no catchy title, just stuff

Used to be, I would update my website 3 or 4 times a year, sometimes more because the web crawlers look for websites that are active first. I think I've updated it once since Harvey. I think I made an attempt a second time but nothing got uploaded. And so it is woefully out of date. I've been wanting to completely re-do it for sometime, a couple of years really but don't have the knowledge to build the pages the way I want so I have to work with what I know how to do. And then for a reason I don't remember, the program I used to manipulate the code was no longer available and I had to find a new one which I did but I've never really figured it out. I'm not real comfortable with it yet.

I want to eliminate the etched glass part. We don't do the work anymore and it has just become an inactive part of the website. And I want to update the pages I'm keeping and make the whole thing a little sleeker, keep the pertinent information but get rid of the superfluous stuff. I'd like to have a shopping cart page but I don't know if my skills extend that far. I'll have to pay someone to set it up for me. Anyway, I've decided to finally undertake that endeavor and I spent part of Saturday and most of Sunday working on it. It's gonna take a while while I remember how to do this stuff. It's not the first time I have completely remade it but if you want to check it out as it stands now, go here.

More rain Saturday, 3”, that's 6 1/2” Saturday to Saturday so it's just as well I've found something to keep me occupied inside because as a result of all the rain it is (still) hot, (still) humid, the mosquitoes have all hatched, and the fire ants are on the move.

Ah, but look! Rain lilies! These things shoot up 12" - 14" overnight.

   

And mushrooms are springing up

and this drowned dragonfly...oh, wait.

I have a lot of birdhouses but the birds are not often tempted. The frogs like them though.

One of my neighbor's bees.

And oh! Look look look! Do you see?

The maple tree has sprouted new growth!

Here's the recipe for the crostata, all credit goes to Joanne of Cup on The Bus who first posted it. You can use any combination of fruit. the first one I made was peach and the second raspberry & blackberry.

It's finally August. I say that but it seems like I should have said it's already August as fast as this year has seemed to go by though you'd think it would have dragged by what with the virus and all. August is usually our hottest month so we're not quite on the downside of summer. But the important thing is we are now counting down the days. Instead of 100 bottles of beer on the wall, it's 100 days til Trump's in the dump. (not great linguistically but it was all I could come up with.) Of course he'll still have 2 months to continue with his scorched earth policies. But it does seem that we are approaching a glimmer at the end of the tunnel. Let's hope it's not a mirage. 92 more days.

VOTE as if your life depends on it because it does.

week 20

You might remember I reported Trump bought up basically the world's supply, 63 million doses for the US stockpile, of the now debunked hydroxychloroquine for treatment of the coronavirus, another example of his poor business decisions, and so he is now promoting Dr. Stella Immanuel as his new medical expert on treating and combatting covid-19 after seeing and tweeting twice a video of a press conference organized by the Tea Party by the America's Frontline Doctors group where she promotes hydroxychloroquine as a cure and tells people that masks don't work and no need to social distance. Except that this woman is a crackpot and her Breitbart sponsored video has been debunked for the dangerous misinformation it contains and both FB and Twitter have removed it as being dangerous to public health. I saw a post yesterday that I wish I could find again, but you know how that goes, that detailed the education and professional histories of every one of the doctors in the video but I did find this.  I would not consider a single one to be qualified to issue an opinion on this subject.

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And related, Trump announced a big government loan using the Defense Production Act, you know the one he refused to activate to convert factories to making PPEs and ventilators for our health care workers and hospitals, to Kodak, the basically defunct film company, to start producing generic active pharmaceutical ingredients in an attempt to reduce reliance on China. As part of the deal, Kodak will reportedly manufacture chemicals that will allow more hydroxychloroquine to be produced domestically. Because the 63 million doses already stockpiled aren't enough of a drug that has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective?

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As I've mentioned before, there is little reporting of the continuing health problems of people who recover from covid-19 but I did come across this one which reports that two studies in Germany have found 75% of recovered patients had heart damage months later including people in people who were formerly healthy. 

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It has been revealed this week that Jared Kushner and his team developed an aggressive, coordinated national COVID-19 response that could have brought the pandemic under control but then it was trashed because, as a member of Kushner’s team admitted, the virus had hit blue states hardest so a national plan was unnecessary because it  would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert. So Trump and Kushner were perfectly happy for citizens in states with Democratic leadership to get sick and die. What a despicable family.

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Progress has been made on two possible vaccines, both shown to protect against the coronavirus in monkeys, one from Moderna and the National Institutes of Health requiring two shots which delivers a kind of messenger RNA into cells and the other from Johnson & Johnson requiring only one shot which is based on a virus called Ad26 which researchers have modified. You can read more about this here. 

