they all told me it was a scam...

when I ran this by my artist friends on FB but I didn't want to believe it.

I don't remember if I posted about getting an inquiry about one of my Botanica's that someone wanted to buy. Now, there are all kinds of scams out there and a major one is tricking artists into selling a piece and I am well aware of them but they usually involve the buyer sending more money than the amount of the purchase in order to cover unknown shipping costs and once the money has been deposited in your bank, either by cashier's check or credit card, then you are supposed to return the excess amount to the buyer just to find out that the cashier's check or the credit card is fake and the artist loses the piece of art as well as whatever money they were tricked into returning. I know all this. I even told my neighbor who was suspicious of a transaction for a piano she was trying to sell that it was a scam.

But this inquiry was so real I was convinced it was legit. She was forthcoming with a back story. I checked to see if her email was on any of the scam lists...no. I checked to see if the shipping address was real...yes. I checked to see if the international courier service she wanted to use for delivery was real...it is. She said she was having trouble paying through PalPal, kept getting an error message, claimed she had just used her credit card to buy groceries and could we use a different service, Quickbooks/Intuit, which she used for her business which when I checked on it found it was a secure service so I opened a free 30 trial and sent the invoice and she paid it, the funds were transferred into my account so I arranged for pick-up with the courier service for last Thursday.

Two hours before the guy was supposed to come (and they supplied a name and phone number), I got an email with a not very professional looking invoice saying that I had to pay in cash in advance for the courier service, that the courier was not allowed to accept payment, and I could do that by going to Walmart and doing a cash transfer to the accountant whose name and Houston address they supplied (not the address of the courier service) and I was to fax or email the receipt and when they received it, then they would make the pick-up. So now I'm getting a little uneasy. I called the number they gave me for the courier, no answer. Before I could look for a phone number for the 'local' office of the courier service, we got a phone call from a woman in Austin whose job it is to keep an eye on the company's credit card for whom she works. She checks the charges on-line once a week and had just done that when she saw the charge to us and called to say they had not made that purchase and were contesting the charge. So, yes, it was all a scam. Later, when I did an internet search for the address they gave me for the money exchange, I discovered it was a real address but the house was empty and on the real estate market.

This woman/person strung me along for weeks! I cannot tell you how stupid stoopid and gullible I feel. What a fucking idiot, eegit, as they say in Ireland. Would I have sent the money if we hadn't gotten the phone call? I don't think so, I hope I'm not that stupid, but they had me totally convinced up until that point that this was legit. Surely I would have discovered the fake address when looking for the local number for the courier service as it was all getting very hinky there at the end. Just a different spin on the same old scam.

What I do know for sure is that I just had a big withdrawal from my karmic bank.

a birth day and other assorted matters

OMG, my next list already has 10 items on it and it's only been 3 days.

On a more pleasant note, the two juvenile squirrels hanging out in the yard and romping in the trees are so cute.

You can't really tell from the picture but this little squirrel is about half the size of an adult.

And then on Saturday, this happened...

and then on Sunday, this happened...

peach dewberry

Friday and Saturday were so hot in the house even with doors and windows open, 84˚ 78% humidity, 83˚ 79% humidity respectively, that we finally turned the AC on for a few hours each day. I believe that's the first time to ever turn the AC on in April.

So I did go and get the last yard of dirt for the season last week and shoveled in enough to fill the raised bed with enough left over for the small extension of the flower bed in the Big Backyard by the banana trees. I want to round the other end to match. Today, I pulled all the gone by poppies out and added some compost and turned that in and I'll plant some bush beans later when it cools off.

Since we had no winter to speak of and a lot of things didn't bloom because of that (no daffodils, white iris, purple iris, no miniature gladiolas, the altheas though it might still be too early for them, it's all so crazy now), there will not be much of a peach crop this year. Not in Texas nor Georgia nor South Carolina. Growers are predicting only about 30% of a normal crop. So when I saw on FB Saturday morning (they are only open Saturday and Sunday) that the local peach orchard had peaches I dropped everything and headed out there and bought 4 bags. They think they will have peaches maybe only another two weeks. So that's where the pie came from plus I put up enough for later pies and still have plenty to eat til next Saturday.

Plenty of stuff is blooming though like some of the day lilies and one clump of nile lilies and finally the magnolia bud that was low enough to reach that we have been watching for weeks, opened.

