Goodbye, Hello

 It’s that time of year…

Catching Up, and 21

Summer always seems so fast and frenetic.  Long (and hot) as the days are, I never have enough time to do all the things I want to do.  Though the list of things I want to get done expands daily, the heat takes all the wind out of my sails, and I spend way more time than I should sitting around being uncomfortable and peevish. 

So now that September is almost over with, I feel things slowing down and cooling off a bit...just the way I like it. 

And there are a bunch of random things rattling around in my head, that I figured I might as well commit to blog.  I considered a "10 things" entry.  I'll just start throwing them down here...don't know if I'll come up with 10, but here goes:

1.) There have been a couple of  somewhat major life events over the past year plus that I have not written about.  In April of 2023, the husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  It seems one in eight men will fall victim to this malady in their lifetimes.  Scary as the word "cancer" is when it is applied to yourself or a loved one, it was made more scary and ulcer-inducing by the way our current health "care" system deals with it.  It was basically treated like not a particularly emergent situation by the health professionals involved.  While we were told that his degree of cancer required "action within six months," it took slightly longer than that to line up all the tests, examinations and gobbledegook required to be able to start treatment.  Husband was recommended into a course of radiation treatments...45 days "in a row" (not) of 15-minute radiation blasts.  Which, after all the bullshit we had to go through to get him started on them, stretched out from a diagnosis in April to "treatment" starting in mid-November and--due to holidays and weekends being "no treatment" days--stretching through to mid-January.  Completely fucking up the holidays, of course, and casting a pall on everything for most of 2023 and into 2024. 

2.) Somewhat major life event #2--just as the husband was starting to recover from the physical and mental effects of the whole cancer thing, at the end of April this year, he mysteriously passed out in the kitchen one morning while fixing breakfast, crumpled down on to the kitchen floor and broke the shit out of his foot in the process.  As innocent as a broken foot might sound, this has been a hideous nightmare from minute one.  The foot he broke has been messed up since our days as restaurant owners.  It had pronated so far out that he had been basically walking on the end of his ankle bone for years.  He has worn a brace on that leg for 15 years just so he can walk without excruciating pain.  And then he broke 9 of the bones in his foot passing out on the floor of the kitchen.  We've gone through an impressive array of conveyances, ramps, and grab bars just to facilitate his ability to get around the house and the yard.  He couldn't drive for over two months, so it was up to me to get him and his latest mobility contraption into and out of the van to a myriad of medial appointments.  And I have to say, I just about lost it during this episode.  I just had the hardest time dealing with his incapacitation and my having to step into the role of "caregiver" so suddenly and completely.  I sucked at it. The fact that we had so abruptly turned into our parents (at the end of their lives) shook me to my core.  It was not a gradual loss of ability.  It was "Bang! You're old and decrepit! Deal with it!"  I am not proud of how I had/have handled it, but I seem not to have a whole lot of control over my reaction.  Ugh.

3.) Somewhat major life event #3--In February, one of my nieces--my late sister's middle daughter--died suddenly of untreated chronic illness.  You want to wonder how someone so "young" lets her health get so out of control.  Young.  She was 51 years old, as impossible as that is to believe.  But she and her sisters have all been beset by various degrees of psychological problems.  For which it is nigh unto impossible to receive treatment in our horrible excuse for a health "care" system.  And though my niece didn't die from suicide as many of those with untreated mental health issues do, I'm convinced our lack of health care contributed mightily to her sad quality of life and her ultimate death.  

Well. Hasn't this post been a day-brightener?!

I have more I want to write about.  Hopefully not as depressing/frustrating as these three bullet points.

Hope I can keep the ball rolling and crank out another slightly brighter post in the next few days.   

Oh, and...

By the way...,

If I had had a baby instead of starting a blog back in September of 2003, she would now be old enough to drink. 

Make Us Proud

Word on the street is that it is now "cool" again for liberals to be patriotic.

Really?

Sorry, guys...

I don't think so.

Not even addressing the fact that I find the concept of "patriotism" on a par with organized religion as far as being a tool for the few to control the many through tribalism, exclusion, fear and violence...

Maybe the first step in the direction of patriotism should be making me "proud to be an American"...another concept of which I have not been a fan, nor to which I have subscribed, for many years.

And while I'm excited about the Harris candidacy, and what it might possibly mean for the slim hope of extending the life of our fragile, ailing democratic republic...

I don't see it making significant inroads into ending Trump, MAGA, and all they represent.

