when disaster strikes, and it will

I was reading an article about the cyclospora epidemic. It’s all over the entire country which seems odd, because, not to get too graphic, but it’s coming from butts, specifically those attached to individual humans, as opposed to contaminated water from massive cattle farms which is used to water nearby huge agrifarm vegetable fields. Seriously, if this originated by some lettuce pickers in mexico, it strains credulity that there could be so many foregoing the honey buckets to infect an entire nation. But what do I know, fortunately we have bobby, brain worm kennedy watching out for us. However, in the meantime, maybe skip the wedge salad. Mje on the other hand is going full on vegan in the hopes that I shed a few lbs.

But I digress, at the end of the article there was a helpful list of ways to survive various cataclysmic events. The first suggestion was to prepare a disaster prep kit. I don’t want to judge, but that seems a highly personal piece of equipment. For instance my kit would begin with a mixed case of french rose and a nice chard, IMO sauvignon blancs are nothing more than grapefruit juice mixed with ethyl alcohol, not a bad thing if you want to start your day off right, but certainly not for consumption later in the day, nor in a disaster. Of course gotta have some nibbles to go with the vino, plastic insulated cups in case ice is in short supply, cocktail napkins if you must but sort of bougie. Then, as this whole exercise involves a disaster, as much xanax as I can cadge from the ob&c’s supply, because god knows I don’t want to get too overwrought, nor deplete my own personal cache. Once the basics are in place, then I would throw in some bandaids (all that drinking makes me bleed like a stuck pig), antiseptic, yada, yada, yada. And tylenol in case I end up with a stress headache.

The next topic was what to do if you are caught in a flash flood. My first thought would be to go with the flow and swim, preferably toward the nearest dry land, which seems obvious. If you don’t know how to swim, hang on to the ice chest with the wine as a flotation device. If the wine makes it too heavy to float then you have some hard decisions to make, dump the wine and get through sober or start drinking to lighten the load. Option two is my rec.

The final topic was what to do if a tornado strikes. First suggestion, do not live in tornado alley. Try vermont or alaska. If you are determined to put your life at risk and stay in oklahoma where frankly you are just asking to be sucked up, definitely do not live in a trailer, tornadoes are drawn to trailer parks like moths to a flame. Just face the fact that if you live in tornado alley in a trailer you are doomed. So I would refer you back to the components of your disaster prep kit, although I might suggest higher proof options, everclear would be an excellent choice as you can use it as an antiseptic should you be lucid enough to treat any injuries, in the unlikely event that you survive. Then something about getting into an interior room, of which there are none in a trailer, or a bath tub, ditto, or dragging a mattress over you. Depending on how old your mattress is, how long it has been in a trailer and what it has been subjected to over the years I would say you are really caught on the horns of a dilemma here. Entirely your choice, smothered by a foul moldy mattress or being sucked into a tornado.

However, if you have the misfortune to have the tornado miss you, you could die like a roach under that mattress, too blotto from the everclear to call for help, in oklahoma.

i never liked you anyway, loser

Say, just for yucks, that you decide to throw a big party to celebrate a major event, like the 250th anniversary of something. You make up a long guest list of celebrities and let everyone know who’s invited, before you send out the invites. But when you start actually inviting people you are mortified that hardly anyone wants to come. You are so embarrassed that you decide the best way to make yourself feel better is to publicly label the invitees who declined, the select group whom you so desperately wanted to come to your party, as losers, worthless nobodies who didn’t deserve to be invited in the first place. You publicly smear them in every way you can imagine. You finally decide that you are going to just change the party to something else, just pretend it wan’t really a party, instead it’s a rally, and you are the only guest. And you are gonna be there with bells on!

Or say you want to make yourself look like a real patron of the arts, even though you actually don’t give a rats ass about something that is not a money maker, something that exists solely to give people joy, a concept completely anathema to you. You certainly don’t want to donate money to it, what a waste! No, you do what you do best, you slap your moniker on one of the most prestigious arts venues in the country. Et voila!

