While Rome Burns, I Play in my own Little World

I'm going to write a post that ignores what went on over the weekend---ignores the 45 million dollar military/president's birthday parade, ignores the thousands of 'No Kings' protests, ignores the inhumane tactics used by ICE, ignores that the president is illegally sending federal troops in where governors don't want or need them, ignores the so-called "Big Beautiful [ugly] Bill" working its way though the Senate and will end up bankrupting us if it passes, ignores the political assassinations in Minnesota. I'm even going to ignore how smart and courageous the new pope was with his live stream message on parade day that surely irked 45/47. Instead of writing about any of those topics I'm going to be Miss Merry Sunshine and share details about all the fun stuff, frivolous stuff and mundane stuff going on in my little corner of the world. In other words, while our seat of government metaphorically burns I'm taking a mental health day.

Let's start with the customized paint-by-number I recently finished to the left. This one is of my oldest niece's oldest grandson and by the time this post goes live another customized paint-by-number kit should arrive from Amazon of my youngest niece's youngest granddaughter. I had hoped to eventually do all of my great-great nieces and nephews but my arthritic hands aren't going to last that long. So I cut the list down by eliminate my nephew's seven grandchildren and will just concentrate of those of my niece's which puts me at four done and three to go before hanging up my paint-by-number brushes. I still hold out hope that I'll be able to find a painting style that works in my old age---one where fine details are not required. If I ever get the time! They keep us so busy here on my continuum care campus that blocking out a chunk of time to experiment is hard to do. On the day this post goes live, for example, this is my schedule: Chinese restaurant lunch off campus with fellow residents from 11:30 to 1:30, Teaching Kitchen back here from 2:30 to 3:00, Mahjong from 3:00 to 4:30, a Magic Show from 4:30 to 5:30 and from 5:30 to 7:00 is a cookout in our park featuring their mouth watering ribs. In the morning and after 7:00 PM I'll catch up on publishing any comments that come in on this post. No one is forcing us to sign up for everything offered and believe it or not, I could have taken a couple exercises classes before the bus picked us up for lunch.

Also in the somewhat fun department is I'm getting a new computer. My current one won't expand enough to get Windows 11 and Windows 10 won't be supported after October 14th. The IT guy here on campus is also a shirt-tail relative on my husband's side who has taken to calling me Auntie Jean and he helped me pick out a reliable HP machine. (We're both worried about tariffs and a higher than normal demand causing shortages if I wait until fall to make the change.) When the new computer gets here he'll help me move my files and photos over to it, hook up Wi-Fi and my printer. I've also made the decision that it's time to join the mouseless community. So I've been practicing using the touchpad. I find it frustrating but already I can tell that it's a good decision for my arthritic wrist.

Speaking of my wrist, I saw my orthopedic doctor this week for a follow up on the Synvisc gel he put in my wrist and to get the results on my yearly bone density test. The day after I got the shot the top of my hand swelled up and I thought it wasn't going to work but he said that it takes time for it to seep in where it needed to go which turned out to be true. Anyway, as I told him it helped 80%. I can once again pick up things without dropping them, put my earrings in and all motions from the wrist to my finger tips is usually pain-free. 

I still have a great deal of pain in my forearm. For that the doctor did some more tests and I got a final and firm diagnosis on what is causing it. My theory from day one has been proven right, that the forearm pain is not coming from the crushed vertebrae in my neck or my arthritic wrist. It is 100% caused by the surgical mess in my elbow from a long-ago break---something he wasn't willing to assume on face value until he'd ruled out everything else. The only real cure is another elbow replacement surgery but at my age I don't think that's a wise choice, so he's recommending a daily steroid pill for life for the pain and inflammation and for me to quit doing anything that causes the sharp pains. That means---among other things---I need to rethink the bras in my life. Eventually he may have to remove the screw that he can feel poking out the surgical site but we'll cross that bridge if it looks like it will actually break through the skin.

And last but not least I'm four days into using the Pink Salt Trick. If you don't know what that is, I'll explain in my next post when I have more data to know if it helps or not. It sounds crazy, but I've done crazier things. Spoiler alert! One thing I've have learned: there are two Pink Salt Tricks going around the internet and a Pink Salt Hack. One is practically free and the other two are not. I'm doing the free version. ©

Until Next Wednesday... 

Unforgettable: A Deep Dive into The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

You know that feeling you get when you finish reading a book that grabbed you from the first chapter and wouldn't let go until you got to the end and beyond? I'm on that satisfying high right now after closing the back cover of Kristin Hannah's The Four Winds. It's the book club selection for our July discussion and I didn't mean to do a reading marathon so soon after picking it up at the June discussion of Becoming Mrs. Lewis. Often when I finish a book so early in the month there's a good possibility I'll forget all but the broad brush strokes of the story---not a good thing when trying to contribute to a discussion. I doubt that will happen with this historical novel. For one, Kristin Hannah is fast becoming one of my favorite storytellers and two, this book is set in a time frame in American history that is as fascinating as it is horrible in terms of human suffering: The Dust Bowel of the 1930s and the Great Depression. 

