When Patriotism Feels Broken

This past Fourth of July weekend was a whirlwind of activity around my continuum care campus but in between the fun stuff I’ve been quietly grieving the loss of the country I once thought I knew and understood. So I skipped the band concert of patriotic music and a pizza party organized by a 45/47 MAGA supporter. We’re (and by we’re I mean the current administration) has been breaking presidential norms all over the place, not to mention the laws of our democracy. America, I’m tired! I’m tired of the flag waving 45/47 supporters and the greedy, spineless politicians who just voted to put the next generation into so much debt they’ll never see the light of day. And God help us if Japan, who owns a good share of our 36 trillion dollars of debt, calls in their loans. And that 36 trillion doesn’t include the 3.9 trillion the so-called Big Beautiful Bill will add over the next decade.  

I’m also tired of ICE and their cruel and illegal acts being committed against our immigrant population. I’m tired of people thinking it’s perfectly okay to snatch people off the streets, out of labor & deliver rooms, etc., without due process of the law, and put them in detention centers. I’m tired of overhearing fellow residents at the next dinner table talking with glee over Alligator Alcatraz and how fat and happy those alligators will grow while at the same time being served their dinner by the son of immigrants. Did they assume the poor kid doesn’t have ears to hear their disgusting remarks? By the way, the photo up above was posted at the official website for Homeland Security. Let that sink in.

I did go to our fourth of July picnic because it’s not often we get barbecued chicken and corn of the cob and if any of us wanted to eat that day, it was sign up for the picnic or forage for your own meal out in the community. I wasn’t born yesterday so I opted to stay off the busy roads on the third—yes, holiday parties around my CCC are usually the day before the actual holiday so that most of the staff can spent it with their families. Our picnics, band concerts and other outdoor events host all residents from all three buildings and our  townhouses in a fenced-in area between the Assisted Living and Memory Care buildings known as The Park. It’s a pretty place that keeps the inmates from walking away while still giving them access to be outside under a canape of trees with a lake view on one side and a wooded view opposite. A few people from my Independent Living building don’t like to go there because they see their futures and it scares them. I get that but as I tell them, seeing how kind and attentive the aids are with the residents from the Assisted Living and Memory Care buildings is comforting and helps diminish the fear of ending up down there. And after living here in IL for over three years, we all know people who've had to move into AL and MC. 

On the Fourth itself the temperature was supposed to get up into 90s so an outdoors pizza party that was planned by residents from our townhouses followed by watching the firework ended up getting changed. (They have their own outdoors area to gather around a fire pit.) The pizza part got canceled and we were to meet later when the sun was setting and it wouldn’t be so hot. But when one of the 45/47 supporters (who laughed over alligators getting fat) heard that he sent out a text message that he was going to take charge of ordering pizza and we could sign up with him. There were some hurt feelings between the townhouse organizers (who originally had invited everyone in Independent Living) because they didn’t get the text invitation to join in at the IL building where the second pizza party was being planned. A day later that oversight was corrected but by then the damage had been done and a boycott began. I was one of those who skipped pizza but I did hang out with the townhouse people at the fire pit. Originally they had forty people signed up but without the pizza that got whittled down to twenty-five for fireworks. But only six people got together for pizza. The whole planned and canceled then planned again was too confusing for some.

Last winter the MAGA guy who decided to organize the second pizza party caused another turf war over the Bridge Club. At one time they had three tables that played twice a week but he caused so much trouble over rotating players—he didn’t want to play with slower players—that several couples dropped out. Then he poached off the fast players and started a second bridge group. So now we have two clubs run by two different people. Sometimes it can be a regular little soap opera around here which I’m sure is true with all places where people get to know each well. Sometimes personalities clash.

The highlight of the long weekend was Saturday when I got to play four extra Mahjong games. Two of us from Independent Living and two ladies from the townhouses played at one of their homes. Let me tell you playing Mahjong where you didn’t have to be careful not to talk too load or edit which topics you bring up was different than playing in our regularly scheduled games in our pubic bistro. We had fun! I wish I had a table suitable to set up the game to I could invite people to play extra games in my apartment in addition to the weekly games where we usually have three tables. I wish I hadn’t given my card table and chairs away when I moved. I also wish I hadn’t given a folding camp chair away. To watch fireworks I had to bring the walker I used when I broke my ribs to sit on. There have been other outdoor occasions down at the fire pit when we've require we bring our own chairs. With all the planning I did before the move, I didn’t see those needs coming. ©

Until next Wednesday.  