Or, maybe you feel like the house you are living in free of charge isn’t big and grand enough, so without consulting the owners, you tear down half of it to make a huge party room. The owners find out and are furious. Not only because they liked the house as it was but then got the bill for the demolition, and are going to be stuck with the party room construction costs. Neither of which they approved or wanted. Unfortunately for them, your lease is not up until 2026 and trying to evict you is nothing short of impossible.

Then there is the repainting of the reflecting pool, damned shame it’s not a “self-reflecting” pool. You don’t like how it looks, too drab, not enough pizzaz, so you hire a pal who paints swimming pools in a no-bid contract. By now you have learned that you can do what you like with other people’s money and without their approval. So you decide to go for it, act fast before anyone gets up a head of steam! Before anyone realizes what’s going on, you’ve set your reservoir dog in action, and surprise, surprise, the cost doubles! But who cares, it’s not your money, and although there’s a great deal of tut-tutting, there’s nothing to really stop you. Just remember not to dive in head first.

But to be safe, you dial it back a bit, while still making yourself feel good, and have huge banners with your scowling visage glaring down upon the masses, hung all around town. They probably didn’t cost all that much, compared to your other pet projects, but they do give off a definite north korea vibe. Not really something that the average person in a democracy is probably too keen on. So what.

But it’s not about them, your employers and your landlords. It’s all about you. And as long as they, through their representatives, don’t say no, you are going to do whatever you want with their money, their property and their country.

Suckers.

.

oh the places they’ll go

The ob&c and mje are just back from hell on earth: atlanta, ga., home of son knut, second wife oleo, and our grandchildren apricot, ambrose and decibelle. Ambrose is graduating from high school so a marathon of festivities worthy of his receiving the nobel prize in astrophysics, is on order. The ob&c and mje do our best to support our grandchildren’s achievements, even when it means driving for days, spending a fortune on an hotel (knut was kind enough to recommend a few…how do you say I don’t want you staying in my six bedroom house…well that’s how) and a $$$$ tab to celebrate the milestone.

First, after missing a hair appt due to the traffic and putzing around of the ob&c, we met alhambra, knut’s first wife and the daughter we wished we had instead of the one we do, her new hubby, presto! and grand daughter apricot for what turned out to be an extremely costly array of cocktails and “starters.” Of course, this is all on the qt, as we didn’t want oreo to feel less than ‘whatever’, nor to incur the wrath of knut for consorting with his former wife and mother of his children but who now is apparently the enemy.

Next up: Dinner hosted by knut (and oleo) Mje had meticulously arranged wardrobe choices as commanded by knut for both the ob&c and myself. The ob&c is completely indifferent to clothing, usually looks like he just fell out of a laundry basket, so when knut states that dress clothing is required for the dinner, the ob&c chooses a pair of hiking pants, a stained polo shirt (“no one cares”) and deck shoes. Well, love of my life, there is one person who cares and she is standing right in front of you and she ain’t moving until you change clothes. Fortunately I had packed a blazer, dress shirt and trousers and a decent pair of shoes, which after the “hair do” debacle, which again was entirely his fault for not getting on the road on time, he felt it was in his best interest (and survival) to accede to my choices. I jammed the him into a “relaxed fit” shirt, one of his few pairs of trousers that don’t require spanx and a blue blazer all the while enduring whining worthy of a two year old being required to eat spinach. Sadly the pushing and pulling ruined my manicure… truly there is no justice in life…(fyi, mje wore a tailored (read: tight) black silk tunic and voluminous polka dot pantaloons, and black satin heel slides with real fur pom poms, fab!!!!) so we had to stop en route to the restaurant to purchase additional polish at a luxe grocery. The ob&c, still laying very low from the hair do debacle, remained quiet as a clam. But, hey, while I was in there I might as well stock up on a few bottles of vino…go to the self check ring up the polish and wine, stick in my CC, but whoop, whoop!!! the age police show up and ask for my ID. I am old, and as much as it would please me (and my surgeon), no half blind person would mistake me for someone half a century younger. No dice granny, gotta run back out to the car in the scorching heat in my too tight silk tunic, and uncomfortable shoes to retrieve my ID, reenter and the lady scans the ID and I am out of there. Not so fast, stopped again, apparently my CC charge was deleted because I had not been properly ID’d, so back to the cash register to pay. By this time any caution about our overindulgence of alcohol was totally and completely moot. Knut had commanded that we be on time, and so anxious were we, that we arrived at the restaurant bar 45 minutes early and gluttonously drank the juice of the forbidden fruit before officer unfriendly arrived.

