Crazy Dreams

 

Karen and I were out and about. We decided to pick up some Chinese to take home for dinner. We walked into one of the strip mall restaurants. The kind that has only a few small tables and rickety chairs in dining room. A large counter filled with specialty cakes and pies separated the dining room from the kitchen. A cow bell tied to the door alerted the cook that we had entered. The cook ignored us and continued to cook something in the wok on the stove top. Karen and I studied the menu for a few minutes. In reality we already knew what we'd order; beef and broccoli for me, Kung Pao chicken for Ken and vegetable stir-fry for Karen. They, like all Chinese restaurants had the items we wanted, but there were no prices listed. 

A few minutes elapsed before the small grandfatherly man came to the counter. He smiled a large smile to show off his ill fitting dentures and asked "Whadoyahave?" Karen  and I looked at each other with a surprised smile. The request reminded us of ordering greasy hot dogs and fries at the Varsity in Atlanta. Karen smiled her warmest smile gave him the order and asked about the price. At that the elderly man shouted "It's a dolla! Everything's a dolla!" Karen looked at me confused. I shrugged my shoulders up, raised my hands in the air and slightly shook my head to let her know I was confused too. Then I reached into my coat pocket and handed her two twenties. I said "Just give him this and tell him to keep the change."

I woke up a little hungry and decided to warm up the beef and broccoli and wondered if we'd ordered any wonton soup to go with it. I went to the refrigerator to find the left over meatloaf and assorted yogurts, protein drinks and condiments that normally inhabit our fridge. There was no Chinese food to be found. I looked around confused for a minute. Karen came into the kitchen and asked what I was looking for. It was then that I realized that my trip to the restaurant was a dream. There would be no beef and broccoli to find. In my disappointment I poured some of the hot water from the kettle on a package of ramen and sulked over my breakfast.

You Catch More Flies with Honey

 

I went to the grocery store this evening. I usually try to avoid markets on Fridays because of Covid. But there was a scattering of things that we were absolutely out of and I needed to go. I could have them delivered or call my niece to shop for me. But I am picky about certain things and I didn't want to have to argue over it. I went to the store my own self.

King County is back in stage one of lock down. Mask are required whenever you are out and about. The area is largely Democratic and is the origin of the pandemic in our country. We don't balk at wearing masks. But what some people consider wearing masks is of great question. 

While I walked through the store I encountered an elderly gentleman whose scruffy appearance shouted that he had no one to care for him. He was walking though the store with an overly used paper mask that hung well below his nose. I needed things in the area he'd been standing and breathing whatever germs he had into the areospace around him. I could have just waited until he left, but then I'd be exposed to whatever he has. Instead, I pushed my grocery cart by him and teased him saying "You know it doesn't work unless you put it over your nose." and winked as I passed him by. I would come back for the spaghetti sauce I needed. I passed him later in the frozen food section. His mask was still taking up space away from his nose. I gave him a reproving glance and said in a sing song voice, "Still not working." He huffed indignantly as he pulled his inadequate mask over his nose. 

We have a whole lot of work to do still.

Exuberant!

 

We are on our way back!

Afternoon Walk

 

I walked down I Street this afternoon. I don't think that I have walked down it before. I've driven down it and ridden my bike. When I do I have to pay attention to the road. It is extremely broken asphalt that is hard to navigate on a bike. The road is narrow and people park on the street, taking the road down to one lane. 

Walking gave me a different perspective from driving. I was able to view the neighborhood in a much more detailed way. I had never noticed before what a sad little street it is. A majority of the houses along it are in the same state of disrepair the street is. Many of the porches and yards had litter, old windows, buckets and furniture scattered about. Many of the houses needed to be sandblasted and painted. We are on lockdown again. A lot of people are back at home. I passed by them the whole time I was out. But not on I Street. No one was in their yards or enjoying the afternoon on the porch. 

I did find one corner of a yard that caught my eye. A table sat beside a cast-off window and some old yard ornaments. It looked artistic to me. I could imagine some Victorian housewife ordering it from a catalog and being so happy when it arrived. Now it sits, painted white in a corner by the fence. 

Raw

 

I feel like something inside has been scraped raw. It's the feeling like after 9/11 when the constant strand of news flow reveals one more horrifying fact after another. I don't care that it's only speculation. It is pretty clear that this coup had it's planning in the highest offices in this country. It was clear from Jim Jordan's arrogant chuckle after he said that Rump would remain the president that something sinister was up. It was clearer in the fall when Rump started replacing all the department heads in the military and intelligence agencies. Representatives of the House and Senate were in on it. The capitol police were in on it. The newly placed military people responsible for sending in the National Guard were in on it. 

Spoiled, privileged American that I am, I think wars shouldn't happen here. Wars happen in other countries but not here. Any logical reasoning quickly pulls that argument apart, but it is what my inner child still clings to. I don't want war here. Again, logic points out my deep seated privilege. Do I somehow imagine that people anywhere want war on their soil?