 

 

Dinner, Drama, and a Dead Body at my Continuum Care Complex

Fancy, five course dinners planned around a Murder Mystery game where twenty of us play a character and twenty other residents dine and watch the action from the sidelines has become a tradition here at my continuum care complex. Last week was our third murder mystery dinner and once again I took a part. I actually signed up for the audience but the Life Enrichment Director asked me if I'd switch. There was a method to my madness, so to speak, because I knew she wouldn’t get enough actors to sign up and like last year, she’d ask me to switch from an audience member to a player. I said, "yes IF I can pick the part I want to play" and both this year and last year she let me. Some of the parts require fancy costumes—cocktail dresses, tailored suits—stuff I don’t own and don’t have the money to buy for a one-time event. Last year a guy even rented an outfit for $50! A lot of borrowing of props to round out our costumes goes on the week before these parties. One guy came with borrowed boxing gloves hung around his shoulders, another came wearing a borrowed tux with tails and carrying a top hat and a wand. One lady offered me to loan me a hundred dollar bill to put in my pocket. I turned it down.

If you've never been to a murder mystery dinner party, here's how they work: you are given a character before the party date with costume suggestions and you show up in costume. As you sit down for dinner you’re given a scribe to read and suddenly your dining table turns into a crime scene. For example my introduction speech was: “I’m Lucky Hart, current world poker champion. I don’t want to sound heartless but this murder has come at a really bad time. I’ve got a tournament in Paris tomorrow night and have to be ready. It wasn’t me anyway. Ever since Sterling left us, I’ve been one of the casino's bathrooms practicing my poker face in the mirror. What? You this comes naturally.” There are four times (between courses) where you have a part to read. And all night long there’s ad-lib accusations, drama, suspicious glances and cat-calling between tables going on and way too much laughter for a place where a murder supposedly happened just before you all sit down for the first course.

My suggested costume was jeans, a hoodie over a t-shirt and a baseball cap. I have lots of hoodies but it’s been really hot and I didn’t want to wear one so I bought a light weight shirt with a hood. I also figured out how to use rubber bands to put cards up my sleeves that showed when I waved during my introduction and I bought a $4.00 patch depicting a poker hand that I put on a purse with double-faced tape.

The part called for me to have poker face to stay in character. I knew it would crack up my fellow Mahjong players because they tell me all the time that I don’t have a poker face. Little do they know that sometimes when I get excited over a tile I just drew that I’m faking it and other times when I get a good tile I don’t show it in my body language. But for the most part, they are right. I get way too excited when I’m close to winning. 

For dinner the chef served five courses consisting of a Caprese Salad with burrata cheese, peaches, tomatoes, basil and microgreens. That was followed by a course of suffron-herb risotto, roasted red pepper and lobster tails. (Myself and another person who is allergic to shell fish got chicken instead of the two tails.) After that course we were given a watermelon with lime zest Sorbet to “cleanse our palate” followed by prime rib, Au-gratin potatoes and asparagus. Dessert was my all-time favorite comfort food. Bread pudding. Not just any bread pudding but bread pudding with bourbon butter sauce and vanilla ice cream that was to die for. Our chef won an Iron Chef Contest over a dozen other chefs working in places like this for a reason and at parties like this her skills really shine. At $25.00 for this meal it was worth going over my food allowance for the month. 

