harvest, dangerous rhetoric, weird dreams

It’s a good thing I took my picture of the cotton field when I did because it’s been harvested the last two days.

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Now that Trump was fact checked during the debate about his untrue hateful claims that hardworking, tax paying LEGAL Haitian migrants, who were invited to come fill factory jobs, are eating neighbors’ cats and dogs and geese from the pond in the park and ridiculed soundly on social media for saying it, he and his rabid supporters have tripled down on the claims to the effect that Haitians are being targeted in the community with vandalism and verbal attacks making them fearful of even leaving their homes. Not satisfied with that, when the mayor of Springfield OH had the audacity to state unequivocally that the accusations of pet eating are completely unfounded, agitators called in a dozen or so bomb threats against various government buildings and schools. While no bombs were found it did disrupt the city and cause a lot of fear. Nice going assholes. Trump and his hate filled minions are getting more dangerous by the day and are showing us exactly what we can expect if he gets elected. 

I do feel that Harris has the popular vote but we all know that is no guarantee she will win when it is the electoral college that decides who our president will be. It is crucial that people check their voter registration frequently since republicans are throwing people off the rolls left and right and doing what they can to restrict early voting and voting by mail. Now that Kennedy has switched parties in a bid to become part of Trump’s administration if elected, he has sued 10 states, especially swing states, to remove his name from the ballot in an effort to send his potential voters to Trump. North Carolina just allowed his name to be removed 5 days after the deadline for removal causing millions of ballots already printed to be destroyed resulting in delaying the mailing of absentee ballots scheduled to be sent out the same day shortening the time allowed to receive and return ballots by mail. It’s even more crucial that Harris voters do not let these tactics prevent them from voting.

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Pictures from the yard to wipe the nasty taste of republican politics away. The surprise lilies are opening,

the white philippine lilies surprised me with blooms this morning,

and the indigofera.

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I enjoy having a cocktail in the evening before dinner but I have refrained a few days before and after the different procedures over the summer. For this last one, I stopped a week before and now two weeks after the procedure I have still not had a drink, thinking I would wait until my heart tissue had grown over the watchman device, a process that takes about 45 days that will be confirmed by the follow up TEE. I’ve noticed two things since I stopped having my evening cocktail. One, I’m sleeping much better, which I like, not waking up nearly every night for hours of sleeplessness. Usually I wake up about 2 AM and it’s generally 4 AM before I get back to sleep. The second thing is I have been having the weirdest fucking dreams almost every night. I mean weird crazy shit and I’m not so sure I’m liking that. 

Last night I dreamed that I went to SHARE and they had completely rearranged things so the building was empty except for tables around the perimeter and people would now have to go to each table and ask the volunteer for whatever food item that table had. I thought this was a bad idea and asked one of the volunteers to step out for a conversation in which I expressed my views and he said they were going to try it out anyway. As I walked away heading home the street became flooded, the water getting higher and higher until it was about chest level when the street turned into a sort of concrete canyon where I stepped out onto dry ground but I was surrounded by water and the only way to get home would be to fly which I did. My sister was there flying beside me when we came to a building with a window just above water level and we managed to open it and step into the bathroom of a stranger’s house. We went into the adjoining room to tell the people that everything was flooded and we came in through the window wanting them to follow us and show them. Then I left with a friend to go borrow some guy’s sailboat and we would spend the day sailing. We got to the building where the boat was and the guy was helping get it rigged but it was taking forever. I tied the line from the sail to the mast with a bowline knot which I wanted him to notice and remark on it which he never did. Then another guy showed up and it gets a little murky, something about not getting the rigging right but the first guy, the one whose boat it was, and I started flirting and I’m thinking, this is the one. My friend gets angry when I tell her he is going to go on the boat with us because this was supposed to be just the two of us. I go off the bathroom (?) to change or something and when I come back everything is still not ready and I’m getting impatient because it’s getting late and he is putting together food for three when there are four of us. It’s almost 2 PM, I tell him, he says it's fine and to help and make the sandwiches. I’m trying to figure out how to put the three sandwiches together in a way to feed four people when I wake up.