The dinner, to which knut insisted we be on time (were we ever!) and properly attired (ditto) was for reasons we couldn’t figure out disguised as a birthday dinner for the ob&c, whose birthday was last month. I brought a card so the crew could sign it although why I bothered I do not know. Knut had apparently forgotten his ruse but made a point to write “dad” on the envelope and a nice inscription, making it seem as though he’d brought it, however the ob&c had already seen it before we left home and was justifiably surprised when he received it. However, despite knut’s firm dress code directive, he himself showed up without a jacket, in a shirt with his sleeves rolled up. Never one to accept criticism of any kind, he dismissed my comment on his violation of the dress code that he had conveyed so specifically to us, with his usual sneer. Children truly are a blessing, but to whom…

Then on to the BIG DAY!!!! A luncheon hosted by knut’s former wife and mother of the graduate, alhambra and knut (and oleo) and attended by many of alhambra’s florida-based family was first stop on the graduation day party train. They are all just right of atilla the hun, politically, so it was a potentially combustible congregation. Also very jesus oriented, and in one case, alhambra’s mother (fortunately the apple fell a long way from that tree) a teetotaler. We were outnumbered and outflanked in every way possible. But kudos to alhambra on the seating arrangement, she managed to keep everything at a low simmer with the unsaid warning, don’t talk about anything that might be flammable, which obviously kept convo to a bare minimum.

Now, building up to the BIG EVENT. The schedule got a bit muddled by then, we arrived at knut’s house for the scheduled “one drink and a snack” , to be followed by “one drink and an array of snacks” in the restaurant bar down the street. Smack on time, we were met by an empty open garage! Yikes, we thought we’d managed, despite our best efforts, to mess it up and miss one of the signature events, the one chez knut too. So we sped to the restaurant , fortunately close by, only to be told that there was no reservation nor were there any other people wandering about looking dazed and confused, at least not at that hour. So we hustled back to knut’s house, now inhabited and covered in family cars, where we were admonished for being late, which meant the bar crawl was apparently off. I swear, sometimes you just can’t win.

So we quickly downed a glass of cheap wine, declined the cold pizza and trundled off to the ceremony at the nearby school, gazing longingly out of the car window at the restaurant (bar) as we drove by. Then, three hours on cement stadium seats to bear witness to this momentous event, from the bag piping in of the graduates, seating of the graduates, speeches by everyone on the dais, then the valedictorian, salutatorian, then the truly endless roll call of the graduates including any prizes or notable achievements they may have been awarded, then a fireworks finale. And that’s what $41,112 a year and a ham sandwich will get you.

Back at the house, we were not invited in, but did receive a car-side lecture from knut about drinking and driving. FYI, that ship was moored in a large plastic cup under my feet at the stadium and set sail when the bagpipes began to bellow.. So we did what any teenager would do, we peeled out of his driveway, did a few donuts and skidded onto the street to demonstrate not only our total sobriety but our amazing automotive prowess, not to mention our shared amazement that we had not only endured, but had done so without incident, well, except the hair do debacle.

And finally congrats to all the entitled grads who will probably use AI for their papers, be drunk or stoned for a significant portion of their academic careers, have their mothers call their TA’s (freshmen never get a real professor, it’s not worth their time, it’s like going to the doctor and getting a PA instead of the doctor you thought you were going to get) if they get a bad grade, have their fathers call the campus police if/when they get busted, etc. College is a wonderful experience, but as knut has often told us, he didn’t learn a thing and the only reason to go is to “make contacts.” For four years, all on your parents’ dime. How great is that?

