Freebies, Dogs and Politics

I’m so cold and I don’t see that changing until next July. The only time I’ve been warm since last summer was when I went to the orphan train lecture at a near-by continuum care campus a couple of weeks ago. That particular campus costs $3,000 a month to live in two rooms and a bathroom (half the size that I’ll be getting for $2,000 a month) so they should be generous with the heat! Part of their marketing plan is to invite the public in for their daily happy hours---yes, with free drinks, a piano bar and sing-alongs---and their monthly entertainment programs like the lecture. This was my third time going there but even if I could afford to live there, the location and the fact that it’s not dog friendly took it off my list of possibilities. Two ladies I know from the senior hall live there and they love it and I can attest to the fact that the food is as good as you'd get in any better restaurant in town. Giving free luncheons to groups of people with gray hair is also part of their marketing plan, been invited and went twice.

It’s twenty degrees outside and I’m typing with fingerless gloves on my hands, leg warmers under my sweat pants, and an undershirt under my sweat shirt. My thermostat is set at 70 degrees but I have so many windows it’s hard to keep the house warm and still be able to pay the gas bills. At least the dog is warm now. I felt sorry for him having to do guard duty laying on the cold, kitchen floor so I bought him a second dog bed. Lately he’s been getting clingy, wanting to be near me when I’m working on the computer thus he’s been laying where I can’t escape without him noticing. The bed killed two birds with one stone. I put it just off to the side so I can still pass by him if I want to get a cup of coffee or a reference book out of my dwindling library. I hated feeling trapped!

In January Levi will be twelve and I’m seeing signs that he’s getting older and the clinginess is starting to worry me. It’s totally out of character for him not to be kick-ass independent and fearless. I don’t know if he’s developing a health issue or if all the moving stuff out of and around inside the house is making him uneasy. Other than when I was away at college, I’ve never lived without a dog or two in the house and even then I could come home on the weekends and catch up on canine companionship. I dread Levi dying more than any other dog I’ve had, knowing he might be my last. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. No sense worrying about what’s on the other side just yet but color me blue when I look at him sleeping in his new bed.

Spoiler alert for Trump fans: You may want to quit reading here. It’s been a while since I’ve blogged anything political which I limit to doing at least ten posts apart. The last time I did I ticked of another blogger so much that she said she was taking me off her blog roll and demanded that I take her out of mine. Heaven forbid a flaming liberal, who had never made a single political comment on her blog, should lay eyes on her very public blog. Do you detect a little sarcasm in that statement? Why, yes you do. I don’t believe in closing your eyes and sticking your fingers in your ears and singing, “La, la, la” at the top of your lungs just because others don’t agree with your political leanings. But that’s a liberal for you.

I watched all the impeachment inquiry witnesses who testified this week. It's no surprise that during and afterward right wingers were closing their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears and singing, “La, la, la” and besmirching impeccable, career patriots like Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and William Taylor Jr and George Kent, the diplomats to Ukraine, mostly without even listening to a word that they testified to under oath. Well, one Republican was watching. Trump live-tweeted insults about Yovanovitch while she testified: "Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go?" President Bone Spurs, she took hardship posts in very dangerous countries. You obviously don't understand what that means. She didn't CAUSE their decades of civil unrest, she was sent there by Reagan because of it. Her response to that nasty tweet? "Where I served over the years, I and others have demonstrably made things better, for the U.S. as well as for the countries I’ve served in.” Classy reply to a classless man.

Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about getting a consensual blowjob in the Oval Office. That almost seems quaint compared to what is going on now. Two of the most vocal players during that impeachment hearing---Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell---seem to have left their sense of standards and ethics for presidential behavior back in the last century. It’s becoming perfectly clear that Trump is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, yet these two senators and other Trump fan boys want us all to ignore the facts. Trump has become a willing (or clueless) pawn of Russia's, helping them in their war/aggression toward Ukraine to expand their borders. "And that," quoting Forrest Gump, "is all I’ve got to say about that" except to say that the impeachment inquiry is so much bigger than about one infamous phone call. ©