If you ever get invited to a mystery murder party, go. Even more fun would be to plan one. Just google Murder Mystery party games. There are several companies making the kits, for various size parties. The one we used came form a UK company. They have seventeen different themes. Ours was the Murder at the Casino and it had characters like: Buck Meister who stole the show. In real life the guy who played the part is a straight arrow, a classy dresser and very wealthy but for the part of Buck—a “red-blooded, ready to ride rodeo cowboy”—he came in jeans, a cowboy hat and boots and a white t-shirt that he’d cut down the front and held it together at the bottom with a big safe pin, his bare chest and gray chest hair hanging out of a very wide V. He’d also cut the sleeves off the t-shirt. You couldn’t help laughing every time he got up to do his speaking parts. Few of us knew he has a good sense of humor. Another standout was a guy at my table who all night long never broke out of character. He was a big, bold mob boss who dressed to kill and literally did. He was going to get me fitted for cement shoes if he ever caught me cheating at his poker table. There was also a magician, a casino floor manager, a crooner, a private detective, a TV reporter, a princess and others parts I’ve forgotten. 

What’s great about these parties is that the fun doesn’t just take place at the party itself but also before and afterward they generate a lot of conversation. For example, I was at the lunch table the next day for over two hours and when I went back to my apartment I had a sore belly from laughing so much over the rehashing of the murder mystery. ©

 Until Next Wednesday...

The Pink Salt Trick: Myth, Magic or Just Salty?

More than likely you've heard of the Pink Salt Trick for weight loss. I've known about it for a year or more but it's only been a few weeks that it's come to the center of my radar screen. This winter I've been gaining weight at an alarm rate and when I got my summer clothes out most of them were too tight. I hate tight clothing on me and other people. If they show tummy rolls and cellulite I won't wear a garment. Even on women who are slim and fit if her "camel toes" are showing I'm going to mentally call her out for wearing a second skin and calling it workout gear. And before anyone is tempted to scold for not being politically correct, I would never say anything out loud to another woman, to her friends and mine so how is that body shaming if I keep it to myself? Either way, I'm not going to be silenced in my own blog for what I think. Sooner rather than later all of us who grew up with a certain standard of decency in dressing will die off and then the sin of women judging the way other women dress will be solved.

Boy, did I get off track! Back to pink salt. I can't help thinking about my brother when the topic of salt comes up. A few years ago when I was on a kick to learn more about cooking I wanted to buy a pricey gift box of salts from around the world. I was fascinated that you can get black, pink, brown, yellow and blue salt as well as the white I've seen all of my life. My brother and I bickered back and forth, as siblings tend to do, about whether or not they tasted any different. He thought it was a rip off---that there wouldn't be any difference except in price---and I thought it might be one of the secrets of good cooking that he learned and I didn't. 

I never did get my sampler box of salt but I did manage to buy some pink Himalayan salt at the grocery store that went mostly unused until recently. Pink salt comes from the Himalayan mountains and supposedly it contains many trace minerals including calcium, magnesium and potassium. Anytime I've dieted in the past I've never tried the fad diets. It's been Weight Watchers, Tops, gym memberships and once I did a doctor supervised, all liquid diet that was my favorite because I never got hungry. I take that back, my mom and I did the cabbage soup diet once. That must have been back in the '70s and I haven't eaten cabbage since. 

When I first googled the Pink Salt Trick I lucked out and found a straight forward recipe---a practically free concoction to put together.  I was not so lucky the next few times I google the Pink Salt Trick looking for more information about its safety, etc., and I found instead Oprah's VERY LONG video hawking a weight loss pill based on pink Himalayan salt. Both the free concoction and Oprah's pill claim that they tackle insulin resistance and is an alternate to the Mounjaro shots that people are paying big money out-of-pocket for but are getting amazing results. Both Pink Salt Tricks have dozens of testimonials attached to their claims.  

I'd already tried the free version before stumbling on to Oprah's video and silly me I thought I'd just be finding some science behind it and variations to the basic recipe so I started watching it. Instead, near the end of her VERY LONG video she revealed that she's selling pills, pills called Prozenith made with pink salt and three other ingredients you can only get in Japan. It ticked me off that she made one of those so-called medical break-through videos. In my mind if it's a good product you don't say things like "we only have 182 bottles left in stock so order now!" You also don't make people buy two bottles at a time for $79 each while encouraging people to buy eight at a time at a reduced rate of $50 a bottle. You also don't have to offer the first ten people who place an order a zoom meeting with Oprah. 

Out of curiosity I did a google search to see if you could by the Prozenith any place else other than at the VERY LONG video website and I found a product on Amazon called Pro Prozenith that contains two of the four ingredients in common with those in the pills Oprah is hawking but for less than half the price. The labels even look the same except for the addition of the word Pro and the difference in the ingredients. 