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Researchers from Yale think they have identified markers in immune system responses in patients that will indicate how severe an individual's case may be. If i'm understanding it correctly, the stronger your immune response, the sicker you will be and which seems to cause problems of its own. Here's a link to the article. 

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My county is really climbing, now at 636 cases and 20 deaths (county officials are reporting just 7 deaths). Up from 499 last week. I get my numbers from the worldometers.info site.

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Current US statistics as of today 8/1/20, 17:56 GMT (last week's totals in parenthesis): cases – 4,735,249 (4,318,247), deaths – 157,265 (149,414) though how accurate these numbers are is anybody's guess considering Trump is trying to control the numbers by having all data sent to HHS instead of the CDC.

still uselessly wandering around

More rain yesterday, another inch. So, of course the electricians showed up yesterday to hook up the house and septic system. The guy was under the house when the heavens opened and a heavy downpour ensued. Just what you want when you're working on electricity. He was trapped under there til it abated somewhat. I had just walked over to the shop to check on something and so was trapped in the shop. It's been rainy, overcast, or drippy every day since Saturday. I think we've about reached the saturation point so it can stop now. Can't we just have a nice soaking in rain every 4 or 5 or 6 days instead of these long periods of no rain and then days and days of rain? Apparently not. Not in the time of climate change. Well, the sun is out today with puffy clouds and it is hot and humid, steamy actually, and the mosquitoes are back. The electricians finished today and the AC guys are scheduled for Monday. Once the AC is in I have to get the surveyor back for the final elevation survey which will prove the house and AC unit are as high as they need to be and submit that to the county.

When we came up with a timeline last February for getting the house and getting it ready for Pam to move in we didn't realize how quickly it would all come together even with the pandemic and so set a drop dead date for the end of November which would give her a month to move before putting her house on the market after the holidays as our fav realtor recommended at the time. I thought we would have to order the house which would take a couple of months right there but as it turned out we bought one off the lot. So now, next week the house will be ready to start moving into. But things have changed in the interim. Apparently Sugar Land, then Richmond/Rosenberg have become too citified with Houston stretching out and Wharton has become a real estate hot spot. To which Pam and I always wonder...why? There is NOTHING to do here. Our few restaurants are mostly Mexican food and barbeque or fast food or a country kitchen where they serve the food on styrofoam with plastic utensils, no movie theater, no bowling alley, no aquatic center (all of which El Campo does have 12 miles further down the road as well as a much better selection of restaurants). We do have a funky little outdoor public pool and several brand new sports stadiums for the local schools, one gym, no nice pubs, no shopping besides Walmart. What we do have is a glut of hair and nail salons. And churches. Lots of churches. But I digress.

I've read that with so many people working from home during the pandemic, some businesses and employees are finding that that works just fine and it may actually be a sea change, that when the virus is under control via treatment and/or vaccine that some businesses will continue this way giving up expensive office space as they find their employees are more productive working from home which frees people up from having to live near their place of employment. Hence the migration out of the city to this little podunk agricultural town. So, checking with our fav realtor about the new timeline, she says every property she has listed except for one run down shack has a contract on it. Houses go on the market and they are snapped up.

So I did absolutely nothing yesterday, and I'm pretty useless today too, except read a little more in the book I'm trudging through and once again spending too much time online. These last 100 pages are taking forever. I've sort of lost interest, no longer care much for the main character, just want to get to the end. Why don't you just put it down, you ask? Because I'm stubborn that way. Surely something will redeem it at the end.

I did make a raspberry and blackberry crostata on Tuesday. I'm liking these better than the pies I usually make because there are just two of us and by the fourth day the crust is soggy on a pie.

I have nothing more to add unless I want to talk about politics and the latest bullshit from the twitler-in-chief, which rest assured there is plenty not the least of which is him whining about how popular Dr. Fauci is and how nobody likes him, him as in Trumplethinskin and so he had to make up a lie that he was invited to throw out the first pitch at a Yankees game which was news to the Yankees and the White House staff as well, and then claimed that he was just too busy to do it as another wall is being built around the White House at Trump's command, this one a 13' high anti-climb wall. You can't even see the White House from the street anymore. Or that he's musing about postponing the election, something he does not have the power to do, only Congress can do it and that ignorant Pompeo saying that Barr will decide if the election should be postponed except Barr doesn't have that power either and whether there's an election or not, his term will end on January 20, 2021 and since the entire House will be up for election, every House member's term will end on Jan. 3 which would mean the ranking Senator takes his place until there is an election. Not to mention the over 150,000 dead Americans. And he wonders why no one likes him.

rain, repairs, and resist

Hurricane Hanna made landfall Saturday afternoon/evening just south of Corpus Christi at Padre Island. It's far enough down the coast that all we got is rain which we got off and on all day Saturday, 2 1/2” total. Some bouts of hard rain but mostly not as the bands swept through with pauses in between in which I got out there with a shovel or hoe trying to direct the accumulating water away from the part of the house on slab. Of course, the lowest part of the property is right around the slab.

