“Recognizing that someone may have had it harder than you doesn’t mean you haven’t had it hard.”

Found here:  https://spacefem.livejournal.com/

Please.

I know, I know, it’s only morning and I should not be watching youtube. But while looking for a particular song, I came across this,  and watching it got me thinking. I have not been outside since March 11th. Yeah. I know. Watching this, my first thought, after ‘It’s not funny, but if you don’t laugh, how can you cope?’, was, I don’t want to go outside. I don’t want to be in a world where white people are like this. I am a white people, and I am disgusted, ashamed, horrified, you name it. I can never look at cops the same, and I can definitely never look at my neighbors in the same way, because how can I know any one of them might be like these people, a hotbed of hate and racism and just plain evilness. The worst part of the orange man’s reign has been realizing how little things have changed in this country. These people weren’t enlightened, they were hiding under their rocks with the slime and the bugs until the orange man came along and said, ‘Hate is good, indulge yourselves, please’. This is the man that made fun of disabled people, encouraged his supporters to beat up people who didn’t agree with them/him, and gave a Nazi salute that people just seemed to be okay with. During the campaign. What he’s done since has been so much worse. And many, many people just love it.  Disillusioned does not begin to describe how I feel about my fellow citizens. Great way to start the day, Jean. Really great. Here’s the video:

White People Calling the Cops

This was on YouTube.

Are they deliberately trying to kill off their own supporters? I know they have badly lost the plot, but this seems a bit much, even for Republicans.

This site asks for a donation, but just get past that.

Asking the United Nations to Investigate

If you read this blog, you may already know how much I love rainy days.  Earlier, I could smell the rain, too, which doesn’t happen a lot anymore.

Having a pretty good day, still messing about with my new HP laptop.  I wasn’t really always sure if the problem was my router, Firefox, or my laptop.  It was the laptop.  The refurbished Dell they sent me instead of the brand new one I had sent in for repair, because it had a problem.  Customer service was horrid, and they did not care at all that I was a very unhappy customer. I will never buy another Dell.  The damn refurbished one never worked right, was so unbelievably slow most of the time, and just took all the fun out of being online, or trying to do anything productive on it.  The new one is lightning fast, it’s more comfortable to type on, and over all I am so very pleased with it.  Of course, I’ve only had it two days, so time will tell, but right now, it’s all good.  The only thing I miss is the backlit keyboard. Completely unnecessary, but pretty and always cheered me up.  Yes, I am strange.  Get over it.  LOL

Did I mention it’s a rainy day?  Woo Hoo.  Soft, soft rain, gently falling from the sky.  A couple of days ago we had a sudden, and I mean sudden downpour that lasted awhile and then the sun came out.  It was glorious.

I have no idea what this is, but it’s funny. 

To me, anyway.  I often think I have come to terms with dying.  If I have a heart attack, or something else probably fatal, I’m okay with not calling the ambulance and having someone attempt to save me.  I seriously think I’d rather just go than have to deal with all the horrors of healthcare, and there are some serious horrors there.

So I’m thinking, my friend suggested maybe it’s safe enough to go for a ride in the car with her, if we’re careful.  Are you crazy?  I think to myself.  Today, it is yet another gloriously beautiful summer day, so I’m thinking what the hey, why not?  Whoa, Jean.  Are YOU crazy?  Fear of contagion is real.

You know why?  I was sick in December, I may have mentioned this ten zillion times.  I was almost totally incapacitated, could barely breathe for  weeks.  I tried everything. Allergy pills, my asthma inhaler, which I rarely need, Mucinex that my homemaker bought for me, steam, everything I could think of.  I extremely slowly started to get better, and when I was well enough at the end of December, saw my doctor, who had me x-rayed for pneumonia.  Nope. Also gave me a very strong antibiotic in case it was pneumonia.  Then I started to get better.  It was a full three months later, around the end of March or sometime in April, that I finally felt like I had regained most of the strength I had lost.  I was extremely weak for a couple of months, and only gradually regained that strength. So I am really not willing to risk going through that again.  It was a really awful experience, and I am not one who had to be put on a respirator and had horrific after effects.  Not saying I had the virus, but whatever it was, I think I was lucky I came out of it intact.  Relatively speaking.

So maybe not as okay with dying as I thought.  It’s probably a good thing.

Not just the virus deaths, but the suicides.  That many people in despair.  How sad is this world?

