Blue.  Jeans, teeshirts, sneakers.  No real reason, just that it’s an easy color,  Not my favorite color, by any means.

Feeling really crap today.  Haven’t been sleeping well, even when I take the knockout pill.  Achy, tired, blah!  On the bright side, it poured, and I do mean poured rain earlier.  I had to close the window because it was raining right in.  It was marvelous.  Now it’s just cloudy with a few blue patches here and there, and chilly in here.  Made some lovely Earl Grey Tea.  I’ve had this tin for years, and slowly am parceling it out, a cup here, a cup there, and it’s getting low.  Can’t seem to find a replacement.  I can order from the company, but this tin is 48 dollars with shipping. If they could make it apparate, it would still be 20 dollars. Twenty-eight dollars to ship a 4 oz. tin of tea. Really? I bought it in a moment of insanity from Amazon awhile back for 38 dollars total, but it never arrived.  Now it says it can’t deliver to my address. What?  Well, darn.

You mean besides Republicans?  And morons?  People who write ‘span’ when they mean ‘spun’.  Span is reach, spun is twirled around.  This drives me bats for some reason.  There are a lot more, but I’m not awake enough yet to think of them.  People who don’t proofread.  People who just end a story in the middle.  No more updates ever.  It’s like reading the only copy of some great work of literature, and someone has torn out the last half of the book and burned it.  Half of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone?  Really?  Not that HP is a great work of literature in that sense, but still, you want to know what happens, darn it.  Write the damn story and then start posting it.  How hard is that?

Okay, so I’m a bit grumpy.  My Marie just left for the last time.  I am so going to miss her.  I was going over how the vacuum works with her for the new person.  It’s pretty sad when you don’t know how your own vacuum works.  Anyway, there’s a plastic something near the bottom, and I asked what that bit down there is, and she reached down and touched the wheel, and said, ‘This is a wheel.”  Smartass.  Lots of laughing going on.  I’m really going to miss that.

A beautiful day again.  No a/c needed.  The cat’s new water and feeding thingies arrived.  I hope she uses them, but if not, they’ll make good planters or something.  🙂 These cats are not Luna:

Cute, huh? 🙂

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I recently got a couple of new followers, which both surprises me and makes me happy.  Thank you.  Thanks to those who have been following me all along, as well.  I sincerely hope some of you will comment now and then, even if only to tell me that I am the most boring blogger on the planet.  Any feedback is good feedback, as they say about publicity.  🙂

I just realized that I have posted a couple of the questions twice.  Do I look like I know what I’m doing, because looks can be deceiving.

Had a bad night.  Lots of pain, and then wound up sleeping to 4pm.  I ordered Chinese for a very late dinner.  Oh, the cat is in attack mode. Guess it’s time to play.  Again, so pleased to have new followers.  Thank you.

Found this on Tumblr.  Only takes a minute or two to listen, and I hope you do.  It’s about the ‘taking a knee’ controversy.  I’ve seen this guy before, and I’ve liked what he has to say.

comments on ‘take a knee’ controversy

Abney Park.  I need some upbeat, cause I’m a bit down at losing Marie.  A bit anxious about adjusting to yet another new person.  A bit sick and tired of being sick and tired, tired, tired.  I need some energy.  I am eating the protein, taking the b-complex, the magnesium, drinking more water.  Nothing helps.  I am just so very tired.  Not sleepy, but exhausted, like there is no energy in my body at all.  Bah!  Also, humbug!

It’s another a/c day.  Yay.