According to the VERY LONG video The Pink Salt Trick was first introduced in Dr. Casey Means book, Good Energy and from what I gather from the video she helped Oprah loss a bunch of weight and afterward they started working together to make the Pink Salt Trick into a pill form that they could bring to market. Their formula has pink salt, quercein, bern berberiene and mountain root. The practically free version has pink salt, lemon juice, honey and water. 

To make things even more interesting a 10 minute video of Oprah showed up in my Facebook feed that I suspect was AI generated. It introduced the Pink Salt 'Hack' and a web link to a guy selling a liquid drop version of a concoction made with pink salt, bern bereriene and an ingredient you can only get in Brazil. See a pattern here? I didn't watch his entire video because the ending was predictable...a high pressure pitch to buy his high priced hack/liquid drops.

Like I said before, I didn't know there was more than one Pink Salt Trick out there before I tried the practically free version. All the testimonials for all three versions claim dramatic lost weight without changing their diet or exercising. To judge if this is true, I drank the nearly-free concoction for a week without going to our gym or taking walks around the campus. I also didn't give up eating things I know I should. For example over the week I had 7 pieces of Ghirardelli's dark chocolate squares, 4 cookies and 2 bowls of ice cream and I didn't cut the portions down on any of my meals nor did I pass up on the bread they serve here with all dinners. I lost 4.8 pounds in the first seven days and maybe it's magical thinking but I feel better---less food obsessing going on in my head. No foraging in the kitchen out of boredom. It also didn't effect my blood pressure. 

By the middle of my second week, the scale seemed to get stuck and by the end of the week I'd only lost two more pounds and I had given up all sugary stuff except for my daily dose of chocolate, so I expected more. I really need to add exercise to the mix. I only average around 2,500 steps a day. Am I going to keep using the salt? As long as it doesn't start effecting my blood pressure will---I'm checking it 2-3 times a day. If you'd tried a Pink Salt Trick what was your experience? ©

Until next Wednesday.  

The Pink Salt Trick Recipe

1/4 teaspoon of pink salt dissolved in an 8 oz cup of warm filtered water. Add a 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice and 1 teaspoon of raw honey. Drink this first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. I've seen suggestions where you can add grated ginger, mint leaves or coconut water to mix things up, if you get bored with the taste or can't get it down. I find that drinking it fast without stopping allows you to avoid the taste issue all together. 

 

Here's an article claiming the Oprah endorsement is fake and so it the pink salt trick - tells how to spot fake endorsements. Click here.

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.

 

Memorial Day and Book Club Selection - Becoming Mrs C.S Lewis

I call myself a wanta-be writer therefore I need to crank out a blog post whether I'm in the mood to do so or not. That's what writers do…no excuses, bang the keyboard until it squeals in protest. It's Memorial Day weekend but over the years I've written over twenty posts with that theme so I'm pretty sure I've covered not only the history of the holiday itself but all the years I've decorated graves of ancestries I didn't know, the years of going to lake parties with my husband's family, the two-day mini vacations my husband and I took along Lake Michigan and, of course, the first few years I was a newly minted widow back then I was one. In more recent years I've attended the memorial services put on by the residents here on my continuum care campus. I didn't go this year because 1) I have a doctor' appointment at the same time and 2) I was glad I had a conflict so my heart and head didn't have to battle it out over going, or not. I'm not proud of my country right now and singing patriotic songs would seem hollow and insincere. 

We have a lot of veterans living here and I've heard their stories----some poignant including a widow's whose husband was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War and some stories almost apologetic because the veteran didn't see any action. The POW was in the same brutal prison camp as John McCain and another woman living here actually wore a POW bracelet with McCain's name on it. He wasn't famous back then but it's still an amazing story to tell. Even more amazing because she's a MAGA Republican and I've thought about asking her what she thought about 45/47 besmirching McCain's military record by claiming he was only a war hero because he got captured. "I like people who weren't captured," he said. To refresh our collective memories McCain was flying a bomber that got shot down and he was ejected from the plane, landed in a lake where the locals where waiting to take him prisoner. How would President Bone Spurs have escaped from that scenario, I wonder?