Virus Vizualization

Image from urbannight.wordpress.com

“Created from one essence, people are members of a single body. Should one member suffer pain, the rest shall, too. You who feel no sorrow for the distress of others cannot be called a human being.” Sa’di, 13th-Century Persian poet.

Two days ago.  I said this.  Good grief.  The first one is from today.  How can you not get that this man is utterly and completely incompetent?  How can you not get that?

A post not motivated by anger.  It is kind of windy, a bit breezier than breezy.  So far, now that midsummer has past, it seems like most of the first half of summer has been incredibly great weather.  I have not had the a/c on at all, only felt actually hot and sticky a brief time this morning, and then that went away, and that was the only time this entire summer.  I have had the a/c on in May some years.  I have had it on for days and days in a row some years.  Yesterday was gray, but beautiful and comfortable, and most days have been sunny and clear or with white puffy clouds.  Mother Nature is favoring my area, and I am so pleased with her. My friend Tess says I am having a great summer because I live in the highlands (second floor).  Her house is all first floor, or ground floor if you are British.  🙂

And another thing.  I made a strawberry pie and strawberries in balsamic vinegar, a bit of sugar, and a lot of black pepper. Because it’s JUNE.  Strawberry month.  Woo Hoo!!!!!!

So much nice to be happy instead of angry.  And so far today I have avoided Verizon hell, but will have to step back in tomorrow and call them before they shut me down for non-payment of a bill I have paid four, count them, four times and they have not accepted one of them.  Not angry today.  Not angry today. Not angry today.  But tomorrow…….

While looking for something to illustrate this post, I came across this.

Verizon Sponsors Hell

Are we?
Lives Being Threatened

What does this say about us as a people? Threatening the lives of people who are doing their job of trying to keep us safe? It tells me that our minds have atrophied and are clearly not working. We worship the orange man, whose grasp on reality seems fragile, at best, and those that are in his inner circle are benefiting from this at our expense, and we just seem to love it. We let ourselves be brainwashed by Fox News, and if you think that is not what is happening, you need to do your research. We have lost any shred of common sense we may have had, and have chosen instead to live in a fake reality. It’s not the news that’s fake (excepting always Fox News, who just make things up as they go along), it’s the reality people seem to think we are living in. The one where Trump is the second coming, and there is no virus, and everything is happy happy joy joy all day in every way. We are a disgrace.

Celebrate freedom.  Info about it here:

What’s It About?

Yeah, like, you slaves were freed two years ago, and we kind of forgot to tell you about it. Sorry about that.

Today’s Friday Five is about State or Country Fairs.
1. When was the last time you went to a state or county fair?
Probably more than 25 years, before I was divorced.
2. Did you try your hand at the midway games?
Did not.
3. Which of the rides were your favorite, either now or as a kid?
I loved the whirl-a-gig, where you sat in a cup and the cup spun and the whole shemogle spun as well. I could ride that all day. And the Bumper Cars. I loved the Bumper Cars. Crashing is fun.
4. Did you ever enter anything into the exhibits? How did you do?
Nope. Just a visitor.
5. What is your best memory that you take from a fair?
Lots of memories. At the Colorado State Fair, my favorite was the cow barn, mainly because it contained a dairy with ice cream made right there. Hey, I was a little kid. LOL And the rodeo. The rodeo was spectacular, with clowns and bucking horses and roping contests and it was fantastic. If I couldn’t be Chuck Yeager, I wanted to be a cowboy. In New Hampshire, my husband and I used to go the the Hopkinton Fair every year. Great fun. Gorgeous, gorgeous chickens, and horse pulls. I was insanely addicted to the horse pull. Pill a zillion pounds of something on a sledge and get your horse/horses to pull it a certain distance. Much more exciting than it sounds. Much more. I miss those days sometimes. It was a great fair, not too big or crowded and lots of fun things to see.

So that’s the Friday Five, and Juneteenth. Not so angry lately, so that’s a good thing, but still not happy with my country and a good portion of the people in it. We are meant to be better than this, America.

Look at these beautiful, beautiful horses.

Miss G, that is.  Second Gertrude.  Dumpling.  One year old.  Here she is last September, soon after she moved in.And here she is today, her first birthday.  Cat has grown!  Woo Hoo!