As long as a major party of this nation can cling to a monster like Trump as its standard-bearer; as long as a significant portion of our populace--including members of our highest levels of government--will worship and emulate him and all he represents...

I won't even be tempted to claim to be proud of America.

Fix it. End them.  Flush them into the black sewers of history where they belong.

Then, maybe we can talk about pride. 

Rabbit Rabbit

 Rabbit rabbit it is...

 

According to folklore, saying "Rabbit rabbit" as the first words spoken on the first of the month brings good fortune for the entire month.

I'll go with that...

How Far WOULD They Go?

 Is there a degree of depravity to which they would not stoop?

Hell fucking no….

New Words, Please…!

 

At first, “tired and used up” seemed appropriate terms for those words we toss around on every national holiday…

But after a little more thought, I realized the REAL problem I have with the old words.

If you are at all familiar with my writings, you know that I LOATHE “The Star-Spangled Banner”…

And, like Old Glory herself, the words to our national anthem have been weaponized by the right-wing crazies. 

“Freedom” applies to anything the hell I feel like doing, no matter how loathsome, selfish or evil… But not to anything YOU do that I’ve decided I don’t like.

“Bravery” refers to my propensity  to mercilessly bully and threaten those less fortunate or even just different from me.

It’s all very tribal…primitive and un-evolved.

And, I don’t know…

I just don’t think that is the crap the founders meant to encourage when they visualized the “Great Experiment.”

Just sayin’

Word

 

GUILTY

 

…Not My Monkeys

Who knew that the problem with the US today is that so many Americans had secret dreams of running away to join the circus…?

You Can't Have It Both Ways

 

Stumbled upon this one on NPR today:

Baby Boomers Own Big Houses and It’s Affecting The Housing Crunch.   

I’m confused.

Last I heard, we Baby Boomers were the villains because we were selling off our big family homes and using the money to pay cash for smaller homes, thereby “cheating” younger home buyers out of starter-level housing.

Seems like NOW we suck because some of us have decided to stay in our big, under-used houses because economic circumstances are not favorable to trading them in on something smaller. Thereby "cheating" millennials with families out of these larger, family-friendly homes.

To me, this looks more like Boomer-Bashing--one of the most popular social media sports these days--than legitimate journalism.  Every bad or even slightly off-kilter thing that happens in American society today is the fault of us evil folks born between 1946 and 1964.

Everything we have, we are hoarding so the millennials can't have it.  

Everything we get, we are stealing from those self-same millennials. 

Apparently, we should hand over the keys to...everything, so subsequent generations can have our stuff; and then disappear, so our children and our children's children don't have to waste any time or money on keeping us alive. 

Look:

Five years ago, we sold our 2200 square foot, four bedroom home, took the money and paid cash for a MUCH smaller place in a city nearer my family. Did it rankle that we paid $40k MORE for this dinky little 50-year-old ranch than we had for our 4-year-old (at the time) beautiful four bedroom home with the 3-car garage 20 years earlier? Yes it did. But the goal was a house with no mortgage in the area we wanted to live in. And that’s what we got. The insane escalating housing market made it LOOK like more of a stupid move than it was.

So I would certainly counsel people my age who CAN trade in the giant empty home the old folks are rattling around in for a mortgage-free, more maintainable single level abode, to do so.  Even if it does drive you crazy that you will end up paying WAY more for the downsized dwelling than you did for the big one.  That was then...this is now.  Deal with it.

Even so, let's face it: In the eyes of American social media, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.  So do what will work best for you and f**k everybody else's bullshit. 

But, really...  Is it too much to ask for a little respect for Baby Boomers?  We didn't have it easy, we worked for what we got; over the past  thirty years we have watched our lifestyles erode just like everyone else's, due to reaganomics and the false promise of "trickle down." Basically, we have stuff that we got before the backward slide, and you're damned right we're going to hold on to it with both hands.  How does this make US responsible for everyone else's suffering?

Maybe the worst mistake we made was teaching our children that they deserved a better life than we had...but somehow, we forgot to pass along that you have to work for your stuff.  It doesn't just get handed to you when you believe it's time for you to have it.

And, you know...  We might even be inclined to give you some of our stuff, if you treated us like human beings instead of the scourge of your existence.  

Shame on NPR for publishing this article.  And shame on everybody else for your ageist, entitled attitude toward your parents and grandparents, and their worldly possessions. We don't deserve your vitriol, and we don't owe you unrestricted access to the stuff we worked a lifetime to acquire. Keep in mind: Without us, you wouldn’t even exist.