And to the parents, you have been warned. As you tearfully deposit your darling babies in their dorm rooms, whisper in their ears, “Just so you know, if you screw up, the rule is one and done. Join the rotary if all you want to do is make contacts”. Ingrate.

porn r us

Well, it seems the suave european doc of yore didn’t translate well into the medical milieu of the low country as well as his employers, and manufacturers of his revolutionary robot had hoped. Turns out we all haven’t just fallen off the turnip truck as they thought. But damn he was the only doc I’ve ever had, besides my cousin dilbert, who ever told me not to stop drinking. I doubt lightening will strike twice at my age.

For readers who have no idea what the fork I am writing about, then I have just one thing to say:

GO READ MJE’S PRIOR POSTS, I DO NOT HAVE THE TIME, ENERGY NOR MENTAL BANDWIDTH TO REWRITE IT BECAUSE YOU ARE JUST TUNING IN. GROW UP. CATCH UP. KEEP UP.

Sorry, needed to get that out of my system, perhaps a bit overwrought, but I literally can’t rewrite that which I have already written. It’s hard enough to do it once, like having a baby, why would anyone want to replicate that experience. Full disclosure, had my first baby with an epidural so it didn’t really count. The second one I thought I would tough out “naturally,” unfortunately, by the time the going gets tough, it’s too late to call in the pharmaceutical cavalry and it’s just you and excruciating pain. Not to get too deep in the weeds here, or raise a long simmering resentment, but while I was dilating at a snail’s pace, the ob&c, whose laboratory was just across the street from the hospital, slunk out to check on an ongoing experiment with a glib..”Look, if this is going to take awhile, how about I just check on things at the lab and be back in a few (what, minutes, hours…?). Absolutely dear, no problemo, I’m just lying here enduring waves of pain that no man would be able to tolerate, trying to push a basketball sized object out of a golf ball sized exit.

Now I have completely forgotten what I meant to write about. Hmmmmm. Oh, yeah MJE has just discovered that the ob&c and our grandson ambrose have bonded over pornography. Yep, you heard that right. Sweet little ambrose, excellent student, amiable (not to me but…) inadvertently sent his grandpa a bunch of videos of shark attacks, bear attacks, etc, but whoa nelly!!!! all of a sudden soft porn images start appearing followed by very hard core porn. Talk about an oops. Well not to the ob&c, he felt, that as a scientist, he needed to really delve deeper into these images. I expect he’ll be spending a lot of time in the bathroom with his cell phone analyzing them.

Grandparents used to bond with their grandchildren over fishing or hunting, maybe coin collecting or sports memorabilia, but come on, this is the 21st century, get with it dinosaur. Apparently a joint multi-generational appreciation of the most graphic pornography, short of snuff videos, is the tie that binds. Fellatio is the new philately.

They grow up so fast then stop in 7th grade

high drama in the low country

So mje has a lazy kidney, much like the rest of my body. It’s in there somewhere but not doing much of anything. I know this because I have had a cough, courtesy of our grandson jesus who brought rsv home from camp lo these many summers ago and the CT scan of my lungs caught sight of my lazy ass kidney. So on to a sonogram and, yessiree bob that kid is def not pulling her weight.

So my doc has heard tell of the new scalpel in town and referred me to him. I arrive at my appointment and am, as per usual, sent to sit in an empty room on a hard plastic chair to ponder what’s to come. In swans the gentleman doctor, clad not in a white coat but a rumpled suit and weirdly pointed, definitely not american, shoes. Now mje wouldn’t know an armani from a pastrami, but I do know polyester when I see it. Decidedly unimpressed, sartorially speaking.

But, hey he’s new in town, unaware that synthetic fabrics trap the heat and humidity and are eschewed by the local mens ware cognoscenti, so mje decides to cut him some slack in return for his cutting out my kidney. So he stands, leaning against the far wall on which hangs a poster showing the pertinent body parts, and explains in his fetchingly accented english why I really need him to put some distance between me and my negligent kidney. He doesn’t show me my ultrasound, he doesn’t do any examination, he’s as smooth as a used car salesman and I am all in. I’ll take the edsel.