This past week I've become a recluse, avoiding all contact with my neighbors. Not for any particular reason other than I was involved in a couple of activities that were relaxing and satisfying. I was working on a custom paint-by-number of my great-great-nephew while listening to a book on my Kindle. It's a book club selection titled Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Cathahan. It's a methodically researched, historical fiction about a friendship that turned into a love affair between C.S. Lewis (best known in America for his Chronicles of Narnia series for children) and poet Joy Davidson. I've never read anything by either author but I'm always curious about books that presume to explain a writer's methods, where their ideas came from and their work ethics. In this case there is plenty of documentation that Patti was able to access and after reading the Author's Notes in the back of the book I'm awed by the research that when in to this novel. Though in reading the reviews I learned that opinions of the book swing wide in book club circles. Our discussion comes next Monday.

If you've ever read the Narnia Chronicles to your kids I'm sure you would like this book on a deeper level than I did. Even so, it held my interest. Fans of his books and her poems will love the frequent quotes that Patti uses in their dialogues and the descriptions of the actual locations that inspired Lewis. Christians will also enjoy some of their discussions---she was an atheist at the beginning of the book and Lewis was well known for his apologetic religious writing. I didn't know what an "apologetic religious writer" was and in case you don't either here is how google explains it: "It involves providing arguments, both positive and negative, to support a specific religious faith and respond to objections or criticisms. Apologetic writing aims to make a case for the truth and value of a particular religious system, often using logical reasoning, historical evidence, and philosophical arguments." Lewis and Davidson were pen-pals for several years before meeting in person and they debated topics too deep for me to care about. But Patti Callkahan is a skilled writer who had a good sense of how much religion she sprinkled in the pages. I finished the book neither converted nor offended. Silly me, at first I thought maybe the universe was putting this book in my path to convert me before I get too old to know the difference between milk and orange juice. 

After finishing the book I tried reading quotes from The Chronicles of Narnia looking for some that might seem familiar, things that might have seeped into every day life the way lines from Lewis Carroll's children book Alice in Wonderland or Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz have. Do people of a certain age go around quoting lines from Narnia, I wondered, like I've done all my life with lines from Oz? If there is, I couldn’t find them.

Lions, and tigers and bears, oh my!

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

There's no place like home.

And there is no better place to spend Memorial Day like the cottage where I spent the first 18 summers of my life. And that's where I'm going today after I finish this post. We'll grill hot dogs, eat potato salad and apple pie followed by the Opening Volley of Summer---putting the dock in the lake. How was your Memorial Day weekend? ©

                                       

Binging Netflixs, TV Habits and a Trip to Memory Lane

I don't watch a lot of television which is a stark change from my viewing habits before moving to this continuum care campus in 2021. Back in my other life I had three TVs---one in the bedroom, the living room and the kitchen---and often they'd all be turned on to mostly CNN from morning to night. To say I was a news junkie would be an understatement. And I loved the freedom of not having to sit in one place to watch something. I could do my housework, work on my computer or hobbies, be at the beck and call of my disabled husband and take care of life's other requirements without missing a thing on TV. 

There are several reasons why I no longer watch TV as much as I used to do. Aside from there being a lot of things to do on campus, liking going to a staff retirement party this afternoon and a Memorial Day presentation tomorrow, I hate the fact that we only have one TV hook up to the free cable aka they didn't wire the building so people can have cable TV in the bedrooms. If we want to pay $145 we can get an exterior cable strung around our living room and through the wall to the bedroom but I'd hate the visual of a cable going along the baseboard and up around the door frame. It seems too ghetto to me. So in the bedroom I have a TV with a modern version of the old rabbit ears but it has limited channels to watch and try as I might there is no way to set both TVs to the same program at the same time. At bedtime in my old life, I always watched the late night comedians but I can't do that here. So my bedroom TV has morphed into a binge-watching Netflix box. Question: Is it just me, or has Netflix been offering fewer new choices in the last couple of months? 

