commando, art, despicable people

My across the street neighbor was working out in his yard mowing and trimming Sunday morning and he was going commando. The reason I know this is because when I went out with Minnie to have a look around I happened to look across the street and he was bending over fiddling with something on the ground and his pants had fallen so far down his rear that I could see his butthole. Ewww, dude, pull those pants up. Seriously. Nobody wants to see that. 

I got all the note cards packaged up and the larger 5" x 7" prints framed this week. Each package of notecards has a sheet showing which images are in that pack.

Then I delivered them to Hesed House after SHARE Thursday and they were delighted to receive them all. I still have the two little original watercolors to frame and take to them. Maybe next week.

An early morning conversation at SHARE yesterday put me in a foul mood for the day. It was pretty slow like it usually is on the first Thursday of the month because people have gotten their WIC funds we surmise, only one or two small food orders the first hour, so I was sitting in the back with the guys when one of the volunteers mentioned he had seen a chart of government expenditures. He expected the military the biggest but first was Medicare/Medicaid. The military budget was third. I remarked that if medical care wasn’t so expensive in this country people wouldn’t need help which set him off about how we’re paying for other people with our taxes and how people think socialized medicine is so great. I told him everyone I knew who lived in a country with socialized medicine liked it. Another guy chimed in that he had lived in Norway and you had to wait a long time to get a procedure. And I’m thinking, first, why would you not want to live in a country that had a healthy productive population and second, how is having to wait for a procedure worse than not being able to get it at all. Then he went off on people just wanting all this free stuff, illegals getting free medical care (they pay taxes I told him that they don’t receive any benefit from, well not if they're paid under the table he said completely ignoring the fact that they pay sales taxes just like everyone else), people applying for everything as if all you need to do is apply and not have to qualify. He went off on college, how he went through college, got his degree, and didn’t get in debt but now nobody wants to pay for it they just get all the loans they can and not pay them back. My comment that people are paying on their loans but after 20 years they still owe the same or more went over his head. The Norway guy spoke up that he didn’t get in debt either but then when he went to college tuition was $300 a semester for as few or as many hours as you wanted to take. Yeah, things are different now. First guy wasn’t through, complaining that colleges just teach useless stuff, people get degrees and can’t get a job. I’m thinking who is he to decide what courses colleges should or should not teach. Not interested in that course of study, don’t take the classes but why bitch about the fact that they are offered. Anyway, I’d had enough by then and we got a food order in so I went back to my station and stayed there whether I was busy or not the rest of the morning. Just about everybody that volunteers there votes republican which at this point voting for Trump makes you a MAGAt as far as I’m concerned. I just can’t reconcile the disconnect of these people that volunteer at a food bank that also offers clothing, housewares, diapers, linens, etc to people in need and then vote to reduce aid, whether it’s medical care or food and housing assistance to those same people, people that they have nothing but disdain and scorn for. Republicans have brought back the myth of the Welfare Queen only this time it's the able bodied man living in his mom's basement who chooses not to work. Do they think Medicaid just sends people checks instead of paying the doctors or hospitals for the medical care? 

When I went to college tuition at the University of Houston was $200 a semester. I don’t know how much room and board in a dorm cost then because I was living at home. Here’s what it costs today.

I wish I could turn that volunteer into a 20 year old and then see if he brags about getting his degree without getting into debt.

Last night during dinner I bit the inside of my cheek, not a nip, but a crunching bite. Then this morning I woke up from a long involved disturbing dream full of struggle and a bit of a headache, reached over and tapped my dream catcher, my talisman bag, and my guardian angel that hang on the wall beside my bed and told them they weren’t doing their jobs. And if that wasn’t bad enough when I went out to raise the garage door (have to do it by hand because the motor quit working after the flood) a wasp that was building a nest behind one of the metal struts on the door stung me right on my nose! Fucker. Because that still wasn’t a bad enough start to the day, during breakfast I bit the inside of my cheek again in the same place!

So today is the 4th of July. I won’t be putting out my flag, I won’t be celebrating what this country has become, a country where the President, a state Governor, and Cosplay Barbie of Homeland Security stand in front of their new concentration camp to incarcerate 3,000 people snatched up without warrants or due process and put in cages in tents surrounded by a chain link fence topped with razor wire that they built in 8 days in the middle of the mosquito, alligator, and snake infested Florida Everglades in the middle of summer yucking it up, big smiles, thumbs up while they imagine potential escapees getting eaten by alligators. The whole thing designed for maximum cruelty. 

The government won’t build housing for the homeless, doesn’t want to feed the hungry or provide medical care for the sick and injured but they can and did build a concentration camp in 8 fucking days to fill it with people who had jobs, families, contributed to their communities, paid taxes, were self sufficient that now the government must provide for however poorly they plan to do it. 

So, yeah, my day is just peachy.