Has anyone seen Granite Falls?  I just binged watched all three seasons this week, and loved it.  And it’s filmed in Utah.  Looks a lot like Colorado, where it’s set.    There is one ep, ‘Also Be the Consolation’ where you can see the trees in autumn.  You know, the ones where the leaves turn yellow, then brown, then fall off.  Colorado is nothing like New England as far as color goes.  It’s a really good show, very surprising, with twists and turns that just keep coming.  You think it’s about kids, and it is, but so much more as well.  Another thing, why is it set in Colorado, but filmed in Utah?  Why was Longmire set in Wyoming, but filmed in New Mexico.  Why don’t they film where they are pretending to be.  Cheaper elsewhere?  IDEK  Pictures from show:

I also recently binge watched Bordertown, a Finnish series which was also pretty good, if gory. Scandinavian shows I’ve seen all seem to be pretty dark, and I don’t mean the lighting. I am now binging The Truth Seekers, which is made in Singapore.  Their tv, based on this, is very different.  It seems overacted, silly, and everything is explained in detail, as if all the viewers are idiots.  Why am I watching it?  Not sure, really.  🙂 Every foreign-made show also has some English in it.  In this last one, a guy is talking and the middle of the sentence is in English, for no reason I can see.  Weird.  Seems like most countries speak English as a second language, unlike us in the US, who are lucky we speak our own language fluently.  We are missing out in the education department, people.

I need to go lie down for a bit.  Later, gaters.

Yes, and no.  I am an email aficionado.  I prefer it over any other means of communication.  I have time to correct mistakes, change my mind, say something better, etc.  It’s kind of like blogging in that respect.  🙂  I do have a couple of pages of a pretty stationary I bought way back when I was a teenager in Denver.  I think it is Crane, and I just fell in love with it.  There’s a bookstore in Exeter, NH I used to frequent, and they had a small room just for stationary.  I have enough note cards, etc. to last me for the next century, mainly because I never ever use them.  🙂 Here’s a couple I found online, meant to be printed out and used.

I had some unhappy news today.  My lovely Marie, my homemaker, is leaving.  My homemakers are like my friends, because they are basically the only person I can be guaranteed to see regularly.  Someone to talk to.  But it’s part of being ill.  People come and go, and it’s wise not to get too attached to any one person.  An interesting result of her leaving, though, is my next person is going to be a male.  A young man looking to work, they said.  Hey, I’m willing to give it a try.  Does he know how to do housework, laundry, etc?  I’ve had some female homemakers who seemed not to have a clue, so it’s not a matter of gender.  Not sure how I’m going to feel about a guy doing my laundry and cleaning my bathroom.  But you can adapt to anything, so why not?  It was hard enough to get used to a complete stranger coming in and doing these things, so that stranger being male shouldn’t be that different an adjustment.  I hope.  And maybe he’ll be fun.  Fun is good.  Marie is fun, Traci was fun.  I’ve had some who were definitely NOT fun.  Added bonus, he will come at 1:15 or so.  This people coming in the morning thing is really hard.  See previous posts where my natural body clock wants me to get up at noon to see why.  Every other Thursday Marie comes at 10 am. TEN. A. M.  Nooooooo.  the rest of the days are 11 or 11:30, which is better but still not ideal.  My brain needs lots of time to kick in after I wake up.  Lots of time.  Unless I wake up naturally, when my body tells me to. Then my brain works from the get go.  I even remember my name most days.  Yay, me.  (kidding)

I went out yesterday.  On my own.  I am so proud of me.  I went across to the new 7-eleven, and instantly realized why they are doing very little business.  They do not sell beer or wine.  Amazing the difference in the amount of business they do versus Tedeschi’s, which did sell both.  So I bought a chocolate milk.  Which I have yet to drink.  Then I went across the street to the Middle Eastern restaurant and picked up my phoned-in order.  Kibbee.  I love kibbee.  That’s not how I would spell it, but it’s the way they spell in on the menu.  Anyway, it was agony, walking, even though I took my cane.  By the time I got home, I was exhausted from dealing with the pain.  My friend Tess came over, and she tried the food.  She is a ‘no pepper, no spice’ kind of New England eater.  When we first moved here, we used to comment on how they seemed to only eat white food in New England.  It’s gotten better over time.  So kibbeh, fatoush (not as good as mine, for sure), and some weird dessert thing I tried cause I’d never heard of it.  Knefe.  Like a white bread bun with sesame seeds baked in, with a filling of a weird cheese, and a slightly sweet unrecognizable something.  Good warm, but cold later was ick.  Everything was good, if not great.  The kibbee needed more of whatever weird seasoning they make it with.  Used to go to a sort of middle eastern deli in Salem, NH, and they had the best kibbeh ever.  And the stuffed grape leaves.  Going to try that next, and the falafel.  I love falafel, too.  I used to have a Lebanese friend, which is how I got into the food.  So pain and exhaustion and fun with friend and relatively good food.  Yay, me.  🙂

And it’s a beautiful day.  Yesterday was air-conditioning day, but today is just lovely.  This is down the street from me, in the park. That orange streak caught my eye.