Currently I'm binging a show with four seasons and I'll polish off the last season this coming week so I’m looking for suggestions for another binge worthy series. I like political stuff like Madame Secretary and Designated Survivor, crime stuff like Black List, White Collar, The Recruit, Night Desk and Ozark. I love law series, too, like Suits and Your Honor. Sci-fi like Roswell and Lost. Quirky stuff like Shameless, In the Dark, Loudermilk, Hab and Lenard, Six Feet Under, North of North, This is Us and Dead to Me. I've also binged on more "normal" choices like Grey Anatomy, Bridgeton, Outlander, and Downton Abby. I say 'more normal choices" because, with the exception of Downton Abby, I've yet to find any of my fellow residents who have the same tastes in Netflixs that I do, and with regular TV I've only found one person who likes American Idol and Shark Tank which are the only shows besides cable news that I currently watch.

Though, it goes without saying that my Liberal Ladies, Tuesday night dinner companions and I all consume a lot of the same news shows. I love our Tuesday dinners. There are twelve of us with three others who would love to join us but we can't make reservations for more than twelve, so they fill in when someone can't make it. Speaking of large groups there are sixteen Catholics living here and recently I landed at a lunch table with five-six of them. They were bashing the new pope. It seems that before becoming the pope he criticized the moral fiber of the president. I had to bite my lip from asking how they can justify accepting a different standard of morality for 45/47 than they do for the common man on the street. Aren't we all supposed to do our best to follow the Ten Commandants and do on to others as we would have them do on to us? "The pope needs to stay in his own lane," one of the ladies said and I came close to saying, "I personally think the pope was voted in for precisely the reason you don't like him." The Catholic hierarchy sees the evil that Trump is spreading around the world and they want a pope who isn't afraid to challenge him. I doubt that all the Catholics living here are MAGAs, but at least six are. How they can admire 45/47 and bash the pope is beyond my understanding---all the while thinking of themselves as good Christians.

Back on Topic: My current binge worthy show is Good Girls. It reminds me of Ozark because the three women who are the lead characters find themselves getting dragged deeper and deeper into a life of crime only the show is billed as a comedy so it's lighter viewing than Ozark. My favorite character is Rio played by Manny Montana---a porn star name if I've ever heard one which I'm quick to admit that that's an area I know very little about. Linda Lovelace is the only name I can come up with and she must be as old as dirt by now. And dare I say our First Lady did her share of soft porn before she hooked The Donald. Anyway, there is something about Manny's gravelly voice or the way he moves that gets to me. He's a crime boss in the series so it's not the character he plays that I like and he's not what I'd call good especially looking either. God only knows why I like the guy but if you watch the video below and have a theory let me know. 

There's no smooth segway I can use to change the subject so I'll just do it. I've been walking down Memory Lane this past week. It all started when a great-nephew on my husband's side of the family reached out to me on Facebook. He wanted my address to send me an invitation to his daughter's graduation party. Mike was one of the few people who offered to help after Don's stroke and who actually followed through in a very real and meaningful way. He took on the volunteer role of being a 'personal guide' in a wheelchair hunter's group that I got Don involved in. It freed me up from doing it and it let Don do a 'guy thing' with other guys. Along with my address I sent him a couple of hunting related stories that I originally shared in a blog posts. He loved them and asked for more so I've been binge-reading old posts and feeding them to Mike who asked if he could share them with his older brother. Don was their favorite uncle and it's been nice, having Don come alive again.  ©

                              Short pool scene from Good Girls.

If you are already a fan of Good Girls, you'll like this longer mashup titled The Hotness of Beth and Rio

Getting my First Passport, the SAVE Act and other Confessions

I've never had a passport. It's been decades since I was out of the country---to Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean Islands---and back then we didn't need them. The trip to Mexico was in the 1965. I had a cousin who lived in California and on a visit he took us down to Tijuana where he helped me haggle over the price of a gold watch on a chain that I still have today. It's the size of a silver dollar and has Roman numerals on its face. Tourist grade, I'm sure, but very ornate and pretty and I almost lost it when I took it off during a one-night stand. It was the early '70s and what can I say, we singles did stuff like that. I'm not proud of it but facts are facts. 

