Life of Wry

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Purgeday!

One of the benefits of my recent insomnia is lots of time to come up with brilliant ideas to better organize my life, or our house and stuff, or whatever. I forget so many of these brilliant ideas by the time I wake up (after finally falling asleep), but I remembered this one!

I have a few shelves, drawers, closets that are bulging at the seams and it’s making me kinda crazy. So I decided that on Thursday of each week, I’d commit to filling one large garbage bag with some of that excess stuff — any room, any closet — and take it to Goodwill. If I feel so compelled, I can fill more than one, but at the very least: one bag a week.

So today, this being Thursday, I started. As luck would have it, we are out of large black garbage bags. Boo. So for this week, I used regular old shopping bags. Before all was said and done, I’d filled FOUR of those regular old shopping bags. Yay me!

Dozens of tee shirts, some pajamas, canvas totes… all donated to Goodwill this afternoon. (Actually SPCA on 3rd St).

Fingers crossed this continues!

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I was also taking a full trunk of stuff that Maria and I sorted out from the emptying of David’s public storage space. That was a big job. She had emptied the last of his things on Tuesday, and yesterday we sorted his belongings into 1) recycle, 2) save, 3) toss, 4) donate. She took the “save” items home yesterday and I offered to take all items for donation to the SPCA .. which I did today. Sad process.

This was the start of this morning’s french toast… two eggs — one yolk yellow and one a very dark orange. We (Maria and I) googled dark orange egg yolk and learned that it was not harmful to eat. In fact, the dark one was likely to be far denser in nutritional value. It may mean that this egg “came from a hen whose diet is high in carotenoids, which is common in free range environments, especially during the summer months,” said another source. Yet another said the hen ate “plenty of feed with a yellowish-orange pigment called xanthophylls.”

Nobody seemed to suggest it was not a good idea to eat it… so we did. And the french toast was yummy!

About 20 of us spread out all over the Modesto Junior College campus today to register young students to vote. All told, we registered about 160 students today.. not bad!

Democracy begins with voting, and voting begins with registration.. so we did our part. All kinds of studies show that if you register people when they are 18, they are more likely to become life-long voters. College students are, by definition, educated (or on their way to becoming educated), and educated voters more often lean left (because: duh).

You see where this is going.

Registering young people to vote, especially students, is good work. It’s tedious, but it’s good work. So today felt good.

That said… holy cow….

Sometimes, because they’re kids and I’m an adult, I have the advantage: they sort of cower and do what they are told.. as in,

“We’re here today registering students to vote, may I help you register?”
“Uh…. “
“Here, it’ll just take 5 minutes and then you’ll be all set, there’s time before your next class, yeah?”
“Uh… ok”

And, sometimes, because they’re kids, they are just so resistant, or they say they are just not interested in politics, or they just don’t want to do it now, or they have no bloody idea what you’re talking about. It’s funny.

Three of us came from Davis (others from the Bay Area!). Our Davis trio was Linda, Nancy and me. Each of us registered 9 voters. That a 90-minute drive each way, and 3-ish hours of wandering around campus looking for victims (er.. unregistered students). We met in Davis at 8:30 and got home at 4:30.. so there was fluff time in there (lunch, training). It’s a lot of time, and I’m pooped. But again… it’s productive.

You’re welcome!

Honestly…

That anyone on the republican side of the country takes this man seriously blows me away. (And I wince when I refer to him as a man when the truth is he’s a petulant boy who failed to launch and has lived his entire life in a bubble devoid of responsibility and accountability. Not to mention morals. There are third graders with a better sense of right and wrong.)

Oops, I digressed.

That any republican can look at that calendar — and all it represents — and still say, hell yeah, he’s my guy… well.. I find it nauseating. Period. You’ve lost all my respect. He’s an embarrassment and, more significantly, a danger to our country and the world. Period.

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Some satisfying memes that speak to his depravity, lack of decency, lack of any human qualities…

And because her words are so much better than anything I can ever come up with… some choice snippets from Maureen Dowd’s August 26th column, “Catch the Smug Mug on That Thug”:

If there were any justice in the world, Donald Trump would have taken the Mug Shot of Dorian Gray.
As with Oscar Wilde’s charismatic and amoral narcissist, the Picture of Donald Trump should have been a “foul parody,” a reflection of what the chancer has done with his life. It should have shown Trump’s corroding soul rather than his truculent face.

It should have revealed a man so cynical and depraved that he is willing to smash our nation’s soul — our democracy — and destroy faith in our institutions. All this simply to avoid being called a loser.

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But Trump is feral and cunning…

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Trump has long felt that squinting or scowling is a good look for him. Timothy O’Brien, a Trump biographer, recalled that Trump once told him that Clint Eastwood was the greatest movie star ever, and O’Brien believed that Donald and Melania modeled their squints on Eastwood’s. Maggie Haberman noted in The Times that when Trump posed for his official White House portrait, he scowled into the camera and told aides he thought he looked “like Churchill.”

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Trump told Newsmax’s Greg Kelly after the arraignment that he had “never heard the word ‘mug shot’” until his was taken — which just shows again that Trump is a pathological liar. Everyone in America has heard the term “mug shot.”

I love this picture…

Janet came over for dinner tonight. Dinner was grilled zucs, eggplant and yellow peppers from the garden, plus a tomato (from the garden) and avocado salad, and some leftover (don’t tell Janet) grilled ginger-tarragon-yogurt-lime chicken from a couple of nights ago.

But it’s the dessert and appetizer — pictured above — that I’m getting a kick out of. I made cheese crackers (one of my favorite things to eat) for an event I attended last night and I had squirreled away a few for us, so we started with those. Jim decided to make some peanut butter cookies for dessert, which was kind of a serendipitous choice, as he maybe didn’t know I’d be serving the cheese crackers and .. well… they look like bigger/smaller versions of each other.