I did not have a stuffed animal.  When I was really small, I had a—and yes, I know this is now politically incorrect, and should be, but back then it was the way it was—I had a nigger baby doll, that I loved to pieces. She and our Boston Terrier whose name I have forgotten were my friends, and I would talk to them and play with them all day until my brother was old enough to play with.  We also called Brazil nuts Nigger Toes.  I did not have any idea these names were wrong or offensive, it was just what they were called.  I didn’t know the correct name for the nuts until I was much older.  You have to remember that I am old, and grew up in a very different world than today’s.  Remember The Walton’s?  It was kind of like that.  Without the sawmill.  My dad worked in the steel mill.  Colorado Fuel and Iron.  That and Colorado State Hospital were where the jobs in my town were.  We held the Colorado State Fair every year, too.  That was fun.  Rodeos, and I don’t mean ro-DAY-o.  RO-dee-o.   That’s how you say it.  RO-dee-o.  Cowboys.  Clowns.  Cotton candy.  Picnics on the grass.  It really was a different time.

This all makes me wonder if changing the words that were written back then to reflect current mores is right or wrong.  It was what things were called at that particular, unenlightened time.  It’s part of who we were and how we thought and spoke.  I don’t think it’s the same thing as monuments to the Civil War, but I wonder if removing monuments to scientists and others who have done good work but also were racists is good or bad.  Do we negate their accomplishments because of their misguided attitudes?  Do we stop listening to Kanye West because he’s a jerk?  Did we stop watching Mel Gibson movies because he’s a racist?  (Well, I did.) We are always a conundrum, it seems.  If that’s the correct word. A puzzle. A mix of good and bad.  Some of us, of course, are just letting the bad rule them, but I have no power over them.  Racism is wrong, but I don’t think in the context of my life, those words had the intent behind them.  They were just the words in use in my life at the time.  Little Black Sambo was my favorite book when I was very young.  The lion? turned into butter.  I liked butter, although we mostly had ewwww oleo.  Poor people couldn’t afford real butter.  Once I could, I never bought margarine again.  Still haven’t, to this day.  Anyway, I think Sambo is banned now.

Should we change the words in books, like Agatha Christie’s, to reflect our time instead of hers?  I wouldn’t want that, because that’s how it was at that time, and reading her books gives you an insight into how people thought and behaved back then.  It doesn’t make them correct, it just gives us a window into life at that time.  It’s how we learn.  When I first read her books, it just all washed right over me.  It wasn’t until I had some life experience and then read them again that I could see the prejudice and racism, and remember feeling glad that we weren’t like that any more.

Of course, I now realize how very, very wrong I was about that.  We are exactly the same, even worse sometimes.  All that ‘enlightenment’ was just covering up what people really felt, how people really are.  It’s very unsettling.  And depressing.  I thought we had come so far as a species, and I was just so damn wrong.

On another note, we had several days of gray, wind, and rain from Hurricane Jose, although the actual Hurricane missed us.  Whew!.  It was glorious if you like wind and rain, which I do, but the gray or the illness, and I’m not sure which or both, got me feeling really tired and with more pain.  I don’t do well with too many gray days in a row, I seem to have SAD to some extent, although it was much worse when I lived farther north.  February in New Hampshire was just gray.  Period.  Anyway, the sun came back, I am better, but still feeling like what is the point to it all.  Yesterday was the first sunny and beautiful day.  I woke energized and wanting to do something.  Got dressed for going out (usually I just live in my indoor clothes, teeshirts and cotton trousers.  Then there was the realization that there was no place to go and no one to go there with anyway.  Being alone is hard.  Especially when you are feeling relatively functional.  I am letting my normal body clock take over, no alarms or anything.  So I am up til who knows when, and getting up at 11 or noon, when my body says, ‘get up now’.  I like being able to just listen to my body, but I wish it wanted to get up at 7 or 8 am.  But no.  It has a mind of it’s own.  Ha ha.