I've been pondering lately my complete disinterest and lack of motivation in making art. No drawing, no watercoloring, no model making or glass casting. It's not like I don't have plenty of time and opportunity though I have been blaming it on the remodel of the bathroom, then the remodel in the shop, then the house hunting and preparation for it to be delivered but the truth is, I just don't have the interest these days. As if finishing the heron box last December was the cap on my career. Apparently. My colored pencils and watercolors stay spread out on the small work table as I studiously ignore it all. I tried to do some sketches at one point for a new piece that's been floating around in my mind but after three days of zero progress I gave it up since I do have some pieces I can offer the gallery for their anniversary show in September. If this keeps up I'm going to have to change the description of my blog.

Although, the more I look at the picture of the begonias on my Friday post the more I think I might draw them. I even went so far as to print out a couple of images and even opened my sketchbook to a clean page but that's as far as I got. Maybe tomorrow. I'm trying to finish the book I'm currently reading but it's gotten tedious here towards the end and not holding my attention. But then nothing seems to be holding my attention.

And so yesterday it was tomorrow and I did not draw but I did go to the grocery store and I did finally mend my skirt. You might remember last spring when I made three skirts. I wear two of them all the time around the house and on my walks, when one goes in the laundry I wear the other. As it happened, a couple of weeks ago I looked down to see that I had caught my skirt on something and there was a big tear, two sides of a square, each leg 2 1/2”. My first attempt was a total failure. I lined everything up and put cellophane tape over the tear on the inside and then zigzagged over it on the outside thinking all the little holes would perforate the tape and I could just pull it off when done. Wrong. So seam ripper and scissors in hand I ripped out all that zigzagging making the frayed edges even worse but I remembered I had some lightweight interfacing, the kind that you can iron on, so I got some of that out, cut it into an 'L' shape and pressed it on over the tears on the inside and then stitched around it and then zigzagged in the middle and I think it did a fine job.

Another rainbow formed as we were coming back from yoga last night (is it night if it's still light outside even though it's after 6 PM?). It started at one end, then started at the other end until it arced across the sky. Short lived and not very strong, nevertheless a picture was got through the windshield.

My sister and my daughter think all I do here is rant, rant about things I can't change and I'm working myself into a heart attack but they are wrong. Things don't change if no one speaks out, if no one observes, if no one shares what they see and learn, if no one resists, if no one confronts, if no one puts their body on the line, if no one informs why it is essential to vote, if we turn a blind eye to the subordination of the constitution and the rule of law and allow a would be dictator supported by a compromised Senate to rise. I resist. I resist by refusing to stuff the anger. I resist by shining a light, however small, on the evil that is this administration. I resist by communicating with the people and our political representatives. I resist because there is no guarantee at this point that we will have a fair election with all the voter suppression perpetrated by Republicans or even have an election. When the Justice Department is compromised and the head Attorney General of the United Sates has become the fixer for a corrupt president supported by his corrupt political party with his own militarized secret police force which is right now being sent into the cities and states governed by the opposing political party to suppress the demonstrations and 1A protests against police brutality and inherent racism in our judicial systems, there are no guarantees, there are no guarantees this same brutal force will not be deployed to prevent people from voting.

This blog was never meant to be about fluff though I have published plenty of fluff. It was and is a chronicle of my life through memories and current activities and what catches my attention, and, to a lesser degree, a history of the time in which I live and my place in it. It's the good, the bad, and the ugly; mine and the world's. And while I don't consider these essays rants I will continue to write them as long as events demand.

week 19

Trump is starting his daily pandemic press briefings again sans any scientists or health care officials because apparently someone convinced him it would make him look good. At least there were none planned for the first one. I haven't watched any of them so I don't really know who is present. He still has no plan, still wants to defund testing, is still bored with the whole thing and wants the country to move on even though he was forced to cancel the RNC national convention planned in Florida. Even though he did finally suggest wearing masks is a good thing. Meanwhile, Trump plays golf while Americans sicken and die.

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Oxford University has had some success with a possible vaccine. In their limited first trial it produced antibodies and the ever important T-cells but there is no proof that it actually protects someone from getting the virus short of intentionally exposing them or for how long. More, bigger studies are forthcoming. 