Ooops. turns out his magic robot has yet to arrive (probably stuck in the strait of hormuz) so I will need to wait until it arrives. A month, maybe two. So much for the urgency of the situation. So I posit, if this is as crucial as you say, why not kick it old school and forget the robot…too slow billy joe, he’s out de do’ and on to his next prospect.

So a week later I go back to my doc with a laundry list of problems, real and imagined that need attention. First thing out of this mild mannered southern gent of a doc’s mouth is, do not let that man, meaning the smooth talking, robot toting doc, anywhere near you. Mmmmmmm, the plot thickens. But doc, you referred me to him. An uncomfortable pause. I did, he said, based on his credentials, however since then I attended a talk he gave on the prostate and I realized that he was more of a salesman sent out to drum up business to pay for the very expensive robot than he was a superior surgeon. Good to know. Even better before he starts slicing and dicing.

Now, you say prostate and I say sold out house of anxious self-absorbed men. Women have the equivalent of prostates, skene’s glands, and I have never heard any woman froth at the mouth over their condition. But men are drawn like moths to the flame of the eternal prostate. They compare psa test results like their golf scores, hyperventilating over anything above a 4.0. Sheesh, most of the geezers who might have elevated psa scores probably haven’t used their operative organs in years anyway. Women don’t whine and cry about their uteri, it’s just one more goddam thing to lug around.

So, now I am stuck between a huckster with a robot and an indefinite waitlist for one of the old fart docs. And that kidney was just the third thing on my list, at this rate I’ll never get to those weight loss shots.

Sometimes life is so unfair.

on the road again

Sorry for the loooong delay since my last post. I am having a bit of mid-life crisis (well, mid-life if I live to be 150 years old). Frankly the political situation in what used to be known as the United States of America is so abominable that I dread getting out of bed in the morning, or afternoon, whatever. I have never been one of those glass half full people, but now I feel more like glass half empty of what was apparently jones town grape koolaid.

The OB&C and I are just back from 2 weeks in the big sleazy. We were joined by grand daughter bandoliera-saturnalia , age 33 and great grandson henri, age 18 mos., from NY, also teenage grandson jesus from oakland. You might think that an age range spanning seven decades might be difficult to plan for, and you would be absolutely goddam right. One end wakes up at 5:30am, the other goes to sleep at 5:30pm. One contingent wants to go to bourbon street, the other to storyland and the merry go round.

But believe it or not, we are all still speaking and all had a great time. At least I guess we are as we have yet to receive any thank you feedback. I am sure it’s just a matter of the incompetence of the USPS, possible inability to find a cell or land line phone number for us or more likely, as much as I hate to think it, the sense of entitlement that precludes the need to show appreciation for 2 weeks of wonderful restaurants, activities, lodging, airline tickets, etc. I want to be upset but I cannot recall thanking my mother for one damned thing. Karma.

The two day drive back was the usual bitch. Having to traverse florida feels like walking on hot coals. The moment we crossed the state line gas prices shot up 50c a gallon. We have stayed in tallahassee midway the last couple of trips, at the best western, and it is a vivid flashback. When the OB&C changed jobs from harvard to oregon state we literally didn’t know which state was on top oregon or washington. Well, let me tell you, we sure as hell know now. We drove from cambridge in a rental truck, into which we had driven our VW bug and packed it full of stuff and filled the truck around it. Our merry band included a 9 mo old baby, knut, who was in an untethered bouncy seat on the floor of the truck (a car seat strapped up like an astronaut , really?, give me a break, it was 1976) and on the bench seat the OB&C, MJE and our 5 year old daughter, albatross, sans seat belts.

It took us about ten days to cross the country in our uhaul conestoga wagon, but man we were going to live large on the way. Best westerns every night! As soon as we checked in, albatross hit the swimming pool and I probably just threw knut in and told here to make sure he didn’t sink while I went back to the room to pour myself a glass of chablis from the chateau gallo gallon jug. We ate in the “dining room” every night, cleaned out the free breakfast every morning and ate waffles, biscuits and sausage all day until the next night of fine dining.

When we crossed the state line in the dalles, oregon on the columbia river I felt like the isrealites did when they finally crossed the desert, admittedly it took them forty days but they didn’t have a nine month old baby and a five year old curmudgeon to deal with, so I am giving both journeys equal weight.