Sunday was my 67^th birthday. I'm sort of unfazed by 67, oddly since it took me til I was about 65 to get over the shock of being in the 60s at all. It's kind of freaky to think about because I'm still me. I don't feel that fundamentally different from my 50s. The day was beautiful, much cooler and dry. My sister came by, I planted two rows of okra in the new dirt, went and visited with a friend, made a pie, put up peaches, had two long phone conversations one with my son and the other with my brother and 3 out of 4 grandkids called too, walked the dog, picked tomatoes. A good day. A good life.

This small plant is only about 1/3 the size of the others, is a volunteer that came up under one of the broccoli plants in the fall garden, and has 20 tomatoes on it.

100 days in he thought it would be easier

Here's your update on some of the stuff in the last two and a half weeks in DC...

Remember when Trump said he would probably be the first president to ever make money off being president? That wasn't a simple musing, it was a promise and one of the ways he is doing it is by being granted trademarks for his businesses by foreign governments, trademarks they kept declining before he was elected. 

As another example, over $500K of campaign funds for Trump's 2020 campaign has already gone into his pocket. 

The generals, given leave to do whatever they want by Trump, have just dropped one of the biggest bombs there is, 22,000 pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, short of going nuclear, a bomb that is not designed to penetrate hardened targets like bunkers or cave complexes, on ISIS in Afghanistan and killed 92 ISIS militants. Trump just spent $16 million to kill 92 militants.

In another act of incompetence, Trump announced a warship was heading for the Korean peninsula Easter weekend with orders to act aggressively towards N. Korea when, in fact, it was headed in the opposite direction to participate in war games with Australia, sparking fears of an imminent outbreak of hostilities with both sides putting nuclear bombs on the table.

Mar A Lago, Trump's weekend getaway, had 13 health violations right before the Japanese Prime Minister was to visit.

Trump signed a bill that would allow states to withhold federal funding from health care organizations that provide abortions, including PP where only 3% of it's services are abortion, even though it is already against the law to use federal funds for abortions thereby decreasing funding for health services to women who don't want an abortion, reversing yet another of Obama's protections for the population at large.

Trump's White House refuses to make the visitor logs public.

House Republicans voted once again to keep Trump's taxes secret.

The Republican Congress passed a bill to allow a person's private browser history to be sold to whoever is interested in buying it.

While Trump undoes all the progress Obama and the US made towards renewable energy, thereby reducing carbon pollution in the atmosphere, by rescinding all the regulations and enticements put in place to slow global warming, China and other countries are taking the lead.

Trump crashed a Purple Heart award ceremony, “when I heard about this I wanted to do it myself”, and then told the man who just lost his leg “congratulations, tremendous”.

Trump appointee AG Jeff Sessions doesn't think a federal judge in Hawaii should have the right to stop Trump from doing something unconstitutional.

Trump has offered the Democrats a deal...support funding for his border wall and he won't cut payments to the ACA thereby holding hostage the health insurance for millions of low income Americans.

On another day, Trump threatens to refuse to sign a stop gap spending bill and shut down the government if it doesn't include funding for his wall with plans to blame it on the Democrats while Trump's budget director, Mick Mulvaney, accuses the Democrats of 'stunning' obstructionism in a Congress in which Republicans have a majority in both houses.

The state department and US embassies are promoting Trump's Mar A Lago resort. See the first entry on this list. (They have since removed the article from their websites.)

Republican legislators would, in another hypocritical move through their new replacement health care bill, exempt themselves and their aides from losing the very popular protections the ACA provides while they are giving the states the right to rescind these protections for their constituents.

In an attempt to open national lands to drilling, mining, and logging, Trump signed an EO requiring the Interior Department to review the designation of two national monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, opening the door to reviewing all our national lands.

Trump admits he doesn't read the EOs he signs, admits he doesn't really read, finds it boring, has instructed his staff to present information in charts and graphs, pictures, instead of words, and no longer than a page or two and is basically functionally illiterate.

Trump responds with insults and applied a 20% tariff on soft wood imports from Canada, once again damaging our relationship with an ally and causing American consumers to have to pay more for building materials, in response to Canada's recent lowering of their prices on dairy ingredients to make them more competitive with American dairy imports.

Trump had his lawyers file a motion that it is illegal for the American people to protest him at his rallies citing his 1^st amendment right to free speech and trampling everyone else's right to free speech in the process in response to the civil suit brought by the victims of the violence he incited at one of his rallies.

Trump once again exhorts companies and consumers to 'buy American and hire American' while he and daughter Ivanka continue to have their merchandise made overseas in sweatshops and Trump companies continue to import workers from outside the US so they can pay them less.

In another act of hypocrisy, Trump constantly criticized the Clinton Foundation for accepting money from foreign governments while HRC was Secretary of State but has no problem with daughter Ivanka's foundation accepting money from governments while Ivanka holds her position in the US government whatever the hell that is.

