when we were young, fucking fire hurricane, slow progress

I’ve had enough winter now. One more night tonight below freezing, our coldest night so far I think at 28˚, and that’s it for the foreseeable future (but we all know that can and probably will change) even though it will still get down in the 30s every night for the next five nights and then it’s going to yo-yo up and down between the 30s and 40s at night. Yesterday was cold and drizzly wet. 

Yesterday we started back up at SHARE after being closed the past two Thursdays and we were busy. We served 44 families with food orders. We also gave away lots of winter coats. A couple of the volunteers opened on Tuesday and Wednesday, days we aren’t ordinarily open, for several hours just for that and I think today also.

Yesterday morning I had a message from the son of a man who was one of Marc’s and my closest friends. In fact it was Tommy who initially got Marc and I together (I was dating his roommate and Marc was dating his sister which made Tommy the common denominator) and Tommy who married us all those years ago and we’ve know his son, Tommy (the 4th), from the day he was born. Our friend Tommy (the 3rd) died in 2004 of liver cancer and his som, the 4th, was going through a drawer crammed with pictures looking for photos of the 5 generations of Tommys for his son Tommy (the 5th) to take to school for show and tell when he came across this picture of me which he sent to me yesterday morning. This must have been taken soon after Marc and I were married and it looks to have been taken at our house from the blurry shapes in the background. I was 26. I’d forgotten how long my hair was then.

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We draw ever closer to Doomsday when that convicted felon and rapist and his company of unqualified billionaire goons formally takes over the government while he and his sycophants blather on about using economic and military might to take Greenland, annex Canada, take over the Panama Canal, and this is like the icing on the cake, rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and his idiot MAGAt congresspeople have already submitted a bill enforcing the use of the new name in reference and documents. Meanwhile, Los Angeles is burning to the ground while Trump spews his lies and lays the blame on Democrats, liberals, and DEI. Seriously. Why the fuck won’t Newsom tell Canada to just turn on the giant faucet preventing all that snowmelt from flowing into California. I mean, it can’t possibly be because of climate change and that California is experiencing a fucking fire hurricane (video Jeff Tiedrich posted) and the water is being used faster than the storage tanks with plenty of water can replace it.

But all is not lost. This guy, real estate developer Rick Caruso, hired some private firefighters to save his upscale shopping center while the homes around it burned to the ground. Where the fuck do you get private firefighters and why the fuck aren’t they trying to save Los Angeles from burning to the ground.

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Progress is slow on the new painting but here’s where I am so far. 

the weekend and departmental reports

The large clump of fall asters by the driveway is in full bloom

Saturday I cut two more cart loads of rose bush from the pile. Paisleigh helped me. Mikey and Audra and Paisleigh were over at the shop and when she sees me coming she runs toward me arms outstretched…Gramma! I’m Granny to my grandkids but Paisleigh informed everyone that, no, her grandmother, my daughter, was Granny and I was Gramma. Works for me. As I would cut the rose canes down to smaller size Paisleigh would put them in the cart, when she wasn’t trying throttle my poor patient Minnie in a hug that is. I probably have three more cart loads before I get it all transferred to the burn pile.

It rained Saturday night, not much, just enough to get everything wet and has continued to drop just enough water off and on to keep everything wet enough for the dog and cat to look out the open door and go…um, nope. It has put the kibosh on my yard work plans for the day which was more cart loads of rose canes and more weeding of overgrown flower beds. I did get the poppy seeds scattered and watered in and the last of the azaleas mulched with pine needles Saturday afternoon.

I suppose I could spend the day making progress on the book I’m reading which apparently I’ve lost interest in since I haven’t picked it up for almost a week.

As it turned out I did get my two cart loads of rose canes cut and tossed on the burn pile, that’s been my limit, two a day until it’s done, between light showers. Looks like just one more cart load left but now today, Monday, we are still having intermittent light showers and maybe a thunderstorm later. 

The crazy dreams continue with one turning very weird last night. I dreamed Marc and I had gone to doctor appointments, same practice different doctors, and when I was called in I left my phone and book with him. The woman doctor and I were on a friendly basis and we chatted and then decided to go get something to eat. She drove me to this big house kind of isolated with trees all around. It was a big house (not one I’ve visited in my dreams before) kind of rustic inside but comfortable. I asked her whose house it was and she said that she had given it to her kids but now she regretted it. We went in the kitchen and she fixed me a big bowl of chicken soup. I ate mine while she served up a bowl for herself. It was really good, like the best bowl of chicken soup I’d ever eaten. Then these two or three people burst in, her kids maybe, seemingly to rescue me. I couldn’t understand their concern. Did you eat the soup, they asked. Yes, it was good I told them. Did you see her eat any, they asked. No I hadn’t. It wasn’t chicken they said ominously, implying I was in danger. Then I started waking up thinking to myself, let’s have a different dream.

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From the Department of What The Fuck Did They Think Was Going To Happen…Trump won the farm country by a wide margin and now those same people are alarmed by Trump’s plans to disrupt the $1.5T food industry with the nomination of Kennedy to head Health and Human Services of which the FDA is a part and who they are calling ‘an absolute danger’ to the American farm industry. Kennedy is notoriously famous for embracing conspiracy theories, is anti industrial food corporations and modern farm practices. They are also suddenly concerned about Trump’s intended tariff driven trade war with China as well they should be since during his first term he basically destroyed American farmers’ markets which left corn and soybeans rotting in the fields or in silos and causing a lot of small farm bankruptcies. Trump was very vocal about his tariffs plan and his intention to appoint Kennedy to head HHS and they voted for him anyway. 

From the Department of How Good Do You Look on TV…(this next bit courtesy of Jeff Tiedrich) from the NY Times an article on how Trump is choosing his picks to head the agencies in his cabinet “Much of the action has taken place under the chandelier in the tearoom at Mar-a-Lago, where Mr. Trump surveys his potential Cabinet nominees on giant video screens. He flicks through shortlists that his transition team, led by the billionaire Howard Lutnick, has drafted over the past months. If Mr. Trump shows an interest in a candidate, the presentation is designed to allow him to immediately watch videos of the potential nominee’s TV appearances — essential for any would-be Trump cabinet official.”  No vetting, no background checks. What could possibly go wrong?

From the Department of Retribution…Trump’s transition team is making a list of the military officers, including generals, involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan soon after Biden took office, which withdrawal was ordered and set up by Trump after he released 5,000 Taliban fighters and leaders, and is planning to set up a commission to determine if they can be court-marshaled for treason. Trump has called the withdrawal a ’humiliation’, a humiliation that he set up for Biden by withdrawing all but 5,000 American soldiers and releasing 5,000 Taliban whom the Afghanistan forces caved to out of personal fear. More to come from this department I’m sure as Trump has been very vocal about wanting to punish all those who have and do oppose him.