass Street was quiet this morning so the stores didn’t open early for sales – maybe #lfk isn’t going to the dance this time around.

I’m seeing lots of Twitter comments about crying jags and teary breakdowns on The Day After. I have a feeling we stayed home and did it right, all brave and stiff-upper-lipped, and today the knowledge of everything we’ve lost is proving too heavy. Will there ever be a road back to what we knew and believed to be real?

This day feels ponderous to carry so I’ll have to break it up into livable chunks – sixteen unbroken hours of staying awake for it is unmanageable. Tried not to write about it, but I can’t go all day without breathing. Tried not to talk about it to Kim but he’s the only one here. Looking for a diversion in the bottom of the toy box that will take me outside myself and into the sunlight. Feels like it will be a long winter, with days and days of isolation and uncertainty, so I gotta figure it out, I can’t whine my way through another year of this. And by the time a vaccine gets final approval, a distribution system is in place, and we’ve all received our two shots with a month between, it will most likely take that long. Then we’ll have to keep wearing masks and social distancing until we achieve community transmission reduction. Long haul ahead, Mama, pull up your big-girl undies.

Image by Judy Smith

How’s the weather?… page 148

24 Nov 2020 Leave a comment

Day 254 – 11/24/2020

Kim’s photo of yesterday’s sunrise gives me all the feels – it’s clouded over again this morning but without the drama. All things considered, I’m not ready for winter this year, the early dark, the wind, the cold permeating the building – the weather becomes my jailer. One attitude adjustment on backorder – they’re temporarily out of stock.

Totally blah this morning. Everything on the inside feels the way it looks outside – dull and gray. Things are moving forward on the political front, but we still have two months of limbo to get through while the country and its people continue our slide down the garbage chute. Two more months for those supposedly in charge to ignore the massive loss of life every single day. It’s hard knowledge to reconcile.

The sun’s always out there, though. Kim’s photo of Watkins Museum yesterday morning…

And a random street…

Image by Judy Smith

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