rain, rain, more rain and the continuing attack on our democracy

We had more rain off and on most the day Tuesday and throughout Tuesday night, rain, not too heavy mostly, but constant lightning and thunder, one particular flash very close and very loud. All evening and all night. Not sure what time it moved on. The little dog finally exhausted herself with trembling and panting (with occasional brief respites) from Saturday night to sometime after bed Tuesday night. I noticed at some point that even though it was still lightning and thundering, she was under the covers asleep. Poor thing. And even more to come. So far the amount of rain we've gotten is nothing compared to what some people have already received west and south of here, 17” in Ganado about halfway between here and Victoria. More rain on Wednesday but thankfully the storms predicted for most the day yesterday did not materialize.

Rain just drains me of any ambition to do anything and I managed to put off my grocery store run til yesterday after carefully counting cat food portions and the number of meals ahead.

The county was out on our street yesterday trying to clear culverts in the ditches so the water would flow. It flows fine at my end of the street where it eventually drains into Boughman Slough but too many of the culverts between my end and the other end of the street are filled with dirt and debris which cause it not to flow at all at the other end so it floods those yards and they just have to wait for the water to soak in. It doesn't help that the culverts are, in a lot of cases, higher than the bottom of the ditches. They dug out at the mouths of some culverts and then determined that the ditches needed to be regraded with a backhoe (or whatever the machine with the scoop is called) to take out the high spots. I know this because the county guy pulled into my driveway to let us know they would be working on the ditch in front of our house even though there was only an inch or two of standing water in a few spots and I told him it flowed just fine. They can re-dig those ditches but unless they clear out all the dirt and debris from the middle of those culverts under people's driveways, it won't improve water flow. What they need is an auger of some sort or a high pressure water hose to blast them clear. More rain and thunderstorms are predicted for today to add to the nearly 8” of rain we've already had since last Sunday. 

And speaking of last Sunday when I was forced to end my work outside, who knew that 5 days of rest and not using my right arm for anything more strenuous than turning a page of the book I'm reading would result in much less pain. OK, the answer to that is...everyone. Anyway, it's much better, not completely healed but have much more pain free movement. And now they are saying the rain will last through next Wednesday so maybe by then it will be healed enough to resume my normal activity.

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And now your occasional reminder of how corrupt the Republican party is. The House voted Wednesday to establish a 9/11 style commission to investigate the insurrection on 1/6 to determine the facts of who did what when with who and with what knowledge achieved how on whose order and benefit. Is that confusing enough? Of course a commission should be established and anyone who would vote against getting to the bottom of the attack on our democracy could rightly be considered complicit because why would any innocent person not want to know who planned it, financed it, enabled it? All but 35 Republicans in the House of Representatives of the United States of America voted against the bill even after their three demands were met by the Democrats, something they did not expect to happen and figured would give them good reason to vote against it. So, 175 of our lawmakers seemingly either participated in the insurrection or supported it. Innocent people do not object to official inquiries. Traitors all or still fear for themselves and their families from Trump's thugs, a fear they need to face and a thug they need to stand up to. And, of course, the day after Trump stated publicly that he wanted the investigation to not happen, McConnell came out publicly against establishing the commission and is now planning to filibuster it in the Senate. Whether enough Republican senators side with Democrats to get it passed remains to be seen. But if McConnell succeeds in blocking it from passing in the Senate it ultimately won't matter as the Democrats can establish special counsels to investigate the insurrection just as the Republicans did with Benghazi, over and over and over again ultimately making HRC testify for 11 hours (can you imagine Trump in that hot seat?). The more the republicans try to obstruct an investigation, the more they try to gaslight it as a peaceful gathering, the more they try to portray it as an average tourist visit, the more guilty they look. We are not to believe our eyes, they say, when we see Capitol police being beaten to death, when we see the looks of fear in the faces of these republican politicians  during the event in the videos and images , we are not to believe  that they were barricading the door to the chamber while the domestic terrorists were roaming the halls looking for them. 

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The open flowers of the elephant garlic, the buds of which occupied this space in my last post.