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A doctor in Dallas has what he thinks is a life saving treatment for covid-19 patients, an inexpensive generic steroid used to help asthmatics for more than 20 years administered for 5 minutes through a nebulizer followed by an antibiotic and a zinc supplement. All of this administered early on when patients are first having shortness of breath and painful breathing has an immediate effect and patients recover. All the patients he has been treating since March are still alive. This is the protocol that has been used in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and Iceland, countries that have had very few deaths. The current CDC and WHO protocol is to go home and get over it until you are so bad you need emergency care. You can read the article here  but this site is listed as 'questionable' for a far right bias with a 'mixed' rating on factual reporting.

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Other studies and trials in the UK have reported:

An experimental drug, SNG001, delivered via an inhaler and based on interferon beta, a protein produced naturally in the body that plays an important role in coordinating the body’s antiviral response, given to hospitalized patients has reduced the need for ventilation or death by 79%. 

The steroid dexamethasone, a drug that fights inflammation, given either by mouth or injection has been found to reduce mortality in hospitalized patients. I wonder if this is the same steroid the doctor in Dallas uses. 

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The US hit over 4 million cases this past week. Florida has surpassed New York for total cases. Even so Trump and his toadies still want schools to reopen in full and in person though it's not clear how many school districts are going to do that. Some of the proponents of this push admit that their grandkids won't be going back though it's fine for your kids to go back as our incredibly ignorant senator John Cornyn is trying to convince us kids don't get the virus and if they do get it it's mild and they aren't infectious. Again, he says children with the virus can't infect anyone else. Because he thinks the virus can choose whether or not to be infectious? I'm sure all those parents who have sick or dead kids will argue this point.

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My county has 499 cases. They are still reporting just one death but people here are starting to question that as they have personal knowledge that more than one has died.

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Current US statistics as of today 7/26/20, 14:23 GMT (last week's totals in parenthesis): cases – 4,318,247 (3,838,389), deaths – 149,414 (142,895) though how accurate these numbers are is anybody's guess considering Trump is trying to control the numbers by having all data sent to HHS instead of the CDC.

a little rain, heat, humidity, aluminum vs copper, and other minor matters

Well, apparently all I had to do to get it to rain was complain about not getting any rain though it wasn't all that much, only 3/4”. Still, better than none, though there's a tropical storm in the Gulf headed our way. It's been trending more south the last few days, was projected to head right for us or rather Matagorda earlier in the week, yesterday it had shifted to Port Lavaca, and today it's aiming at Corpus Christi. As such it has been mostly cloudy to overcast all week and more rain is predicted for later today and tomorrow. But do you think this little bit of rain and the cloudiness has made it a little more bearable outside? Ha! If you think that, you know nothing about humidity. Thirty or forty minutes outside wielding the long handled nippers and sweat is dripping off me. Wednesday I hacked some virginia creeper off a small section of fence along the front of the shop property standing in the ditch, Thursday some ironweed further down, and today a rose bush that had long branches laying on the ground and some small trash trees along the property line side of the barn that were already too big to be successfully dug up.

It's been so hot and dry that all the pecan trees are damping off lots of small branches. 

They haven't started to fall yet but they will. This is a neighbor's tree but my three look just the same. And I'm not seeing many pecans up in the branches so I expect there won't be much of a harvest this fall, at least not from my trees.

Progress on the house has come to a standstill while we get estimates from electricians to hook up the house and the septic system. I have three estimates ranging from $1690 - $2090 depending on copper or aluminum wire. Right now we're waiting for one of them to confirm copper in their price and be more specific than 'August' for when they can do the work. It never occurred to me that there was more than one kind of wire so I spent some time yesterday researching the difference between aluminum and copper. Copper is more expensive by about twice and heavier but it has better conductivity and a smaller expansion rate when heated. Aluminum is cheaper, lighter, more flexible, has less conductivity and expands more when heated which can lead to weakening of the wire and breakage. Every article I read said that there is a danger of fire if the aluminum is not installed correctly. However, most home builders switched to aluminum in the 50s and 60s since the price difference is considerable if you are wiring a whole house. The manufactured home is wired with copper so we've decided to go with that. And Pam just called, they only use copper and can start next Thursday or as soon as they get the wire in.

I also spent part of this week investigating flood insurance as our FEMA supplied policy expires in October. And as long as I was at it I got a quote for our car insurance to see if we could bring that back down from when our current insurer raised our rate after the grandboy wrecked the truck. He hydroplaned one night right into a brand new Lexus. Of course. Had to be a brand new Lexus.