The next morning the guy was decent enough to come to the place where I worked to return the watch. He thought it was an antique. I didn't even know it was missing but I was grateful to get it back. I have vivid memories of that return because at the time I was wearing custom-made, orthopedic shoes that laced up the side and they were so ugly the guy couldn't help saying that out loud. In my work clothes I was dressed nothing like my ultra ego from the night before. She might have been 'hot' like the kids have re-branded 'sexy' today. But seeing me in the light of the day, without the glow of a disco ball casting a spell over us, he probably drove way that morning thinking he had more to drink the night before than he thought. Heck, my transformation might have even been responsible for him giving up drinking. If I could rewrite my personal history that's the way I'd end that scene. Note I didn't say I'd rewrite the one-night stand out of drama. Sometimes what we regret doing in life teaches us valuable lessons.

My trip to Canada took place in the late 1970s and we didn't need passports then either. We were just passing through on our way back from Colorado taking the scenic, long route home to Michigan. Mostly what I remember about that trip was that for some reason the people up there all seemed to know we weren't Canadians. To us we didn't look or sound different. I'm old and I also think I might have been to Canada on a trip with my parents when I was a kid but without photographic proof your guess is as good as mine. I gave my oldest niece custody of my folk's photos albums and I'll need a field trip to her cottage to verify my vague memory of standing next to a Canadian flag in a circle of colorful flowers…well, I assume they were colorful. The photo---if it exists---is in black and white. I joke about how at my age when I learn or experience new things old things need to fall out of my brain to make room. Unfortunately, that's probably more truth than humorous banner to cover up my failing memory.

I was online recently reading an article about how the 45/47 administration is trying to make it harder for women to vote with the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act) that passed the House and is working its way through Senate hearings. It will require women who've changed their names after getting married to jump through an extra hoop to prove citizenship. A birth certificate and marriage certificate won't be enough. You'll have to apply to the state for proof that you applied to change your last name to your husband's, no matter how long ago a woman was married. Lord help her if she's been married more than once. Even if the SAVE Act becomes law that part won't effect me because I didn't change my name when I got married. 

But the article got me to thinking because it will require certain kinds of picture IDs I don't have to comply with the SAVE Act as it's written now. Thus was born the burning desire to get a Passport Card. A Passport Card is different (and cheaper) than a regular passport and will get you into Canada, Mexico, Bermuda and the Caribbean but not onto international flights to go else where which is fine by me. My traveling days are all but over but I do like the idea that with a Passport Card I could run away to Canada if the USA goes all out Handmaid's Tale on us. And I also harbor a daydream of going on one of the Caribbean cruises that are filled with thousands of Mahjong players. It's a dream I know I'll never follow through on, unless I win the lotto and can invite a village to go with me.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking an Enhanced Driver's License ID can also get me to Mexico and Canada and be a second photo ID. I missed the deadline to get one that is now required to get on international flights and I don't have the REAL ID either that as of May seventh is now required for all domestic air travel and to get into federal facilities and on military bases. It would have been smarter and cheaper to get the Enhanced ID instead of a Passport Card. The Passport Card and REAL ID can be used interchangeably, but the DMV (where you have to go to get the EID and RID) is busier and harder to get to than our city hall where I have to go to get the Passport Card. That made the choice easier for me. I downloaded the passport application online, got a friend here to take the required photo---not an easy task since it has to be a two inch square photo with a one inch face showing. 

When the Passport Card gets here I'll feel better, knowing I'll be able to produce two forms of citizenship documentation if/when the SAVE Act becomes law. (And I think it will, given that the Republicans are in control of the Senate.) While we're being distracted by 45/47 daily shenanigans, like posting photos of himself dressed like the Pope on the White House account, the creators of Project 2025 are quietly working behind the scenes to freeze as many women out of the next election as they can. ©

 Until Next Wednesday.

Derby Hats, Horses and Mint Juleps

All eyes were on Churchill Downs Racetrack on Saturday including those belonging to most of us living on my continuum care campus. We had a Kentucky Derby hat making contest and picnic followed by a viewing party where we sipped mint juleps. I'm always up for anything artsy-fartsy so I of course I entered the contest, although I must admit that I resented spending money on something I'd only wear once. After seeing some of the other entries I knew I didn't have a chance of winning. But that was okay. I decided that I could add a long ribbon to my hat after the contest and the resulting hat now hangs on my door as summer decor. Resentment mitigated. 