After a swim and a plastic cup of that chateau gallo chablis, we cleaned up, dressed up and went into what was actually a semi-legit “dining room.” I suspect the ob&c and I ordered steak, baked potato in tin foil and maybe a glass of house wine, honey we were on top of the world. We had made the journey! We were all still alive, estranged for life, but alive.

When we called the waitress to settle up she said that a gentleman at another table had paid our bill, because he said we looked like a nice family. Boy can looks be deceiving, but we took it, for sure. We tried to locate him but he was in the “nightclub” next door shaking a tail feather and we couldn’t locate him among the writhing oregonians.

On to corvallis, our new home town, where we checked into a motel and were promptly visited by the “welcome wagon” (remember them?) laden with a basket of summer sausage and smoked gouda. Sadly this was twenty years before willamette valley even had a glimmer in its eye about pinot noir. It was old timey, the parking meters cost a penny and people routinely paid other people’s meters as a courtesy. 😁

Now, 50 years later, we have more stuff than we ever imagined, most of which we don’t need or want. But I miss the excitement and anticipation of starting out with everything we owned in a uhaul truck.

geezercise

“Experts” are constantly telling us how vital exercise is to maintaining good health into one’s golden years. They also say that stress is a killer, therefore mje has successfully and blissfully ignored repeated encouragement to engage in group exercise classes, because mje has found that even without a set exercise regimen one can incorporate a number of healthy exercises into one’s daily routine without too much effort.

Steps: Whatever moron came up with the idea that people must complete a certain number of “steps” in order to be healthy should be strapped to a treadmill until death.. If one more obnox accosts me with the number of steps they have completed or need to complete, I’m gonna pull a tanya harding on them. Mje has found that that you do not have to have an unattractive device strapped to your wrist to track your movement, I have instead been relying upon the “why am I in this room” technique for years. I decide that I need to go to the laundry room for instance, but upon arrival I have no recollection of why I am there. So I return to my barcolounger and remember what it was I wanted to go to the laundry room for, I get up, walk there and either retrieve the object or simply say screw it. Either way I have walked to and fro twice. I repeat this throughout the day and voila, a whole lotta steps have been taken. Sometimes I actually remember why I went into a particular part of the house in which case I kill two birds with one stone, I unload the dryer, find my keys or glasses, and I step my way to a healthy lifestyle.

Stretching: These same self described “experts” tell us that stretching is crucial. Could not agree more. Mje utilizes a number of stretches throughout my daily routine. One I call the “reach the ravioli.” I have found that I am becoming smaller, laterally and literally, as I age and that objects that I had stored on the top shelves of the pantry are now not easily accessed without a good long stretch. It often takes me several attempts to get a grip on the item and each of these is a winner. If I want to stretch my obliques I simply use the other arm. It’s a no brainer.

For stretching the hamstrings I use the “pick up the pill” technique. As you all know, when you drop a pill it inevitably rolls into the deepest darkest corner of the room. Leaning down to search for it is an excellent way to stretch the hamstrings and lower back. Once you have found it you may incorporate a version of the plank, engaging your core, to reach behind the bath tub to retrieve it. MJE downs a number of pharmaceuticals everyday and my technique is to pour the required meds into my hand and down them all at once, usually with a light rose. Inevitably a couple of the little bastards escape and so I stretch my hams and lower back quite a lot. Plus at bedtime I also require a rather vast collection of sleep meds, usually washed down with a nice french bourgogne, and I again engage in the p.u.p. stretch. No yoga required.

Strength training: Again “they” say that strength training is essential to maintain strong bones. My bones have the tensile strength of angel hair pasta so I incorporate weight bearing exercises daily. Again, no need for expensive weights or bungee cords, just switch out your crap aluminum pans for cast iron and heavy old timey stainless steel. My skillets weigh on average seven pounds, throw in a couple of pounds of edible stuff, lug that to and fro from counter or cutting board to stove to plate to sink, wash and dry it and rehang it on the pot rack and you are done. Bon appetit!