It's getting a little breezy out there (though I have just been informed that our county is no longer included in the tropical storm watch) and my birds haven't shown up for a couple of days so wondering if they sense the storm coming. I don't put the bird feeder out in the summer when food is plentiful even if they have to work for it because it wouldn't do for them to get dependent on humans but soon after it was emptied for the last time this year a young male cardinal would come and sit in the tree outside my window, peer in, and chirp at me so I've been putting a handful of seed out on the elephant plant stand every morning and evening. Usually he's waiting for me and will swoop down before I even get back inside totally unconcerned about me or Minnie or even the cat who likes to lay on the little patio right outside the door. Pretty soon he showed up with his lady friend and later with a fledgling. After a while the blue jays came to get the peanuts and then the chickadees and titmice got in on it. I went out to take this picture

and before I got back inside, I could hear him chirping and then there he was!

What else have I done this week...touched up the paint in the big bathroom that discolored from a leak in the attic that was easily remedied, painted the white glue to blend in on the naked lady though I haven't set her out yet as I can't decide where to put her. Not next to the tree again because...squirrels. Bought 10 peaches on Tuesday that were firm, needed a bit more ripening before I used them for a pie so I put them in my netted basket on the kitchen counter, they looked good on Wednesday but didn't have time, and Thursday morning they were so gone by they were soft, oozy, and moldy! All of them! Don't think I'll be buying anymore of those peaches. Not something I did but the crop duster was out yesterday, zooming low and banking over our house, spraying defoliant I guess on the already dying cotton field. Seems a little early for cotton harvest to me but maybe not. All the farmers who had still been waiting for their turn with the harvesters late August when the Harvey flood hit lost their entire crop, including the one at the end of my street.

And now for the end of post flower pics.

more coral ginger

mexican bird of paradise

begonia

another few days in the life

It continues to be hot and humid and dry. So dry. The cotton in the field at the end of the street is suffering, wilted with large swaths yellowing. 

I don't remember this happening the year of the terrible drought when the whole state was in exceptional drought and Texas lost millions of trees to wildfire and also from lack of water. Feed corn must have been planted in that field that year which they don't harvest until it is completely dried out anyway.

Monday evening, though, it was raining east of here and a rainbow developed while I was walking Minnie

and then Monday night a storm blew through but was mostly just lightning and thunder. We recorded 3/8” of rain. It cooled things down a bit if only temporarily. And then this morning I woke to a decent rain, or rather it was raining decently as long as it lasted, less than ¾" worth.

My neighbor whose husband died suddenly last December had a crew come in and whip her acre that had gotten out of control (this is not to be construed as a criticism especially considering my own yard maintenance style but simply as an observation) back into shape. It took them two days. There was a lot of stuff to recover and uncover. It made me wonder if she's thinking of putting the house on the market soon.

Grandgirl Jade, who is finishing up her third year at University of Texas San Antonio I know, right! is moving into a new apartment with a friend and she claimed our old dining room table that we have been keeping for her over at the shop. You might remember I got the score of a lifetime at an estate sale, a round oak table with lion paw feet, a leaf, and 6 chairs for $80. She came and fetched the table and chairs weekend before last and last Friday I got this text from her...

I'm going to have to stay away from the news and all things Trump for a few days. Trump's deployment of his DHS and prison guard and border patrol thugs in Portland and the upcoming deployment to Chicago to instigate and engage in violence is making my afib act up. Trump is doing this as part of his 'law and order' re-election strategy, and he's only doing this to democratic run states and cities as a way to delegitimize the Democrats, as proof that Dems are soft on law and order and that if they get elected the country will descend into chaos. So he is sending in his secret police to escalate the violence to create the 'proof' he wants. And in Portland that's exactly what happened. The protests had dwindled down to about 100 diehards hanging out at a park, barbequing and making music and now with the uncalled for violence from these unnamed police, the protests have resurged. Never mind that the country has descended into chaos under Trump's hand ot that this maneuver is illegal as no one in Portland asked for the feds and federal law enforcement must be requested. As for Chicago, their mayor is a black woman. He needs no other reason to demonize Chicago and send in the feds though I did read today that the police union sent a letter to Trump asking for help because they are just as racist and misogynistic as he is.

A few more pics from around the yard...

been seeing more of these little tree frogs

and I saw the tiniest little anole yesterday that must have just hatched but it scooted away too fast for me to get a picture.

Summer stalwarts Katie ruella which is basically a dwarf tamed wild mexican petunia though they also spread easily,

and the yellow bells (also called esperanza and tecoma stans) are blooming,

and the coral ginger is starting to bloom.