When the contest was being discussed one night over dinner, the Art Professor asked why we had to vote on the best hat and award first, second and third place prizes. "Just the experience of creating the hats should be enough." I was quick to reply with, "Speak for yourself! We're too old for participation trophies." Everyone laughed and that shot her idea down without another word from anyone. I'll admit it, I'm competitive when it comes to arts and crafts---and mahjong. I wanted to win but I thought the better hats took their rightful places in the contest. (Photos below.) The woman in charge of the contest gave us all a small plastic horse for entering so we did get 'participation trophies' of sorts. You've got to love the humor around a place like this. 

If you're a long time reader here, you might remember two Christmas's ago when the Art Professor caused a controversy with her entry in the gingerbread house contest. It was a bombed-out house in the Gaza Strip that needed and came with a written explanation of what we were looking at. Some people thought it had no place in a Christmas themed event. Some thought it was god-awful ugly and I thought it was poorly executed but there is a reason for that: the art professor is going blind. I give her a lot of credit, though, she keeps making art and participates in anything creative around here. Her current project is crocheting mushrooms that she wants to display on a rotting log. Big ones, little ones. A couple of them look like penises that had us all laughing our guts out at lunch one day. She couldn't see the resemblance or didn't care which made it even funnier. She loves it when her art creates a buss.  

Back on topic: This week I started watching a documentary on the owners of derby race horses and I quit half way through. What a pretentious, egotistical, money sucking business to be in. I suppose if you have that kind of money to throw around the ego and pretension comes with the territory. The seven richest horse owners are worth in the billions, not millions and most of those owners didn't seem to love horses, they just liked what the horses could do for them. Race horses aren't like other horses. They are investments that are trained, pampered, spit-shined and polished to perfection and sold off or discarded to the breeding farms when they fail to bring home the trophies.

Side note here: Did you know that, Black Beauty---a book written like an autobiography of a horse that passes through many owners---is credited with bringing about an awareness that animals have feelings and it started a movement to treat animals more humanly? I didn't. One reviewer put it this way: "Anna Sewell's only book changed the world, alike to Charles Dickens 'Oliver Twist' to child labor, or Charlotte Brontë's 'Shirley' to feminism and the 'women-question.'" I thought it was just a book most people in my age bracket read in childhood. One thing for sure, it had an impact on my favorite sister-in-law who had a lot of Derby watch parties. She loved the Kentucky Derby for the horses and the hats, the upper class pageantry of it all. 

My only real interest in the Derby comes from one of my all-time favorite books and movies, Seabiscuit. It's the true story of a once neurotic horse that turned into a sports icon, a horse that became the single biggest news generator in 1938 topping Hitler, Mussolini and FDR. And of course, I'll admit to once being romanced by the sight of all the beautiful horse farms one sees when traveling through Kentucky. One of my upstairs neighbors is from Kentucky and volunteers daily at an equestrian therapy ranch near-by. She misses having her own horses and is willing to muck out stalls just to be near some. In my experience all little girls have a love affair with horses at one point in time---even if they're in the form of unicorns. She just never out grew hers. Mine came attached to a crush I had on a trail guide who worked at a riding stable near our cottage. He was a friend of my brother's and we often could ride for free if there weren't any paying customers. But every time any bare skin of mine touched a horse I broke out in hives. So after the second summer of doctoring my hives Calamine Lotion and cold tea my mom made me quit riding. That was okay with me because by then my crush was crushing on another girl who he ended up marrying.

The party was fun. After the judging we all wore our hats and others not in the contest wore assorted styles of hats, too, even some of the guys dressed up in hats and sport coats. But if I never have another mint julep it will be too soon. They were so strong I didn't think I'd be able to walk the 150 feet to my front door...had I actually drank the whole thing. ©

Until Next Wednesday....

  My is the hat is in the photo at the top of this post.

Won 3rd prize and the hat I voted for.

 

The hat on the top took 2nd prize.

The black hat took first place and it looks better in person than in the photo.