Hannah's expert research and writing had me sitting right next to the characters as a dust storm turned the sky black and blew hundreds of centipedes inside the Martinelli farm house along with the dust, and left everything outside covered in dust so thick it drifted and changed the landscape. I felt the hopelessness of Elsa as she tried to milk a starving cow that bellowed in pain as dribbles of dirt-colored milk came out. I wondered how anyone could go on living out of a broken down car sitting in a migrate encampment where every day they had to walk for several miles looking for a job that paid as little as 40 cents for 10 hours of work. I was right there with Elsa as she'd cut a single hot dog into thirds to feed herself and her two kids and count out beans in a can for their dinner. 

Several reviewers called Hannah's style of writing in this book 'visceral' and I had to google it to find out exactly what that means. Artificial Intelligence defines it as "…to write in a way that evokes a strong, gut-level, emotional response in the reader. It's about tapping into the reader's deep feelings and instincts, rather than just their intellect." Say what you want about AI but that definition nailed how I felt reading this book. 

Most of us have probably read The Grapes of Wrath back in our distant past, being a popular reading assignment in high schools and colleges back in the day. Written in 1939, John Steinbeck captured the migration of the "Okies" from their bank-foreclosed farms but it didn't cover the environment crisis that caused the Dust Bowl to happen. Reviewers of The Four Winds are drawing parallels between what caused the Dust Bowl to what is going on now with climate change and in terms of the human suffering that will come in our near future if better angels among us don't find a way to turn things around. As I usually do, I don't read reviews before I read a book, I read them afterward to help me focus in on what I'll talk about in book club. I must admit I didn't see those parallels while reading the book, but I do see them now that they were pointed out. 

Farmers in our bread basket states back during WW1 were told they would help win the war if they produced more and more wheat. So they didn't rotate their crops and they took the wind barrier lines and native drought resistant grasses out between fields causing the top soil during the drought season to get blown as far as the ships in the New York harbor. With the top soil gone and and no rain, crops could no longer grow. It took a government program that eventually canceled their defaulted mortgages, paid the farmers to stay on their farms and work together for several years to restore the land so it could produce crops again. It will take that same kind of government investment, and a commitment in clean energy, to turn the temperature down on our climate. 

West with the Giraffes, one of my top five favorite books, is another well researched historical novel set in the same time frame and I thought I had a clear picture of what life was like during the dust storms, the droughts and the migration of homeless people going west. But The Four Winds took me to a new level of empathy and understanding…thanks to that visceral writing the reviewers talked about. The resilience of human beings to live through such hardships truly is amazing. 

My parents where born in 1911 and lived through the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918/19, World War I, The Dust Bowl years, the Stock Market Crash, the Great Depression, War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. They both lost their mothers at ages eight or nine, my dad's mom was burying in a mass grave during the Flu Epidemic. But my grandfather went on to raise three kids on his own. He was a coal miner living under the same "company store" system that the many migrates did during the Dust Bowl when they reached California. He got paid in store credit and got laid off long enough to used up their credit before the mines opened up again---or in the case of the Dust Bowl migrates, when the fields were ready to be planted or picked. It was a system designed to keep the workers enslaved with no way to save money to find a better life. 

< rant on > Without the Labor Movement and help from the federal government we'd still have masses of people living in extreme poverty. And yet we have too many short-sighted people in our government right now who are willing to throw people back into that kind of hardship by taking basic health care and pubic assistance away. We can not get complacent with the state of country and its leadership. We must continue to make our voices heard. < rant off > 

One reviewer said that The Four Winds was about hope. After losing everything the people who make it through hardships beyond their control are the ones who could still hold on to hope for a better life in the future. In my own family history, I can document that kind of hope. To get out from under the company story system my grandfather grew potatoes and sold them to the only other grocery store in town and he saved that money up until he had enough to buy a train ticket north for his oldest son, 15 or 16 at the time. That boy, my uncle, got a job in a furniture factory here in Michigan, saved his money to help bring my dad up to join him in the furniture factory where Dad made twenty-five cents an hour as newly minted teen. My dad, uncle and grandfather next saved enough money up so my grandfather and aunt could leave the coal mining town. This all took several years but progress happened because hope for a better future endured. © 

Until Next Wednesday.

