It was cold last night. We had a pretty good covering of frost when I woke up.
The window sill seems to be warmer by a couple degrees, maybe because it's near the exhaust for the boiler, I still have flowers blooming!
I've been shopping for a phone case. My hubby is giving me his Samsung Galaxy S4 after he gets his new phone. I want a new case, and since I intend to take a lot of pictures, I want a wrist strap. What I don't want is one of those cases that folds up into a wallet. Do I want to talk with a wallet stuck to my head? No. And speaking of that, maybe I will get a blue tooth thingy....not sure yet. Do I want a thing clipped to my ear? Maybe not. I don't know. I'm just really undecided. What I want is some way to hang onto my phone so it doesn't cascade off the side of a cliff or tumble down into a gorge because I didn't have it attached to me.
I was going to write about the pretty sunrise and sunny day today.
And then I was going to write about the Fire Alarm and the police and fire department showing up because the guy upstairs had a freakin' FIVE GALLON bucket FULL of cigarette butts and it was ON FIRE.
But then everything I wrote got lost and it wasn't saved. The fire was put out, my hubby and I went for coffee, and all is well with us.
So then we were talking a little bit about all the stuff going on since the election. Now, a little backstory here. My parents were democrats and even though they weren't religious, they taught me to be kind and tolerant. My first husband was a Republican. I learned early on that people don't need to be on the same political party to love each other. My second husband cannot vote until he is naturalized.
Fast forward to the election. Well, we have no TV, only Internet, so we are a bit isolated from the news, to say the least. I honestly did not want to vote for either candidate. I certainly was put off by Trump, and his comments about Muslims were deeply troubling. Hubby asked me, which one was more likely to protect Kosovo, after all, he has family there. I told him Hillary. He said he felt she was more level headed and a better choice. I agreed. I was actually choked up when I voted, because I was voting for a woman for the first time. I was also voting for my and my hubby's choice, because, as I mentioned, he cannot vote.
I stayed up until Trump was declared winner. My hubby was at work. I texted my younger daughter, "F**k he won. She was as angry, stunned and upset as I was. However, I suspected my other daughter and other family members as well voted the other way. I knew they were not bad people. After my shock wore off and the riots started, I gradually began to learn a few things, like, most people who voted for Trump were not horrible racist people, they were hard working people who wanted to prosper again. Mind you I am not talking about @ss holes who are doing @ss hole things. Trump being elected didn't cause them to be @ss holes. They were already @ss holes. We could argue forever about being tired of political correctness and all manner of things, but I'm not here to argue.
I'm not going to try to defend one side or the other. There is enough of that chatter going around. With the whole nation in an uproar, the one constant in my life is my husband. I started hearing a song in my head, as my hubby and I drove home from Starbucks.
Stuck in the Middle With You ~ Stealers Wheel
Well, I don't know why I came here tonight
I got the feeling that something ain't right
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down those stairs
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
Yes, I'm stuck in the middle with you,
And I'm wondering what it is I should do
It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Losing control, and I'm all over the place
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
Well, you started off with nothing,
And you're proud that you're a self-made man
And your friends they all come crawling,
Slap you on the back and say,
Please, please
Trying to make some sense of it all,
But I can see it makes no sense at all
Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor?
'Cause I don't think that I can take anymore
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
And you started off with nothing,
And you're proud that you're a self-made man
And your friends they all come crawling,
Slap you on the back and say,
Please, please.
Yeah, I don't know why I came here tonight
I got the feeling that something ain't right
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down those stairs
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
Yes, I'm stuck in the middle with you
Stuck in the middle with you
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
Well, not literally, but so much has happened it's mind-boggling. I don't have TV, so I rely on facebook for news. I don't know if that's good or bad. There are riots, there are cases of people being bullied, and opinions about everything are all over the place.
So, I'm taking a break. No comments today.
In other news, my daughter and I had an "Apple Tasting Party" last night. I cooked tacos (my hubby doesn't like tacos, and he was at work) and my daughter brought 8 apples. I cut two slices of each on a paper plate on which my daughter wrote their names.
I discovered I am terrible at evaluating apples. "They taste like apples." Some were stronger, some were more tart. I was too tired to take good notes. I didn't sleep much on election night.
We both agreed the Red Delicious was the best
In other news, there are succulents planted OUTSIDE at the library, and one of them is the one I named "Bumpy" and left behind in California.
Firesticks (a type of euphorbia)
"Bumpy" (Lampranthus deltoides)
Out the front window is fall's last hoorah, the last tree to turn color.
Excuse my Rant that I posted early this morning. I would like to say I am hearing a lot of good things from a lot of people. Many people are talking about pulling together, about watching over our neighbors, especially if we feel or see that they may become victims of hate crimes. I think what many people are saying is, hate is not what we are about, and we shouldn't let our President define us as such.
*********************
"Set Back 50 Years"
It looks like %$@$#@ is going to win, not that I liked either of them, but I felt she was the lesser of two evils.
I hope and pray we don't end up in a nuclear war. I hope and pray that f'tard doesn't play into Putin's hands and destabilize the Balkans. My hubby has family there.
All these angry people here who voted for him....what are they thinking? Do they think this asshat will draw a line around America and cut off everything? What...make America great again? What they really mean is "make America white and Christian again". That's stupid, because there have always been other religions here and other colors here and other races here.