I mean really, what the fuck was that about? I may have to start drinking again.

hurricane, the debate, Texas snow

Monday I was all ready to start going back to the yoga class twice a week in El Campo but I accompanied my friend undergoing cancer treatment to her appointment in Galveston for a liver scan, a two hour drive there and a two hour drive back, and didn’t get home until 3 for a late lunch after which I had about an hour before I would have to leave again. So I didn’t go but I am planning to go tonight.

Monday evening it looked like TS Francine was going to skirt the coast before making landfall somewhere around the border between Texas and Louisiana giving us two days of rain but yesterday it had moved farther away from the coast while it strengthened into a hurricane. This morning it’s already past us and landfall has moved farther east heading for New Orleans. For which I’m grateful since I’m still dealing with the damage from Beryl. As for rain, we got about a five minute shower around 5 PM Tuesday. 

So, of course, the debate was last night. We didn’t watch it. I just cannot tolerate Trump’s voice, his butthole puckered mouth, his accordion hands, and his constant stream of lies, conspiracy theories, and hateful rhetoric but now I kind of wish I had seen Harris’ masterful handling of Trump. I did monitor social media and my grandgirl Autumn watched it and we texted back and forth so the following is gleaned from what others have said and an article from NPR. Trump was Trump and he got played like a fiddle by Harris. Harris had clear answers to the questions while Trump, as usual, did not answer a single question, the closest he got was saying he had ‘concepts’ of a plan for healthcare which he did not elaborate on, but instead went off on his riffs though Autumn said he was a little more cognitive than he is at his rallies. While he tried to goad Harris, she never took his bait but she cleverly pushed every one of his buttons during her clear answers and then stood by while he reacted. The moderators gave Trump more speaking time and more chances to speak in rebuttal than they did Harris, which on the face of it was unfair and unbalanced, but it also seemed to be giving the man all the rope he wanted showing the world how unhinged and completely unqualified he truly is. And he really didn’t like that the moderators fact checked him. Harris’ prosecutorial style put Trump on the defensive and he wouldn’t even look at her during the debate. A poster on social media wrote that he practically ran off the stage when it was over. One commentator later criticized Harris for not controlling her facial expressions, her looks of humor and disbelief at Trump’s responses but did not criticize Trump for his facial expressions of disgust and distaste when Harris was speaking. Because we women are supposed to be pliant and demure I guess. In a call to Fox this morning Trump said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to do another debate (I guess not) even though he previously tried to goad Harris into one on Fox and of course he thinks ABC needs to be punished. 

Even so, the media is still saying that this election is neck and neck and that Trump could still win according to the ‘polls’. I don’t give much credence to the polls especially this election cycle because people under a certain age don’t have land lines, over which most polls are conducted, and they don’t answer calls from unknown numbers on their cell phones. I know I don’t. We can’t get complacent though, we can’t assume a victory. We still need to campaign and get out the vote and most importantly, vote. Be sure to check your voter registration regularly because red states are removing millions of people from the rolls and in Texas and Florida, the governors are actively using the police to conduct raids and voter intimidation.

I finished my drawing of the tallow tree leaves but haven’t started on the watercolor yet. I may do another drawing of something else first before I put my colored pencils away. The page in my sketchbook is 8.5” x 5.5”.

Some pictures from the yard…yellow bells aka esperanza, porterweed, morning glory bush (one of my favorites)

and it’s cotton harvest time, the field at the end of my street.

first fall day, lilies, and progress

Between Friday and Saturday I’m four piles of tree debris down, two on the burn pile, two in the truck, and three more to go. I’m not done making piles but I want to get the ones I already have either burned or moved over to the burn pile first. I’m only burning one truckload at a time so that the bonfire doesn’t get too big. Fortunately this stuff is very dry despite the rain we’ve been having and it goes up fast.

This picture of the back of my property past my property line is for Sabine who asked if I could leave some of the tree debris for the bugs and what not. It’s the Wild Space I refer to that is really part of the field behind but all this wild growth has grown up from not being mowed completely when they hay the field which they’ve only done once so far this year I think. 