As more and more evidence piles up via various investigations supporting the allegations concerning the Trump campaign's, and Trump's, collusion with Russia prior to the election and certain political figures' ties to Russia including but not limited to money laundering, digital espionage, payments, political promises, and blackmail, the Republican controlled congress continues to refuse to appoint an independent investigation while they drag their feet on the congressional investigation.

As usual, everything Trump does is to benefit himself and other millionaires and billionaires and his tax plan goes a long way to making them richer. Us peons? Not so much.

Remember when Trump, during his campaign and earlier, condemned President Obama for his Executive Orders and that he wouldn't need to rely on EOs to get things done, that he was going to basically do away with them? Yeah, that. He will have signed 32 EOs in his first 100 days according to WH aides, more than any president in 74 years, along with 24 memorandums and 20 proclamations.

Because the 9^th Circuit Court judges continue to strike down Trump's unconstitutional decrees and EOs, Trump wants to break up the 9^th Circuit. 

Trump, on his 98^th day in office, admits in an interview with Reuters that 'I thought it would be easier' and hands out maps with the latest figures from the 2016 electoral map with the areas he won marked in red still finding it necessary to remind himself and everyone else that he won the election.

In line with Trump's promise to be the 'jobs president', Secretary of State Tillerson plans to cut 2,300 state department jobs because who needs diplomacy when you can just drop a nuclear bomb on them.

accomplishments

You might remember that on February 14^th a tornado came through town and peeled back half the roof on one of the buildings of the antique store and busted out some of the clerestory windows and the store is still closed. None of the damage has been repaired yet and the owner isn't sure what she wants to do about any of it since she has another location now in Rosenberg. The point of this is that I no longer have a Saturday job. Without that job and being mostly retired I have a hard time remembering what day of the week it is. Well, I can usually keep track of Mondays and Wednesdays as these are yoga days but the rest soon escape me. Not that that matters I guess as long as reminders from my calendar keep popping up like the one for last Tuesday.

I had my last follow-up doctor's appointment with my primary care physician who I like a lot. She was pretty astounded at some of the things I told her about my visits to the ENT and asked if I wanted to go to a different one, which I declined. Her position is we may not know exactly what is causing the spasms or choking but we know what isn't...not cancer, not a tumor or any other growth or obvious malfunction, which is nice to know, so we're back to mindfulness while eating and drinking.

I did finally get two things accomplished...

the second horizontal surface, clean tools, clean paper, wax dust free and in plastic bags

all that clay finally removed, now one more yard of dirt to fetch this week

...and just in time since it's supposed to get up to 90˚ on Friday. In April.

yard and garden notes

getting our summer canopy

We had a cool front blow in Saturday evening so I abandoned cleaning the wax off my tools and decided to work on the shop fence between us and our neighbor. It's completely overgrown with wild grape and virginia creeper and ironweed and further down, poison ivy. There are pecan trees and hackberry trees growing under all that that needs to be cleared out. I don't know how many hours I worked out there with a machete and long handled nippers but the truck was completely filled and I only uncovered about 10' of fence.

Garden news...some of the tomatoes are starting to pink up 

but so far all but two of the 7 I've picked had rotten spots on them. 

My neighbor says worm damage though I haven't seen any worms and I look over those plants every day. I did pick a big hornworm off the potato plants so maybe it moved over there. I've counted 7 more that have damage, all at or near the bottom of the plants, so maybe that will be the end of it. My onions, which I took such care to move to the good dirt, have still not grown one bit and neither has the pepper plant I put in there too so I guess this dirt is hot too or stuff just doesn't like to be moved. I've given up on getting onions this year. I emptied a bit more of the crappy dirt clay and located another place to buy garden soil from that while it may not be any closer, it's not any farther away and is $2 cheaper for a yard. Hopefully it won't be so hot nothing grows in it until it sits over the summer. I'd like to get some green beans in at least.

baby satsumas!