Another sunny, beautiful fall day here. Hubby is off so we will be doing lots of stuff together, after I vote of course, and after he sleeps some, since he worked all night.
In short, I've been flip-flopping around this election. I have friends and family on both sides. I tend not to discuss things, because, well, I'm not into political fights with family.
Two important discussions came up between me and my hubby, because with him I discuss everything. I said "discuss", not "give into", for anyone who doesn't know us, my hubby is my soulmate. 'Nuff said.
Anyway, something was resonating with me, with us, and that is Hillary will defend Kosovo and Trump will dump it. The other important discussion was that Hillary has a level head and Trump is a knee-jerk jerk. My hubby is not a citizen yet. He cannot vote. I will be voting for both of us.
The other thing I want to bring up today is, although I'm posting everyday, I'm not in a contest to win any awards with my blog. I like to write and talk about stuff, and about life. I'm not into themes or making money with my blog. If you are here reading, great! Thank you and hello!
One thing I will be working on is some page or linked blog with the best of my photos. Not sure how I want to do this yet...still thinking. I have a vast number of photos that are not categorized, and that are spread across several blogs and folders on my harddrive and back-up drive.
I leave you with another picture of my sedums, this time in the sun. I am thoroughly enjoying my tiny piece of outdoor garden.
It was my son-in-law's birthday and the household was all rushed with cleaning and cooking. The kitties were in the spare bedroom, except for Sophie, who was in the front room, because Murry and Macey didn't like her. My husband and I had moved into the other spare bedroom earlier in the month. It was our chance to get out of the dirty city air where I had lived so long. Anyway, that's another story.
Murry, Macey and Sophie became my charges in 2002 when my daughter married and moved to Australia. I was their "foster mom". Eight years later my daughter divorced and left Australia. After a time she and the kitties moved to California....enter....my new hubby and I, also in California in 2014.
Macey and Murry, like brother and sister, "The Gang" or "Kitty Mafia"
Macey had "Catatude"
Sophie ~ "So Soft Sophie", luxurious thick, fine fur and very shy. She sounded like Chewbacca.
My daughter got Murry from a pet store in the fall of 1998. He almost died from a severe infection when he was a kitten, which left him "dumb as a box of rocks". We finally figured out that he caught the infection at the vet's, because I recalled maybe the table had not been wiped down before I put him on it. We never went to that vet again.
My daughter found Macey in a Walgreen's parking lot on the south side of Chicago. She was working for an inventory company, and someone had found a dirty, abandoned kitten. My daughter agreed to take her. It might have been the spring of 1999, if I recall correctly.
"She looks mean", I told my daughter. "Look how cute she is! She has extra toes!" Exclaimed my daughter. Macey was a polydactyl, with extra toes. She turned out to be the most intelligent cat we had ever known.
Murry and Macey became best friends. They were a team, always backing each other up. When Sophie joined the group as a new-found kitten with a slight limp, Macey and Murry teamed up to get rid of her. Sophie was shy, and hid from them. In the years they lived with me, and after when my daughter took them all back, Sophie had her own room separate from "The Kitty Mafia". Macey actually accepted Sophie. Murry was almost always sleeping, so most of the time it wasn't a big issue. If he woke up, he would attack her. Sophie fine-tuned herself to run to her room if he twitched.
As I mentioned, Macey was the smartest cat we ever knew. She was too smart for her own good. She was a "people cat". She would greet company with a chirp, sort of a trill that started with a "B", and a rub. If they sat down she would be in their lap purring. I often thought it would be a good idea to build a "catwalk" at eye-level all around the house so Macey could trot along side us as we walked. That's where she wanted to be. My furniture had the scratches to prove it. She had the annoying habit of jumping up on anything so she could "talk" to me, even if I was cooking. She never jumped on the stove, but she would jump on the kitchen island. One evening I was rolling dough. I saw her sitting on the floor looking up at me, twitching her tail. "Stay down!" I scolded. "I'm cooking. Don't you dare jump on my dough." In a blink of an eye she landed on the very edge of the Island, all four feet as close to the edge as possible, not a single paw on my dough." "Chirrrp!" She said, as if to say, "See I didn't touch your dough." That was Macey. Always in your face, the "interactive pet".
I had checked on Macey in the morning of the party. She and Murry were both of advanced age. We knew Macey didn't have much time left. Three years earlier she had been diagnosed with Hyperthyroid disease. She needed a daily dose of medicine to slow her thyroid. It's that time most pet owners hate...learning to say goodbye. Macey looked bad. I tried the best I could to make her comfortable. I tried to offer her water, gently touching her lips with my finger dipped in water. I closed to door and went back to cleaning and preparing for the party.
People were arriving. I checked on Macey again. She cried faintly and reached for my fingers with her paw. I held her paw, tears began to flow.
"Mom!"
"Macey, I have to go," I gently told her. I rushed to wash my face and rejoin the party. I didn't say anything. I didn't want to ruin my son-in-law's birthday. My heart was breaking.
Guests were leaving, finally all of them were gone. My husband opened the door to check on the kitties. "Come! Come quick! Macey is bad!" We all came running. My daughter found a clean towel and wrapped her in it. She held her until she died in her arms. Then we buried her at the back of the property.
Beautiful Macey R.I.P. 1999 - 2014
A few months later Murry passed, and a year or so later, Sophie was gone, too. Murry didn't want to be bothered, but Sophie wanted to be held. Like people, some animals want to die alone, and others just want you to hold their paw.