Saturday was a beautiful blue sky day, low humidity. When I woke up it was cooler outside than inside for the first time of the coming fall season or what passes for fall around here. I opened all three doors to air out the house. Today is just as nice. Monday it starts to cloud up again and by mid week more rain is predicted. Even though it got hot later, up to 90, and supposed to hit high 80s today, nights are down in the 60s.

Walking around the yard, admiring the oxblood lilies popping up everywhere in the front

with Cat following me around,  

I noticed these. 

Last spring I dug up a big clump of surprise lilies (what Ms Moon calls hurricane lilies) that never bloom, or just one flower once in a blue moon, and replanted them where I thought they would get more sun and were less crowded. Two of the clumps are sending up bloom stalks. The third is a no show so far so I guess they aren’t happy there but I’m going to have at least 13 blooms!

Current progress on my colored pencil drawing of the tallow leaves. I had put in the dark gray shadow that shows in the picture but it just did not read as a shadow from the curled up edge of the leaf on my drawing and I really didn’t like it so I took it out altogether. Still need to work on the stem a bit but this leaf is essentially finished.

My only task today is to torch the burn pile if it’s not too breezy as I think I overdid it yesterday. I didn’t feel like I was exerting myself all that much just dragging dead branches out of the truck and tossing them on the burn pile or walking back and forth between debris pile and the truck and the stuff isn’t heavy but I was hot and sweaty when I came in and I definitely felt it later. I’ll spend some time working on my drawing and maybe sit out on the deck and read.  

sore muscles, rainbow, and other miscellania

I was really feeling achy for a couple of days, a little discomfort in my chest and back, and so Tuesday morning I called the doctor’s office and spoke with the nurse just to make sure that this was either normal or something to be concerned about or just from lack of any exercise for months which I had been used to doing. She spoke with the doctor, should not be experiencing any discomfort from the procedure, did I try any pain relief and if it continued to call back and they would schedule a stress test. So I took ibuprofen during the day which helped and by the evening felt fine so I decided it was option #3 and did a slow and modified version of my yoga routine before bed. I slept all night, waking only once to go to the bathroom and felt fine the next day. The discomfort has not returned but by end of the day Wednesday my arms and other parts of my body were so sore! Regardless, I did my routine again Wednesday night before bed and went to class last night. Just three days in a row of yoga and I already feel better, still have sore muscles after a long period of disuse but even that makes me feel better.

We’ve been getting rain nearly every day since Monday for which I’m glad because we really needed it, a little over 2 1/2” so far this week. It’s been much less hot if not exactly cooler but that is about to change as we are getting a first real cool front this weekend and will have lows in the 60s all next week, highs in the 80s. It was drizzling/sprinkling a little when I left yoga class last night and saw this on the way home. At first I stopped and pulled into a side street and took a picture through my windshield afraid it would fade before I got home, but it was still there when I turned into my street so I stopped again and got out and took this picture over the cotton field. It was a double rainbow, the one on top very faint but you can see it in the upper right corner. The color bands don’t really show up that well in my picture but they were very evident looking at it.

I haven’t worked much on my new drawing. The ink came and I got my print. Here’s my progress so far on one leaf which still needs a lot of work.

I guess I’m going to get out there today and load up the truck again even though I haven’t taken the accumulated metal to the recyclers yet. I’m more interested in getting rid of two more piles of broken tree debris. I took these pictures yesterday of one of the ‘legs’ holding up the hanging limb on one of the trees.

And last, walking around the yard earlier yesterday I spied this tiny just hatched anole.

book reviews

I’ve accumulated 11 books since my last book review post and since I have nothing new to write about since Monday here are the first five. I’ll post the next six later.

Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin - Vivvy is the daughter of a psychic and has visions of her own that come unbidden when touches pictures, things, people. When she was 10 she started having dreams of a blue horse killing a boy, Mike, at her school and took to hanging around outside his house. One day she pushes him out of the way of a blue Mustang about to run him down. Grown now, Vivvy has gone off to college and become an astrophysicist, Mike has become a cop who believes in Vivvy’s visions and asks her to come in after hours and go through files of cases to see if she comes up with anything helpful, a success rate of about 42%. This day though, Mike has asked her to come in and review a file of a case belonging to Jesse Sharp, a skeptic but when Vivvy pulls a photo of a charm bracelet out of the file telling him it doesn’t belong and that the missing girl the file is about is alive he keeps his eye on her as she conducts her own investigation to find the child and the kidnapper. I’m not going to say anymore about this story, it’s worth a read. There’s the relationship with her mother, recently dead from a brain tumor, with her sister Brig, with Mike, and ultimately with Sharp, and attempts to reconcile her visions with her scientist mind.

The Institute by Stephen King - 12 year old Luke Ellis is extremely intelligent, he absorbs knowledge like a sponge absorbs water only he never becomes saturated like a sponge does and he remembers everything he reads. He doesn’t just remember, he understands everything he reads. He is also capable of very weak telekinesis. One night his parents are murdered and he is drugged and kidnapped and wakes up in a room that is exactly like his except for no window where there should be a window, a prisoner at the Institute, a secrete installation in the woods of Maine. He meets the other kids and learn that they too were kidnapped for telekinesis and telepathy and the kids stay in Front Half for several weeks being tested and given injections to enhance their abilities before being sent to Back Half from which no one returns and no one knows what happens there. Then 10 year old Avery arrives who has very high telepathic ability. When Luke escapes, a team is sent to capture or kill him, his friends are sent to Back Half who try to hold onto their sanity hoping Luke will find someone who will believe his story and bring help. When the kids in Back Half finally figure out what they are being used for and discover their true power they start wreaking havoc in Back Half but their revolt is doomed unless Luke gets there in time. I had stopped reading Stephen King for reasons which aren’t important but I enjoyed this one. It’s a good story and he’s a good storyteller but I could have used a little less detail on how train yards work. But that’s just me.

We Are All The Same In The Dark by Julia Heaberlin - When Odette was 16 she went to Wyatt’s house for their scrabble date. Wyatt met her at the door, told her to run and never come back. He had blood on his clothes. She left and in her panic rolled her car and nearly died and by the time she was found had to have one of her legs amputated. Wyatt’s sister Trumanell, the darling of their small town, and their father were missing, her bloody handprint on the door, and Wyatt was found wandering out of his mind in the fields. The town accuses Wyatt of their murders but no bodies are ever found and no proof. Odette graduates and leaves for college and returns five years later and joins the police force, obsessed with Trumanells’ disappearance ten years earlier. Then Wyatt sees a young girl with one eye laying in a field. He stops and brings her home to protect her. Odette gets wind of it and shows up at Wyatt’s house and tries to shield him from the town’s conviction that he is a murderer and whisks the girl to a safe house run by her cousin, daughter of her Baptist preacher uncle, brother to her dead revered cop father. Odette is desperate to solve Trumanell’s murder and uncover the shocking truth of that night and clear her ex-boyfriend as well as the mystery of this young girl with one eye who refuses to talk and who Odette feels will somehow help to uncover the truth in this twisty psychological thriller. It’s a good story, well written.

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods - I’m not really sure how to write about what this book is about so here’s the blurb on the back…”On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found…For too long Opaline, Martha, and Henry have been the side characters in their lives. But when a vanishing bookstore casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. By unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder…where nothing is as it seems.” It intrigued me enough to check it out. The story is told in the first person by the three characters. Opaline’s story begins in 1921 in London when she flees to Paris and then again to Dublin to escape from a forced marriage. In Dublin she finds safe harbor taking over a nostalgia shop after its owner had died, adding books to the inventory. The nostalgia shop was originally a library in a remote Italian village which had the extraordinary ability to direct the visitor to the one book that would change and set their lives on a new path. The villagers wanted to burn it down, spooked by its uncanniness. Instead a man from London had it dismantled and shipped to Dublin where he had it rebuilt for his nostalgia shop. Martha’s story starts in the modern day when she flees her Irish village and her abusive and violent husband ending up in Dublin and getting a job and a home as a ladies housekeeper for Madam Bowden. Henry’s story also starts in the modern day. A literary researcher convinced that Emily Bronte was writing a second novel, he meets Martha while looking for the lost bookshop run by Opaline that he thinks is the key to this lost manuscript and that should be next door to Madam Bowden’s house but isn’t. As Martha and Henry search for more information about Opaline, who seems to have dropped off the face of the earth when her brother finds her once again, their own stories become intertwined. I don’t want to say much more but it’s a good book full of magic and self discovery and I enjoyed it.