I talk of war like I know anything. These terrorist who are fighting this coup aren't paid mercenaries. Are they? These traitors are cops and firefighters; nurses? They are the mechanic that fixes your car, the CEO of a Multimedia company. They attempted a coup to overthrow the government, hang the Vice President and kill the Speaker of the House, and they thought that once it was over they should catch a plane home and go back to work the next day. God help us if they had succeeded. What did they plan to have happen if they had? Did  they think they'd call it done and go back home?

And the insurrectionist are still out there because this thing was planned in the highest offices. They were told to let them leave uninhibited. They have other plans. What if they don't plan to call it a day yet?

If you made it this far, this is mostly a speculative anxiety filled rant. I have made claims that I have no proof or personal knowledge of. It is just what I think from what I've seen in the news. It seems like every day in the last thirteen months have been a long stream of "This can't be true, this can't be happening." only it is true and it is happening. And it has gotten crazier with every passing day. 

And Then There Was Wednesday...

On Tuesday I stayed up as late as I could because I was invested in the outcome of the Georgia Senate runoff. What U.S. citizen wasn't? We would either continue to squeeze progress through the eye of a very narrow minded needle, or Georgians could flip the Senate and the USA could leave the Twilight Zone that is tRump's America. By the time I turned of the TV the Reverend Raphael Warnock had been declared the victor and it was all too apparent that Jon Ossoff would be following closely behind.

Wednesday I tried to sleep in. But something kept pulling at me to get up. I did. I was up two hours before my usual  time. I bathed, ate and washed a load of clothes before I turned on the television. The joint session of Congress had just started the certification of the Electoral College vote. I had seen tRump's call to arms and a few news stories about the rowdy crowds in D.C. I expected that an unruly crowd would show up. I expected that there was a show of force like there was during the summer on the Capitol steps to deter any ambition of a breech. I was wrong and I want to know why. I was wrong and I am offended that I have to ask why because I know the answer. I am once again embarrassed to have ever benefitted from the type of privilege that allowed thugs, vandals, insurrectionist to invade and vandalize our democracy the way tRumpubicans did on Wednesday. 

This was an attempted coup. This was insurrection. This fucking horse and pony show cost five people their lives. Cheeto Mussolini, his merry band of Proud Boys and the QAnon shaman had been planning it for weeks with his regular peanut gallery. tRump had even announced it on social media. There is no reason that the FBI or any other policing body in the D.C. area didn't know about it. EVERYBODY ELSE DID! The dirty truth is that they did know about it and there were enough tRump cultist to provide insider access.

They want us to feel sad that a young woman was shot and killed. She trespassed the security gates of the Capitol with a flag draped around her neck and attempted to invade a barricaded doorway through a window that had been vandalized and broken. She did this in an attempt to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power to a fairly elected administration. While inside the real perpetrators were trying to delay the same regular and peaceful transfer of power. She was an insurrectionist committing treason when she was shot and killed. Attempt to overthrow our government and we will not have pity on you.

This post calls it yesterday, but another full day has transpired since we have had this gut kick to our democracy. If  9/11 taught any lesson at all it should have been that to attack us would bring us into formation against you. Even if you are one of us. Too many people were all too happy to give the tRumpian transgressions a pass to send them into our past. That option is no longer open. We have to purge out and punish this transgression.

But wait, there's more! This hits on more levels than just insurrection and attempted coup. There is the whole social issue about the difference in the way BLM protesters were treated and the way the traitor who attacked the capitol were treated. We need a national "come to Jesus" moment and I don't even know what that would look like. Heads need to roll. We don't need any more soft answers anymore. Don't tell me the cop who shot a jay walker was put on administrative duty after I saw a cop escort the Grand Pooh Pah of QAnon around the halls of Congress in an attempted coup. We need to address this and in a big and substantial way.

I'm sorry. My angry, outraged rant.

Just Another Tuesday in the USA

This is not my painting. It is called "Walk on a Blustery Day" by Barry Hulme. But it has the feel of what is happening outside my window. Winters in western Washington seem to be one day like this after another until well into the spring. 

It was like this on New Year's Eve. But that didn't stop my neighbors from shooting off fireworks that were premium enough that I'm sure they must have gone to the reservation and spent their whole stimulus check on them, not that it would have been hard to spend that measly amount. Karen and I watched the light show at the Needle on TV. It was pretty spectacular and we didn't miss the fireworks at all. We were getting our own private showing. Right at mid-night, when the fireworks were all bursting into their crescendo the power for the whole town went down for about half a minute. It was probably a coincidence, but it was a weird way to start the year. What wasn't bad was receiving my stimulus check in my bank account a few minutes later. Yes, if that is what I brought into the New Year, receiving a little extra money was an acceptable way to begin 2021.