Cottages, Funerals, and Echoes of the Lives We Build and Leave Behind

If blog posts are a slice of life then this post is like an entire pie because I crammed enough stuff into this past week to last a month. If you asked me what kind of pie I'd say it was a fruit pie because my activities were chunky and chewy, not smooth like a cream pie. I'm not really a pie person---I prefer to eat cake instead---but if I have to pick a favorite it would lemon meringue. My mom used to make them from scratched which I suppose was the norm back in the '40s and '50s when I grew up. She made fruit pies in season, too, and we had an unlimited source for wild huckleberries so mom made lots pies and cobblers that were guaranteed to turn our teeth temporarily blue. 

Cottages and Memorial Day go together like peanut butter and jelly. The one I went to over the holidays has been in the family since I was two years old. It's an easy drive straight south of town, no way to get lost which at my age is a dreaded sign no one wants to see. It happened to my dad in the early days of his dementia and it happened to my brother. So far I've only gotten lost once, two years ago but it was in an area of town I never go to so I didn't punch a hole in my Old Person's Card with that incident. It's getting lost when going places you've been to a thousand times before that count. That's my story and I'm sticking with it. 

Opening day at a cottage is when you put the docks in, blow up the water toys, bring out the cushions for the screened-in porch and start restocking the kitchen for a simple meal of hot dogs on the grill, potato salad, chips and dip and this year my niece made chili---I'm guessing because the weatherman whispered in her ear that it would hit the spot on the cooler than normal holiday. Anyway, I brought a store bought apple pie as my contribution. Her family is not big on sweets and I've yet to figure out how to hit a home run with a dessert that pleases them all. I also brought store bought peanut butter cookies for the kids. Recently I dug out my mom's old recipe for peanut butter cookies, thinking I'd like to make them because I remember them as being so much better than store bought. One look at the ingredients and it was easy to figure out why back in the day when no one cared about sugar, fats and carbs, her cookies were a favorite with everyone. They had a cup of shortening, a cup of brown sugar, a cup of white sugar, a cup of peanut butter and three eggs in each batch. Still, it's a goal I set for myself before I die, to make a batch of peanut butter cookies from scratch. I've got a bad habit lately of setting goals to accomplish before I depart this world and I need to take a deep dive into that self destructive behavior one day, but not today.

Also this week I went to a funeral of the daughter of a woman I've known since the day she was born and that's a long time considering she's only a year or two younger than me. Her daughter was only 54 years old, died of cancer but she did more in her short life to add goodness and positivity to humanity than I've done in my 80 plus years. She was a teacher and the service was standing room only. It doesn't seem fair, the way someone with so much to give, dies young and suffers at the end while someone like me who tends to be a tad self-centered keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny. I left the funeral home being proud of my friend for raising such a great daughter but by comparisons feeling like I've wasted too much of my own life. We were summer friends who spent a great deal of time together growing up. Our parents were life-long friends but she took the giving nature of her own mom and passed it on to her daughter while I took the lessons passed down from my folks and kept them mostly to myself. 

At another party this weekend---one given by a great-nephew from my husband's side of the family and where the desserts literally numbered in the double digits---I was sitting next to a niece-in-law who has MS and, like me, never had any children. She's been in a wheelchair since her late 20s and hasn't had the easiest life. She looked around at all her nieces and nephews and out of the blue she said, "I'm glad I never had any kids." Her reason for thinking that is because during the years when her friends were all having babies, she said it was all she could do to go to work each day. She was so tired and didn't think she had anything left over to give. She figured any kids of hers wouldn't have turned out all that great. 

I also wonder from time to time how any kids I might have had would have turned out. Some people will scoff at me for saying this and call it apples and oranges but I was a good mom to my fur babies and I think I would have approached motherhood the same way I approached raising them to be well behaved canine citizens. I would have researched how to do whatever it took to be a mom including I would have even applied myself to the dreaded experience of learning how to cook. But would I have been as devoted to any kids of mine the way my mom was to my brother and me? I can't imagine me being completely void of the self-indulgent person I know I can be. Or did the self-indulgent part develop organically from having more time on my hands than my cottage friend had whose daughter just died?

I ended the week with what they were calling a Spring Fling here on campus, a party that was arranged and paid for by the daughter of a fellow resident. They come from money and spent lavishly on this party. After two glasses of wine I was ready to call it a night and that's when I got a call informing me that the husband of my best friend since kindergarten died. I'm in the season of my life when I buy sympathy cards by the box---and there I go again, making it about me instead of the loss of my friend's soulmate. But she has dementia and her husband was her caregiver and if I think too much about what is ahead for her and her sons my heart will break. At times like this I haul out the Scarlett O'Hara line from Gone With the Wind, "I'll think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day." ©

Until next Wednesday.

P.S. The title of this post was generated by Artificial Intelligence. How do you think it did? ChatGpt is fun to play with. Thanks 'Awkward Widow' for introducing it to me.