Shoot The Moon by Isa Arsen - Annie is the only child of the only couple with a child in her neighborhood in Santa Fe whose residents live there because they are nuclear scientists working at the nearby facility. Annie finds little things under her mother’s rose bush in the back garden, inexplicably there. In 1948 when Annie is 8 years old a little girl appears in her backyard, she’s just visiting she says and is gone a few minutes later. When Annie is 15, her father, who she adored, died and Annie represses her memories in order to repress the pain of her father’s death, represses the need to love things that will leave her. Annie is brilliant and after high school she leaves for college and a double degree in physics. After graduation, inexplicably drawn to the moon, Annie heads to Houston and NASA where she gets hired as a secretary, leaving her artist girlfriend Evelyn behind. After correcting mistaken calculations from one of the engineers working on the moon shot/landing she confronts him and is eventually brought to the attention of the director who promotes her to the computer room/programming suite. As her relationship with the engineer, Norm, blooms, Annie discovers an anomaly in the back corner amongst the massive computer banks. Things that fall onto a certain spot disappear and then reappear 6 minutes later, a discovery that completely changes the course of Annie’s life. I’m not going to reveal any more, it’s a good story told by jumping back and forth from the past to the present, just that Annie must learn to let love in her life even though that comes sometimes with loss and that she must learn to reign in the single minded curiosity of her brilliant mind to let that happen. I liked this one a lot.

being a good girl, flowers, another harbinger

You might remember I wrote about getting rid of a few pieces of Pam’s furniture including the old cash register chest that she used for jewelry of which my sister had a lot. The day I published that post I got an email from a reader who lives in the city that wanted to purchase it. We struck a deal and she’s coming out today to pick it up.

The weather has continued to stay out of the 90s, overcast today with rain predicted off and on the first part of the week, with lows in the 60s and next weekend two nights maybe even in the 50s! So says the weather app but we know how quickly the forecast can change. Such a contrast to last summer which was brutally hot and dry and lasted for months, even into October. Another sign the season is changing…

The yard is liking these less hot temperatures and a few things are blooming…the plumbago, the morning glory bush, a few double orange day lilies are have a resurgence, a white rain lily popped up.

A few scattered cosmos blooms but they haven’t put on their full bloom yet. They are taking over the flower bed they’re in and so I’m going to have to get aggressive when they finish blooming and pulling up next year’s volunteers to keep them in their end of the bed. 

I’m still being a good girl and not doing anything so we’ve been streaming From on Prime. It’s from the same people that did Lost and is similar in many ways while being completely different. The first season was due to stop being available yesterday and having started it before my procedure we powered through the rest of the 10 episodes and are now into season 2. The premise is a nightmarish town surrounded by a forest where the residents are trapped, any attempt to leave circles them right back to the town, where they try to survive from creatures that come out at night and other spooky things while trying to find a way out. The residents have come from all over the US who are out traveling when they encounter a fallen tree across the road. When they turn around the road leads them to the town.

Today and two more days of basically sitting on my butt and then I go volunteer at SHARE on Thursday. And yoga Thursday night and then Monday I begin to start back to my normal life. I should avoid strenuous exercise for several weeks the All Knowing Oracle tells me. I looked up strenuous exercise...running, jogging, swimming, dancing vigorously, aerobics, biking, jumping rope, basketball, tennis, etc, none of which I do. Some forms of yoga can fall into that category but not what I do so I think I'm safe starting back up.