The cheese crackers are sort of like mini-me’s!

Both = delicious!

This is Dror’s homemade bread. He brought a huge (and shockingly heavy) loaf for dinner last night and left us with half of what remained. The other half went to Charlie and Lucy.. cuz fair’s fair. (And what a great time we had last night!)

Thought exercise: If someone said you had to choose one, and only one, food item to eat every day, every meal, for the rest of your life, what would it be? My item would be fresh baked bread with butter on it. Hands down.

I love this so much, I could just live inside that fig.

Every time I eat a fig, two things come to mind. First, as I’m sure I’ve written a million times before, I think of my grandma who loved figs and is the first person ever to serve me one. She served fresh figs peeled, in a bowl with milk and sugar. I didn’t care for them then.. too weird and wet. It was the farthest thing from a Fig Newton I could imagine. Somehow, sometime, that changed and I just can’t get enough of them. Secondly, figs seem so ancient, like, how long have they been a food? .. seems like since the beginning of time.

Okay, I looked it up, check this out:

Fig remnants were found in archeological excavations dating back to 5000 BC. Cultivation of the fruit was reported first in ancient Rome, where 29 different types of fig were grown. Believed to be indigenous to Asia Minor, the fig spread beyond the Mediterranean region before recorded history.

Ew.

We’ve been dealing with an infestation of cottony cushion scale in a particular tree in our front yard for a couple of years. Today, after numerous unsuccessful efforts to eradicate it, we removed the tree.

No more extremely gross sticky goopy stuff on the driveway, Jim’s truck, the trash cans, the roof… SO EXCITED!

They did other stuff in the backyard, too, as long as we were addressing tree issues: they removed a long overgrown shrub (that was about 15′ high and ever so gangly); they cleaned up a dying mayten; pruned a birch tree; and pruned a plum tree.

I just can’t tell you how great this all feels.

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You know what feels better, though?

This: #P01135809.

That is the inmate number assigned by Fulton County Georgia officials to the forever-disgraced, twice-impeached, and now four-times-arrested-and-booked ex so-called president. He posed for an obviously rehearsed mug shot photo (can you imagine him in front of the mirror perfecting that look?), designed to convey [I think] defiance, but which conveys to me that he’s a thuggy mob-boss lunatic.

I’m out of the prediction business — I have a terrible record — so I won’t guess what’s going to happen now. But today, while pathetic and sad for some, was, for me, a fantastic day of due comeuppance. I’m deeply needing some world class accountability and this (along with the other three indictments and a total of 90+ criminal charges!) is an excellent step on that path.

Meanwhile, sadly, a huge percentage of our grossly ill-informed fellow citizens are solid in their support for this master con, and they are sending ever-more money to their favorite billionaire (who spends nothing of his own money on his defense, thanks to them). Crazily, each and every time he gets arrested, their support strengthens. He is their idea of a great role model leader (he’s nothing of the sort) who represents their interests (not even close) and has elevated the US like no other president in the history of democracy (nope). Isn’t that just the weirdest?

So yeah, a good day. These arrest days never get old.

I’m sure I’ve told you this. We planted three tomato plants this year.. one yellow cherry and two regular sized tomatoes.

We are still — several times a week — harvesting tomatoes by the bowlfull. We’ve even given some away this year, we have so many.

(Note to Self: Plant exactly the same next year… it’s perfect.)

We had hamburgers for dinner — something easy to eat while watching the first republican debate — and they were, as usual, just fantastic.

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So.. speaking of that republican debate.

To my ear, Nikki Haley was the strongest, and I think they’re nuts not to support her. I feel like she’d win easily over Biden b/c the general election favors the candidate in the middle. She’s moderate, reasonable, experienced and brings something entirely fresh to the stage: she’s a woman. I’m stunned she is not getting the traction she needs to separate from the field, consolidate support and beat trump to the nomination. But she’s not. My ear is not the republican ear, and to listen to the post-debate analysis, NOBODY was the clear winner, which means trump won. There was consensus that Haley did very well. There was also consensus that Pence was strong and fiesty and, when Ramaswamy got under his skin (a lot) he took him on and showed him up (as did Haley). Christie was flat and disappointing, Hutchinson and Burgum not factors, and suprisingly, De Santis was just sorta meh.. not damaged, but didn’t shine. But there was also consensus that the ever smug and annoying Ramaswamy emerged as Mr. Popular (among voters, esp the young ones), was most provocative, was master of the outrageous soundbite and will prolly get a big bump.

Too bad for the republicans.

Nobody seems to want to get out of the race b/c they’re all hedging their bets, hoping the indictments will force trump to drop out, giving them a chance. But that seems not to be happening. He really may just cruise easily to the nomination. And then lose. You know, unless something catastrophic happens to Biden (entirely possible).

How did this happen? How is this even possible. How will we ever get through the next year?

I will have to seriously consider self-care strategies. I am not, NOT going to go through 2024 the same way we all suffered through 2016 and 2020. By the time 2020 came along, we were organized and mobilized and we had a pandemic that allowed us to focus all of our efforts on constructive activism. I think activism will also be a good strategy in 2024, but I’m going to need a big giant filter to keep all the toxic stuff out of my head and heart.

Sigh.

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To-great-oes rhymes with to-mate-oes.

I am really taken with this photo. Not only is it just so well conceived, I can feel the freshness of the sea air and the colors are so perfectly soft and serene.

Good job, somebody (couldn’t find an attribute).

My inner cynic thinks it could be manipulated, but my more dominant inner open-hearted self accepts it as beautiful art.