She has really made my life better, and I would not be doing as well in isolation without her.  Too bad she wouldn’t stretch out to get a picture like the first one, but mind of her own has this cat.  🙂

*One crucial caveat is that the virus will outlast the summer — everywhere. During the 1918-19 flu, transmission rates fell in the warmer months, only to soar again in the fall. “People thought it was over,” as Apoorva Mandavilli, a science reporter at The Times, said, “and stopped taking precautions.”*

We have to remain vigilant.  It is so easy to get overwhelmed with constant monitoring, wiping things down, washing your hands dozens of times a day.  I just want to go back to normal, please.  I want to go to the DQ with a friend, visit an actual grocery store, just be outside.  I don’t have a yard or balcony or anything similar, so any outside involves elevators and hallways and the main street.  So in I stay.  Humans are very adaptable.  Inconvenience and a bit of stir-crazy versus possibly dying of a devastating illness, I know which I choose.  I am appalled at people who feel it is appropriate to whine and even protest about getting their hair cut.  Good grief.  If they all got sick and died, I probably wouldn’t be that upset, because they are idiots, and we seem to have a glut of those since the orange man happened, but the problem is, they will infect and kill people who haven’t been moronic and are collateral damage, as they say.  You may think you are invincible, but are your loved ones, your friends, your neighbors? And while I may applaud the protesters, I think they would do well to take more safety measures.  Masks, at least.  Some do, some don’t. Same risk to others you come in contact with later.

Oh, looks like a storm is coming. We had a spectacularly fast-moving one the other day, which cause considerable damage, not right where I am, thank goodness. I lost power three times, but only for a few seconds each time.  Happy I had unplugged everything before hand.  I had friends who lost every single bit of electronics and electrics, computers, refrigerator, you name it, in a storm. They were not home to unplug and disconnect at the time and came home to find everything done in.

Haven’t seen the social media yet today, and feeling pretty calm and not angry at the moment. Maybe I’ll just skip it all for a day.  Not like I can fix anything, anyway.  And I am so tired of being angry, and appalled, and in despair.  Stay safe, people.  Stay safe.

What looks like fog is rain blowing past.  Neat. From last Saturday’s flash storm.

A newsletter I get.  A good cartoon by Clay Jones Copyright 2020 Claytoonz.com

Al Sharpton: Responding to the business leaders and politicians who have taken pains to express their support for protesters, Sharpton brandished a sharp tone. “Don’t apologize — give Colin Kaepernick a job back,” he said. “Don’t come with some empty apology. Take a man’s livelihood, strip a man down of his talents, and four years later, when the whole world is marching, you all of a sudden, you go and do a FaceTime.”

Hypocrites abound these days.  ‘Let me put up a nice big banner on my product page, while doing absolutely nothing in the background to give my workers decent wages, health care, and safety materials they are in dire need of during this pandemic.  Can’t be bothered with that, but just LOOK at the big Black Live Matter thing I’ve stuck on my company’s page.’  Looking right at you, Amazon

From my new post page: There’s an easier way to edit posts on WordPress.com.

So, dear WordPress, have you actually used it, because easier is NOT how I would describe it. At all. I am not the only one, either.

I can’t really go out and protest, and I have no clout in any area of life, so this is all I can do to contribute.  Also, I am very, very angry at my fellow countrymen who are making excuses and even applauding police brutality and worshiping the orange man.  Very angry.  Here’s an article comparing police brutality and murders in several countries.

Police Brutality

I have not been out of my apartment, except twice to go to the lobby, since March 11th.  No one has been in here since March 12th.  I have been coping well, with the odd going batshit crazy day here and there.  But now, now I am feeling so stressed and angry and upset at what is going on, it makes batshit crazy look like a field day at a farm, with baby animals and ice cream.  I just want to shout, OMG, OMG, OMG , what is happening to my country?  How many people are loving this.  How many people believe that if you think this is all wrong, you are a libtard and an idiot.  Good grief, how did we get to be so horrid? Such hideous excuses for human beings?  They seem to love calling themselves ‘Christian’, too, although they have no concept at all of what the word even means, let alone what the person it is named after taught.  How did things get so distorted?  How did so many people lose any semblance of rationality.  I kind of just want to crawl in a hole and cover my head til this all goes away.  It will go away, right.  Enough people with working brains will step and and make things change and get rid of these hate-filled, greedy cretins.  OMG, OMG, OMG.