Luna has morphed into the sweetest, most loving and affectionate cat you could imagine.  She rubs her face on my face, she walks me to the kitchen in the morning for ‘the FOOD, lady’, she sits on me, sleeps on me, she is just the best little kitty ever.  I am so glad I took the risk with her.  It’s just over two weeks, and she’s as comfortable as if she’d lived here her entire life.  Pictures:

What’s not to love.  I still call her Gertrude quite often.  I still miss Gertrude.  Heck, I still miss Simon, and he’s been gone for years.  But Lunabuna makes me happy, and I think she is happy and content, too.  It’s a good thing.  🙂

And it’s AUTUMN.  My favorite time of the year. 

Autumn in Boston, by Marie Jamieson

Somebody on Tumblr actually liked one of my blog posts.  They’ve been going over to Tumblr for a long time, and this is the first feedback I’ve gotten from there.  I get next to no feedback in general, so yes, this is a big deal for me.  Yaaaay.  Thank you @woebegone-van gogh  🙂

I looked and looked for this picture for question 26, about shoes, but could I find it? Ha!

Second thing. There’s a site recommend me a book that posts a clip from a different book each day. Here’s a quote from today’s:

‘And a hundred grand would barely last them the year, here in California.’

A woman and her son. So never moving to Florida, and now California is off the list of possibilities? What the heck is their cost of living? I thought Massachusetts was expensive, but I could live a good long time on a hundred grand.  Although maybe this is similar to a book I read a while back.  The ‘don’t actually know what I’m writing about’ syndrome.  Author kept referring to Cape Cod as a ‘small town’.   I’m sorry.  Have you even been to New England, let alone Massachusetts or the actual Cape called Cod. I literally could not finish the book because it annoyed me so much.  Yes, I’m weird.  Get used to it.  LOL

Cheese Danish, and not that pretend crap that they sell nowadays.

Here is my new cat, Luna. That’s her shelter name, and even though I don’t love it, do you think I could come up with anything else. No. Got her Saturday. She attacked me twice, once Saturday, and once again Sunday, where I barely missed losing an eye. ‘Doesn’t like to be picked up’, they said. Doesn’t like to be touched anywhere that is not her head, is more like it, and she will kill you if you do. Or give it a really good try. She’s not very sociable/friendly, although she was all over my friend Tess when we brought her back to mine. See picture below. We thought maybe she smells dog on Tess, and cat on me, and she really does not like other cats. I decided to give her some time, but I am definitely not sure about keeping her. I wanted a companion animal, not a vicious little gray bundle. She is cute, though. So she’s my new cat at least temporarily. There was another one I would have taken, but she has an inguinal hernia, and if it needs to be fixed, I cannot afford that, so better not to take her in the first place. Shelter person said it cost 4,000 dollars over all to fix a broken leg on one of the animals. Sheesh!

Oh, the first picture is not Luna. It is my spider plant baby, which is going bananas.

Tess and Luna

She jumped on my lap, then sat on the laptop. Changed the tab I was on, closed out Firefox, then shut down the laptop. How? No idea, she was just getting comfortable. 🙂

Co-opted my desk chair.

Exploring. She checked out every inch of my house when she first got here. Sniffed and sat on everything possible.

When I was a teenager, my side of my ‘shared with my sister’ room was very neat and organized.  I like to be organized and know where things are, but since I’ve been ill, keeping up with that is more often than not impossible.  I try to organize things when I’m doing better, but it goes right back to disaster when I am not.