In other good news, I woke up on Christmas Eve with a head cold. It was welcome a little as it made my excuse to stay in my room and away from Nora and her father who had come for Christmas. Being away from my kids had me in a bit of a funk and I just wasn't feeling festive. On New Years Eve, I was still feeling under the weather, so on New Years day I went to the local testing center and was tested for Covid. I got my results back yesterday. I am negative for Covid, I have a head cold. Now I worry that I could have been exposed to it at the testing center. My mind can squirrel cage over anything.

I have the blinds open on the window near my desk. I have been watching the birds all day. There was a huge flock of Steller Jays when I first woke up, but they were chased away by the largest swarm of Robins I think I have ever seen. They covered our backyard, and our yard isn't small. They stayed there feasting on earthworms and bugs for a few hours. Then suddenly, they all swarmed and flew away. A few minutes later there was a mild shaking of the ground. It happens quite often here, but when I check to see if there was seismic activity in the area I almost never find this area mentioned.  

I am watching the Georgia run-offs today as I suppose most Americans are. Right now and throughout the day they have been showing Cherokee county. I recognize the polling place. It is at a church where I used to walk. They have a walking path that was nice. I wonder why they are using the church. Usually they vote in the elementary schools. Maybe the republicans who are in charge there have decided to keep the super spreader event away from the children. No, unfortunately Cherokee County schools are braving the pandemic in favor of children not falling behind. I have to wonder behind what are they falling.  

If today is a cliff hanger, tomorrow is promising to be the kind of shit show that only theRump, Inc. can deliver. The mayor of D.C. has called in the National Guard. I think it was a power-play to keep them out of the hands of tRumpublicans. 

Reflecting

 

I've been reflecting a lot today on the fatigue that everyone seems to feeling about Covid. It reminds me of my friend, Brenda. Right before her 16th birthday, where she'd be getting her driver's license and more independence, she came down with H1N1 influenza. The virus destroyed the beta cells in her pancreas and she was left a type 1 diabetic. It was truly tragic. At first she was offered hope that her pancreas might heal with time. But after almost a year later, when she was totally weary of the new normal of her life, she finally came to terms with the truth that this is just the way it's going to have to be. 

We are collectively all in the same place with covid. We are tired of wearing masks, We are especially  tired of social distancing and lockdowns! Like a diabetic teen who rebels, wishing to return to being able to eat without counting carbs or injecting medication we rebel against wearing masks and staying apart. We push and even ignore the safety precautions to pretend like life is once again normal. Many people just outright rebel and refuse to be responsible ever. 

Now we have a vaccine that promises to get us back to a more normal than we have seen in many months. We will be able to be together again, but having lost so very many loved ones and businesses, having lost careers and livelihoods it will not be the normal we long for. The same happened with Brenda; since she was diagnosed new technology and familiarity with necessary precautions have made her normal livable, but it isn't the normal she had before she got ill. Our normal will necessarily be different than it used to be. 

The good news is that help is on the way. The reality is we will never go back to the way we were pre-covid. Our normal will be different.

Happy Christmas week, if you celebrate. If you don't then Happy Dawning Eve. This is the last night of the Piscean Age. Tomorrow the Age of Aquarius will fully arrive. Happy winter solstice. Better, more light filled days are ahead.

Reemergence

 

I used to be an artist. I was actually pretty mediocre. Not nearly as good as I thought myself to be at the time. But I was young and could take classes of it in high school. It was really kind of a badge of geekness honor in the school where I went to be known as a frequent flyer on the fourth wing ancillary. I even taught a 101 level class in the college that I went to. I was still fairly mediocre. 

My soon to be son-in-law bought me a set of nice sketching pencils for my birthday. It had been decades since I actually just doodled. Interest in other hobbies, distain from my ex-husband and sheer exhaustion and depression are to blame for me giving up on the endeavor. His gift brought back the desire to pick it back up. Not only have I starting using the pencils, I bought myself a set of watercolor pens. 

Art is like writing. It gets better with practice. Atrophy happens with disuse. I am no longer mediocre, I have lapsed into purely pathetic. 

DIIIINNNGGG DOOONNNGGG!!!!!

 

My body woke me up at 6:30. I was despondent to see the counts still at 253/214. The days since the election seemed like going through birthing pains. But my depression didn't last long. Karen came into my bedroom to show me a text from Nora. Joe Biden had won Pennsylvania. For at least half of America a sense of hope has been restored. More than that, we have joy again! People are literally taking to the streets to dance and celebrate. 

Tomorrow we will have to face again the pain and devastation of the past 4 years. The next 10 weeks will be a battle as the other half vents their collective anger and despair. They aren't known for their civility. This is what I fear. But there is a light ahead. Better days are coming.