I noticed the juvenile squirrels are out romping around. There were two in the ditch in the front earlier and I caught sight of three others chasing each other up and around one of the trees in front of the library last week. They can be such pests but the young ones are so cute. Sitting in the house a week or so ago I looked up and saw a bunny in the front yard out in the middle of the day. I've seen them in the back out by the Wild Space if I'm up early enough but I've never seen one out in the front yard during the middle of the day.

taken on high magnification through the screen

stuff is still blooming though the evening primrose and baby blue eyes are going to seed and the poppies are about done 

last night's sunset

all play and no work

Wednesday evening looking east

A thought occurred to me yesterday while I was at an estate sale with my sister that I might not be semi-retired like I've been saying but actually retired. I have not been pursuing the etched/carved glass for some time now and I think we only did 3 jobs last year even if one of them was the big A&M job and only one very small job so far this year, more of a favor than an actual job though we did get paid for it. And we sell the occasional pate de verre piece. I'm not retired from that, just the etched glass even though I haven't made anything new in months. It's just that the weather and the garden and the yard and the flowers and the birds and the bees and all that. There's still some work to do out there but it is starting to get hotter and I can't spend all day doing it like I have been. So today I'm cleaning off the two large horizontal surfaces in my 'in house' studio in preparation for starting some new models during the hot part of the day, even though one of the horizontal surfaces has all my wax working tools and wax spread out all over it. It all needs to be cleaned and neatened for a fresh start. Right now everything is covered in dust and cat hair.

it's worse than it looks

probably should have shown you the before picture so you could be properly impressed

These estate sales that we go to are all pretty much alike. They were a treasure trove when I was collecting glassware to make the totems. I still manage to score something cool now and then like this rusted metal candle lantern shaped like a firefly that I got yesterday, which speaking of fireflies have been out the last several nights. It's going to get hung outside next to the back door.

I picked up these paper fans at another one a while back.

I have to wonder at who prices some of this stuff though like this totally rotten wood falling apart covered with spider webs and filled with ancient nesting material bird house for $3. That should have gone straight in the trash.

The other thing we did was stop at a plant nursery on the way home to see if I could find a new porterweed (that's the butterfly magnet shrub that made those long stalks with the small pink flowers that I can never remember the name of) to replace the one that froze and I did. The other thing I was looking for they only had in big pots and I didn't want to spend that much so I got a bulbine (which also froze and didn't come back) for the new flower bed.

Then Minnie and I went for our walk and checked on the garden and listened to the birds and watched the fireflies and that sounds like retired to me.

the ENT redux

He basically blew me off. (of course, there was that less than stellar review I wrote on the questionnaire they sent me after my first visit) We looked at the CT scan images of my nasal passages and he pointed out how constricted the left side is and how I don't breathe out of the left nostril because of this constriction which is why I breathe through my mouth and most people would have got that corrected. old news All this is damage from when I was 3 and broke my nose and my parents never saw fit to have it corrected later and then as an adult with no insurance and living and raising a family on an artist's income it was out of the question as long as it wasn't life threatening and it hasn't been life threatening. I am aware that my breath through one nostril is restricted, I take care to sleep with my nose and mouth not smooshed into the pillow, I don't like stuff around my face, I try to keep my nasal passages clear within reason. For the record, I can breathe out of my left nostril and only breathe through my mouth when I'm stopped up. It's not like what happens is a slow asphyxiation. When it happens it's sudden, one minute I'm fine and the next I can't breathe or just barely.

So he does the camera down the throat thing which didn't hurt (the attendant put numbing solution soaked cords in my nostrils first) and shows me my vocal chords and has me make noise and I see them constrict and he pointed the camera into my nasal passages. All looks good and right in there, no obvious malformations down there.

Then he kept pointing out this thing in the image of the CT scan in my nasal passage on the left adding to the constriction from the broken nose...a skin sac full of air. It was very clearly there (hmmm, I wonder if that's why the left side seems full so much more often) so a malformation there in that most people don't have this but I was born like this he says, born with it, that it shows up in about 15% of people. I'm like...OK, so this is something I've lived my whole life with and I'm not really sure what he's saying or recommending, it doesn't seem to be a problem that demands to be fixed to me unless it is or will get worse for which he didn't really have an answer. So yeah, OK, but what about the problem I'm here for, the whole suffocation/choking thing. Perhaps I should get a second opinion, he said, because he could not see anything wrong, perhaps another doctor would be able to see something he wasn't able to, and he was done. What a colossal waste of time and money. I got more attention and useful information from the speech therapist that helped administer the barium swallow test than from this doctor.

So no. I'll not be going through this again just to find out what I already know, that it's just one of many swallowing disorders that you learn to manage among the many weird things that affect and afflict the ever diverse physical form of a human body, unless something extreme happens. 

Maybe I am choking, or rather, aspirating and not suffocating, only instead of one big thing blocking my airway, it's small droplets (saliva or liquid) that take some effort to expel. Who knows. The only answer is the same...mindfulness. Mindfulness when I eat and drink so I may be a pretty dull dinner companion from here on out, just saying.

But, y'all, I kept my promise and went to the doctor about it.