For a more intense weight workout I hoist bags of groceries, cases of wine or loads of linen sheets up a few set of stairs. Or, under duress, I haul out the vacuum cleaner and lug it around, which is a great combo stretch and weight training exercise. Bonus, clean floors!

Cool down: It is essential to cool down after every workout, although I recommend several cool downs a day. Mine usually involve a slow shuffle to the fridge, opening the door (which on a sub zero is not all that easy, but again a good upper body workout) and pulling down a cool bottle of wine. I give my hand and wrist muscles a bit of a workout to uncork or unscrew the bottle, then another soft stretch to reach the wine glass cupboard, pour the wine, reopen the fridge, using my other hand to balance the workout, then slowly shuffle back to my lounger. Yet even then I am maintaining a healthy routine as I sit down very slowly which is essentially a squat. I repeat this routine many times a day and aside from a fatty liver I am the picture of health.

deep dish piazza

Well, the entire christian world can now exhale. There is a new pope, leo. Mje is not a christian, nor anything else, deity-wise, but I am sure it was really important to christians to know there’s a new sheriff in the vatican who’s going to oversee all the pedophilia lawsuits against the catholic church. I’m not surprised it was quick, the rest of the cardinals, if not actually implicated, were probably praying to god they wouldn’t get put in the papal hot seat.

So bob of chicago is now leo of the vatican. He was a pretty safe choice as he’s spent most of his career in the jungles of peru indoctrinating indigenous people in the catholic catechism. Teaching them that the many water, earth and sky gods that have served them pretty well for as long as any of them can remember are now irrelevant and they have to abandon them and worship christ, the one true god, who frankly had never done one damned thing for them as far as they knew. But with christianity comes the bounty of the catholic church, giving up their au natural sartorial lifestyle and learning to be ashamed of their bodies, keeping track of the abstract notion of time and remembering to be somewhere at a seemingly random moment in order to kneel down and recite meaningless words, and most importantly, to be made to understand that if they didn’t do what the great white “padre” told them that they would suffer for eternity, whatever that was.

More importantly, bobdapope was tucked far far away from any possible pedophelia induced lawsuits. Heaven is the amazon jungle without lawyers.

But mje says, hey, let’s give leo a chance. Rumor has it that he, like his predecessor, is a “progressive.” Finally, a pope that realizes that women are just as capable of being as blindly devout as men and should have the right to an equal status in the catholic church. Well perhaps that is a bridge too far right out of the gate, or that men (and women) are not by nature celibate, and perhaps giving priests and nuns the right to marry might cut down on that pesky pedophilia problem. Or maybe reversing the whole tithing racket and instead giving everyone in their congregations ten percent of the luchre of the diocese, to be used in any way they feel supports the needy in their communities, catholic or not.

But what do I know, I am a simple human being who can recognize good or evil when I see it. I don’t need a supernatural being to give me a set of instructions. I don’t think any less of people who kneel on the putting green on sundays instead of in a church pew, or who hold hands and thank some invisible (at least in the supermarket, farm fields or kitchen) deity for the meals they are about to eat.

I understand that sentient beings are filled with fears and anxieties and need something, anything, that can provide them with a sense of security. For some it’s a supernatural being, for others it’s a circle of friends, or in my case a double makers on the rocks.

Peace.✌🏻

gravity of the situation

Devoted mje followers will surely remember a prior post titled “things I hate,” a list which seems to grow longer by the day. I really have nothing to complain about, which I hate, but the #1 thing I hate is gravity. Not to rehash the whys and wherefores of my antipathy towards ole Isaac’s big ass law, but folks, gravity is what makes your scale read at least five lbs. more than you actually weigh. Hate that.

Gravity, I guess, is kinda fundamental. Everyone understands it, even babies who sit in their highchairs, stare you right in the face and slowly and deliberately slide their bowls of mashed carrots off the edge of the tray. Or drop their favorite toy, knowing you are going to sprint over and put it back in their tiny grimy hands before they blow a gasket, and then wait until you are settled back down again to complete their elder siblings’ science projects, to drop it again. And laugh. It really never gets old.