Doing well:

Also doing well:

Not so great.  I know it’s not the best place to keep a cat, but it was the best I could do at the time.

The second hurricane in no time at all is devastating the Caribbean, and may soon hit Florida. I was appalled to read that Delta has jacked prices for those trying to get out ahead of time, in one case from 547 dollars to 3258 dollars. Amazon, which surely doesn’t need the money, has jacked water prices. From inc.com:

“For example, a 24-pack of Aquafina — typically sold for less than $6 — was priced at $20. And, Deadspin editor Diana Moskovitz reported that a 24-pack of Nestle bottled water with expedited shipping was priced at $179.25.”

My country is a disgrace. We have become the capital of greed, with money as our god. For shame, America.

I do love me some steampunk.

May get a cat.  Waiting for shelter to call to start the approval process. Remember when people just gave away kittens and puppies?  Not any more.  Everything is for sale, and at the shelter, you have to pay for whatever medical things they have done to that particular cat, like shots and spaying, etc.  Hmmm.

Trying to get under control with food.  Buy it, then don’t prep or cook it.  Idiot!  Buy it already prepped, and/or already cooked.  Having a store-made salad right now.  Cut up fruit in single serving sizes.  I pay more, I know, but it’s better than paying less and then wasting it.  Making pizza, too. Which kind of negates everything I just said, but oh, well.  I make great pizza.  🙂

So I read this article:

Apes and Bad Science

and it seems to me that humans are genetically programmed to have a better than/less than mentality.  We need to feel superior for whatever reason.  It causes tremendous problems in the world, and especially right now in my own country, where the rich old white  men seem to have a driving need to feel superior to everyone else on the planet.  Don’t know how to fix this, of course.  I may be brilliant (inside joke), but even I am not THAT brilliant.

Having a pretty good day, so I am happy.  Later, peeps.  Peeps?  Seriously, Jean?

I have lots of socks, even toe socks, but I tend to stick with white ones, because they don’t need sorting and if I lose one, so what, there are always more.  I wear socks all the time. I never wear shoes indoors, and I hate dirty feet, so I keep my socks on in the house.  Yes, I sleep in them.  Weird thing, since my knee surgery, the sock on that foot does not stay in place but twists and slips partly off and it’s very annoying.  Oh, the excitement of this news.

I got over my snit by the next morning after the last post.  I have been stuck posting, mainly because the questions are getting lamer and it just shuts down my brain.  Not good to rely on questions, it seems.

Been doing quite well up until a couple of days ago when I could not sleep much.  Repeat the second night, then last night slept okay, up at 9:30, brushed teeth, etc. laid back down and woke up at 4pm.  Must have been really tired.  Feeling okay now, but will no doubt be awake all night.  Oh, well.

It got pretty chill for a bit, and now it is cold at night, in the 40’s or 50’s and then gets into the 80’s during the day.  Interesting weather.  Definitely an early fall this year.  Wonder what the winter’s going to be like. I took this last year, November tenth.  I think it’s going to be much earlier when this happens this year.

Stocked up a bit just in case we get a hurricane here.  We’ve had near misses since I’ve lived in New England, but never a real full-on hit.  Good to be prepared as much as possible.  After Texas, you can’t help but be a bit cautious.  Cannot imagine the hell those people are going through.

Binge-watching Prime Suspect on Britbox.  We watched this on PBS way back when.  I love binge-watching, because you notice so much more when there is not a wait.  For example, Inspector Morse is a lech, which I never realized when we watched it on PBS way back when as well.  And you can kind of see the beginnings of that in Endeavour.  And I’m not sure I like Tennison at all.  She is not the person you want as your coworker, I think.

I am so happy without tv.  No commercials, no orange moron sound bites, no horrible world news, just watch  your show in peace.  I love my Fire Stick, and my subs.  I have five, including Amazon Prime, and still am paying less including internet than I was paying Comcast for slow internet and basic basic tv.  I’m not counting the whole cost of Prime, because Prime Movies/TV is only a part of it.  So there.

Rambling on, as usual.  Later.