So the other night mje was vegetating in front of the idiot box and was intrigued by a program about a guy who buys old buildings around charleston sc that are dilapidated, derelict, condemned, and restores them. It’s an incredibly noble cause, reclaiming long abandoned architectural gems that display beautiful features seldom used in contemporary buildings. On the episode I watched, he had bought an abandoned “queen anne craftsman style” house that was originally built in about 1890 and had been uninhabited for 60 years.

It was exciting to see him pulling down the plywood from the windows, discovering the unusual interior spaces, uncovering long hidden bead board or flooring, etc. But if the televised version of events is correct then this guy don’t know shit from shinola. Look, mje does not claim to be a master builder, although I did construct a fabulous “camp kitchen” out of half inch ply back when I was a girl scout leader (yeah, I know, hard to believe that anyone would want mje to be responsible for their gaggle of tweens and more confounding still, that I would ever volunteer to do such a thing) which was a marvel of carpentry, however it weighed in at about 75 lbs and took up almost the entire back of the car so we used it once and left it on the sidewalk.

But I digress, this guy shows off re-staining wainscoting (way too dark, in my opinion), painstakingly piecing together old beadboard, subdividing rooms into walk in closets, yada, yada. So he’s about halfway into restoring the interior when he and his pal start to pull up some linoleum flooring and discover water damage and rot. Only then idoes it occur to them that there just might be termites lurking within the structure. As mje has stated, I ain’t no builder, but I ain’t no dope neither, if you live in the south where termites (and roaches) rule the roost, you’d probably have a notion that an abandoned wooden house with a leaky roof would be party central to both of them. And sure as shootin’, they called the termite guy and the little buggers are all over the place. Pause for extermination.

Bugs gone (but ARE they really?) time to install a contemporary kitchen, complete with a cement countertop which weighs in at 150 lbs per square foot (keep this in mind for later on). Done, looks great!!! Then onto finishing out the master bedroom and bath, putting pretty tchotchkes all over the place, you know feathering the nest.

So the renovation is complete on the interior when the builder finally decides he might have a look see at the brick piers holding the whole shebang off the ground. Surprise, surprise, surprise the century old bricks are crumbling. oh no. So NOW the guy realizes he needs to jack the house up and replace the piers. Crank, crank crank…..alarm, alarm, alarm!!!! Everybody out of the house!!!!! Like cockroaches (or as they are colloquially, and totally adorably called in south carolina, “palmetto bugs”) fleeing under the counters when you turn on the kitchen lights, workers are blasting out of there like they’d been shot out of cannons.

And not a moment too soon. A terrific cracking sound starts, builds to a crescendo and godamn if the whole freaking front porch slowly peels away from the house and collapses in a massive cloud of dust. The guys stand there stock still, mouths agape until a piercing, profanity laced scream comes out of the builder’s mouth. WTF??????

Gee, wonder if all of that meticulous interior work could have miraculously remained intact. All the delicate piecing together of bits of beadboard and wainscoting, the patched and refinished floors, the meticulously reconstructed chimneys, the expensive and extremely weighty cement countertops….the months and months of slaving away in the charleston summer heat in an old dusty house only to have it literally brought down by gravity, oh and stupidity.

So what have we learned?

1. Termites and roaches will outlive everything else on the planet.

2. Nothing can escape the pull of gravity.

3. Before you pound the first nail, you dumb ass, you forking call a structural engineer and terminix.

sheesh

Trump’s hole in one…hundred days

My fellow americans…are you tired of winning yet?

I know mje is, in fact if we win anymore I am going to lose my ever loving shit.

Trump’s Hole in One hundred days is so big that it can accommodate almost everything.

Contents of trump’s hole (so far) in no particular order:

Rule of law

Due process

Illegal detention and deportation of american citizen and legal residents

Right to free speech

Thousands of federal workers’ jobs and the services they provided

Most of NIH, EPA, NSF, NOAA

USAID

Paris accords

Healthy economy

Booming stock market

Value of US dollar

Respect for america worldwide

Trump’s hole is so big, so vast, so impossibly expandable that there is only one thing that will sadly not fit into it.

Trump.